In a Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories

Boreal Forest Roulette (shown below), a collaboration of Ree Nancarrow and Charlotte Bird, focuses on fire: the conditions of wildland fires and the outcomes after a fire.

This collaboration was first shown at In a Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories at Bear Gallery in Fairbanks, Alaska in 2022. The trans-disciplinary exhibit featured multiple artists and humanists working in a variety of media, following regular interactions with scientists, to produce original works that communicate narratives rooted in the boreal forest, including its ecology, its inhabitants, and their interactions.

Jill Johnstone, adjunct professor at UAF, was Charlotte & Ree's first scientist collaborator. Her presentation to the ITOC group, her articles about fire succession, and her classification key system game for identifying climax outcomes, gave them their focus on fire. Joan Foote, retired USFS botanist, spent many hours on walks sharing her wealth of knowledge about the boreal forest and succession following fire.

Ree Nancarrow’s three quilts depict some of the existing conditions in the boreal forest when fire strikes. Charlotte Bird’s four book structures track stories of how combinations of variable factors lead to different climax community outcomes.

Ree worked with Tamara Harms and Xanthe Walker in developing sections of the images for her quilts. She manipulated drawings, collages, and textures on an IPad to create images for fabric that became heavily stitched whole cloth quilts. From left to right, the stories are black spruce forest growing on cold soil underlain with permafrost, fire spreading through the boreal forest unchecked, and areas of boreal forest with exposed mineral soil, no permafrost, deciduous trees, and lightning-induced fires.

Charlotte used Jill Johnstone’s game to show variables that can change climax community development over time. Each of her four books illustrate early post fire situations based on fire severity, some of the variables acting on succession over shifting periods of years, and the climax community. They are: return to black spruce forest, mixed black spruce and deciduous forest, deciduous forest, and open grassland. The collaged panels include hand dyed and commercial fabrics, various commercial and exotic papers, birch bark, photo transfer, and glue stiffened canvas.

This work was first shown at Bear Gallery in Fairbanks from Sept 2–30, 2022, and will also be shown as part of the In a Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories exhibit at the Pratt Museum & Park in Homer, Alaska from May 25 through September 23, 2023. The opening reception will be on Thursday, May 25 from 4-6pm.

Read more about Ree's involvement with In a Time of Change here.

Boreal Forest Roulette Triptych 37" h x 68" w

Panel 1: 35" h x 21" w | Panel 2: 37" h x 27" w | Panel 3: 35" h x 18.5" w

Charlotte Bird's Collage Panels

Continuum featured on cover of Interdisciplinary Journal Of Partnership Studies

Ree was featured as the cover artist in the Spring 2021 issue of Interdisciplinary Journal Of Partnership Studies.

From the artist's statement for the issue...

"The quilt pictured on the cover of this issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies is called Continuum. It was created in 2018. It is 16” x 17”, and was created in response to Turbulence, a musical composition by Libby Meyer, as part of the Composers in the Wilderness program.The recurring, descending pattern of melody makes me think of water; it descends as rain, flows from hillsides and mountains, and gathers in streams. The melody dominates the other musical notes, so I chose to make the rivulets of water dark against a lighter background. Water rises and falls like musical notes on sheet music. The melody becomes discordant, evoking flowing water crashing up against obstacles. My water rivulets surge up and meet with printed areas of confused imagery. The water flows over and around the obstacles; it returns to relative calm, and the process repeats itself. The overlying quilting lines emphasize this continuum. The abrupt ending is depicted by the dark rectangle in the right margin. The image and music are finite, but the cycle of water continues forever."

Read the full statement here.

View more details of this quilt here...

Selawik Sheefish

Selawik National Wildlife Refuge posted Ree's new quilt Selawik Sheefish on their Facebook page. This is one of Ree's new pieces sponsored by the Rasmusson Foundation.

You can see more detail and learn more about this piece here.