Regeneration After Wildfires
While traveling through Banff, Canada, during the summer, I experienced the effects of wildfires that were raging in British Columbia. The sky was constantly gray and I could barely see the outline of the surrounding giant mountain ranges; the ash completely covered the natural beauty of the forests and glacier. As I drove through the Banff National Park, I passed a section of dead trees which had been destroyed in a 2016 wildfire. It struck me how destructive and powerful wildfires are and how long it takes to restore the damaged areas. Wildfires are a natural part of the environmental cycle, however, due to climate change the regeneration of the destroyed areas is becoming increasingly slower.
For my final broadside project, I wanted to create a broadside which acknowledged the destruction of forests, and also bring to light how wildfires are becoming progressively bigger as well as more frequent due to the changing of our climate. I created a design of a tree joined to a flame of fire through its trunk, symbolizing that trees and fire are forever connected through environmental cycles. However, the image is slightly tilted to represent that fire forces trees to crash and fall, causing destruction. I paired this design with a sentence of text: Post-fire regeneration is affected by prolonged drought as well as increased size and frequency of wildfires. I chose this sentence because it educates the reader what affects post-fire regeneration, but also insinuates that something is causing prolonged drought and an increase in size and frequency of wildfires: climate change. I also hope that the sentence and image cause the viewer to think about climate change as a broader topic to create more awareness of how our world is changing.
I was inspired by the artist’s book I chose for our class exhibition: Jo Going’s Wild Cranes. Her book contains colorful paintings, drawings, and collages depicting different aspects of nature, paired with her written poems. The colorful beauty and abstract imagery Going includes, forces the viewer to admire the brightly colored illustration while drawing connections to the poem, which describes natural elements clearly. Her use of colors caught my attention because she doesn’t stick with realistic coloring, using rainbow colors to create all aspects of nature.
-Eloise Shields, Scripps '21