Art Talk: Cara Despain and Jackie Barry

Join us for a conversation between Cara Despain and Jackie Barry. Cara will discuss her work on view in In Memoriam, while Jackie will talk about her experience working as a wildland firefighter, public misconceptions about fire, and the incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a way to “restore” the land. 

Cara Despain is an artist working in film and video, sculpture, photography and installation addressing issues of land use, the desert, climate change, visualizing the Anthropocene, land ownership and the problematics of frontierism. For the last three years, she has been collecting burnt debris from wildfires—or perhaps more accurately, urban-interface zone fires—in the western United States and using them as drawing tools to create large-scale ‘paintings’ of pure carbon that are to serve as markers of a changing climate and exist in memoriam of the consequences of human habitation on the planet.

Jackie Barry is a multidisciplinary artist, wildland firefighter and Masters of Natural Resources candidate at Oregon State University with an emphasis on Forests and Climate Change. Her focus in both her art and forestry practice is to bring knowledge and clarity to empower communities looking to learn more about fire ecology and forest management. Jackie is currently exploring how art as a science communication tool can be a more approachable way to disseminate information to towns and people affected by climate collapse.

This program has received funding from Utah Humanities. Utah Humanities (UH) empowers groups and individuals to improve their communities through active engagement in the humanities.