Photo of Suze Woolf installation at The James Museum"State of the Forest" Installation Photograph, Environmental Impact II, Produced by David J. Wagner, L.L.C. (Photo Courtesy of The James Museum, St. Petersburg, FL)


For the traveling exhibit Environmental Impact Sequel, I created a large installation, State of the Forest. Thirty of my burned tree paintings have been digitally transferred to fabric in three layers: a printed transparent silk organza, a printed solid layer and a plain black layer. The fabric is shaped to fit the contour of the trees, which hang in sets from the ceiling. Many have stories written by wildland firefighter and author, Lorena Williams printed on the black layer.

 

The original paintings are from trees all over western North America from many different forest fires. In this way they represent all fires. Many are shown in the Burnscape section of this site. By using fabric to represent this grove, I convey that the forests we take as permanent are in fact fragile. 

 

In 2021, I did the largest one yet -- 21.5 feet long or high. The Magnitude of the Problem has been installed at the King County Public Library in Kirkland and, like the 2018 ten in fabric, has also been installed in a downtown Seattle storefront thanks to Shunpike's Storefronts initiative. In 2017, twelve original paintings were installed at theSan Juan Islands Museum of Art, mounted on board and suspended from the ceiling. It was an artistic peak moment. A number of those individual paintings are shown the Burnscape section of this site. The same paintings were also installed at the Museum of Northwest Art's 2016 Surge Festival and this blog post describes the complex process of production and installation.   

 

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