Happy New Year!
First up, Threshold at Kirkland Arts Center. This juried exhibit will include the largest burned tree painting I’ve done yet — a cedar tree from the starting point of the North Cascades’ 2015 Goodell Creek Fire. I’m always struck by how cedars seem to rot or burn from the inside out. Many times the center is completely gone yet the tree still lives.
The exhibit is on display January 7 – February 15. The opening reception is January 10 from 6 – 8 pm and I will be there.
Goodell Creek Cedar, Varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52″ high by 44″ wide (2019)
Next, Gage Academy in Seattle is having its 30th anniversary exhibit at the Washington State Convention Center Phyllis Lamphere Gallery. I teach the occasional weekend workshop at Gage, so I’m happy to have three of my burned tree paintings up from January 9 – April 13, 2020. Update: The reception date has been changed from the evening of January 31st to February 9, 11-1pm; I still plan to be there.
Stehekin Sentinel, Jolie laide and De-Limbed; Varnished watercolor on torn paper,
all 52″ high by various widths, (2014, 2017 and 2014)
Several of my large landscapes are hanging at the Lynnwood Convention Center’s Northwest Landscapes exhibit, now through June 30. There will be a reception February 19, 6-8 pm, but I will be away and unable to attend.
Young and Old Alike, Watercolor on paper, 22″H x 30″W (2008)
Three of my artist books will be at Northern Arizona University’s Art Museum for a book arts exhibit, “May You Live in Interesting Times” February 4 – April 18, 2020.
Top: The Last Iceberg, laser cut mat board, rub-on type, acrylic paint, varnish, linen thread; acrylic mount. 17”H x 10”W x 2.5”D (2016). [Rotated]
Above left: Rockbound Book: Elephant Canyon Volume.
Book: Sandstone, laser-cut mat board, elastic thread binding;
Case: wood, laser-cut mat board, paint, polish. Case: 7″L x 6″W x 3.5″H (2015).
Above right: Rockbound Book: Snowline.
Book: sliced snowflake obsidian, mat board, non-woven viscose;
Case: wood, paper, cord, casein paint, shoe polish, hardware. Case 8″ x 5″ x 4″ (2015).
In March-April, Anna McKee and I will be showing our work in an Art+Sci exhibit entitled Gathered from the Field; art provoked by climate research at the University of Puget Sound’s Kittredge Art Gallery in Tacoma, WA. It will include her installation, WAIS Reliquary: 68,000 Years and I will have ~30 of my bark beetle books. There will be a reception March 26 6-8 pm. Not only will Anna and I attend, but our various scientific, literary, audio and other collaborators will be there as well. Update: The reception time has been changed to 4:30pm-6pm at the Kittredge Gallery.
Bark Beetle Book Vol. XXVII: Survivorship. Log (likely white bark pine) with mountain pine beetle galleries, laser-cut bamboo, offset-printed text with inked-in mountain pine beetle galleries, brass binding post. 9.5″ diameter, 6″ H.
Based on a paper by Six et al.: ~7% of white bark pines in a research tract survived mass attack by mountain pine beetles. DNA analyses of the survivors showed “quieter” encoding for certain VOCs that the beetles perceive. The interior pages of the book have been printed with “ASCII art” of the mRNA encoding for monoterpene synthase. The proportion of dark, low-contrast (“quiet”) to light, high-contrast (“noisy”) pages in the book is 7/100.*
On March 24 I’ll be the speaker/demonstrator at the Northwest Watercolor Society’s March meeting at Daniel Smith Art Materials, 4150 1st Ave S., Seattle, beginning at 6:45 pm. Here’s what I said I would talk about (from page two of their newsletter):
“Painting landscapes in watercolor, both in the studio and from life, has led her in many directions Some are fairly predictable, like artist residencies in national parks and coordinating last summer’s NWWS plein air outings.
Other impacts have been more unexpected – learning to use tools such as pyrography (drawing by burning), paper making and casting (sculptural paper pulp), technology (software interpolation, laser cutting, digital printing on fabric), bookbinding and woodworking.
Another surprise has been deep creative collaborations with scientists, writers and poets. By spending time outdoors painting and living in remote parks and art colonies, she becomes aware of the issues affecting the landscapes she finds so inspiring.”
In other news, my State of the Forest installation continues to travel with Environmental Impact Sequel, opening in Asheville, North Carolina’s Arboretum in February-April. Update: owing to an unforeseen conflict on their part, I will NOT be visiting to give a short talk in late April.
I hope that the commencing decade is productive and joyful to all of us — I hope to catch up during one or more of these events!
*My colleague Iskra Johnson informs me this brief description is difficult to understand. Here is a more expansive attempt:
The beetles sense and take advantage of some of the tree’s own defenses. Some of those defenses are the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that it makes – semi-toxic gases, really – that the beetles re-synthesize as aggregating pheromones to call all their friends. Remember turpentine comes from tree resin. So the messenger RNA for the gene for monoterpene synthase, one of those VOCs, turns on its manufacture by the tree, but ironically, strong monoterpene synthase is something the beetles sense and use. 93% of the white bark pines made enough of it that they got attacked. 7% didn’t, they were less “visible” to the beetles.
C-A-T-G (cytosine, adenine, thymine and guanine) are literally the base pair components of DNA and RNA. I made the “ASCII” art from the c-a-t-g sequence for monoterpene synthase. You might remember in the early days of computer graphics people made illustrations out of text fields: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art
I used an “ASCII art converter” to make the base pair text field have beetle trails running through it. I printed the pages in both positive contrast-y, color-on-white, “noisy” versions in the same proportions (the 93%) as the trees that were killed, and negative/low contrast, white-on-black “quiet” pages — the 7% that survived.
