Fire in the Forest by Susan Reynolds

$1,500.00 - Please contact 23 Sandy for current availability.
Fire in the Forest presents the story of the Silver Fire that devastated New Mexico in June/July 2013. The area was suffering exceptional drought and high temperatures at the time of the lightning strike that eventually destroyed over 138,000 acres of forest. Presented in the book are facts about the fire and the drought; details from the U.S. Forest Service and from the New Mexico Department of Health; personal journal entries from the days of the fire; quotes about trees and forests; and photos from after the burn. The box is covered with a hand-drawn leafless forest. It presents numerous found objects that are part of the story: a slumped beer bottle, charred bark, litter revealed when all the ground vegetation was burned to ash. This rugged wilderness forest will not recover in my lifetime. Fire in the Forest is my memorial to the Gila National Forest.

Artist Bio

Susan is an adventurer and an artist, a writer and a distance-walker. Her artistic adventures have included photography, silver-smithing, hand-painting tee-shirts, a decade of working with clay, and finally to book arts in 2012. In between clay and book arts Susan spent the years walking literally hundreds of miles in unfamiliar places and writing the stories of those walks. Susan's books are a culmination of her art and her walking. The colors and textures of landscapes stay with her when she has walked a land. Intimate details such as the bark of a tree or a slug crawling on the damp forest floor of the Ardennes are not to be forgotten. Susan's books have been included in several exhibitions. In 2012, one of her journals was awarded "Third Place Best of Show" in the Harvest Time Exhibit at Poudre Gallery in Fort Collins, CO. Whatever Happened to Me? is a humorous presentation of grammatical incorrectness. It is now part of the Cofrin Library Artists' Book Collection, Univ. of WI Green Bay, and has been included in 500 Handmade Books, Vol. II (available from Lark Books Sept. 2013). In November Susan will be an artist in residence for two weeks at the Madrono Ranch in Medina, Texas.