Pamela Blotner

After the Fires

19” x 21” & 42” x 9”

Wood, found objects

This wall sculpture is my latest interpretation of a theme that has occupied me for the last two decades, humanity’s relationship with nature and beliefs, which I explore through the tools we make and use to enrich and protect our lands and our culture. “After the Fire” was first inspired by the 2019 brushfires that devastated much of Australia, followed by the next year’s wildfires that ravaged the American West- and by the enormous and constant effort that went into controlling them and beginning to rebuild.

This series is also inspired by Gary Snyder’s, “Axe Handles,” a poem in which a father teaches his son to carve an axe handle from the wood of the broken tool that they used to use. The story then drifts into a meditation on parenting, the transmission of cultural heritage, and the relevance of ancient wisdom to ordinary, everyday life.

- Pamela BLotner