Colorado is having a big wildfire summer. This is not unexpected. We've been in a drought for years and this past winter was the worst snowpack in recorded history. Snowpack is the lifeblood of the water system in the west. The Colorado River which feeds five states and Mexico depends on the slowly melting snow to keep it running. This mighty river is dry this year in parts of Colorado right now. I bet you can guess what it looks like in Arizona and California and Mexico.
In 2020 I lived in Fort Collins and the Cameron Peak Fire was and still is the largest wildfire in Colorado history. Many places I loved to backpack were burned and at the end of it all 5 months after it started, the fire had traveled all the way to the edge of Fort Collins from where it started 50 miles away.
That fall I wove four tapestries about the fire. As I watched ashes that looked like parts of trees fall from the sky into my hands while I was standing in the driveway and choked through weeks of smoke without air conditioning, it felt like the world was coming down around me. Of course we were also in the early days of a global pandemic and the massive wildfire nearby made everything feel apocalyptic.
Pieces of bark and pine needles falling from the sky into my hand standing on my driveway in the middle of Fort Collins. It wasn’t bark, it was ash.
Here are the four tapestries in this series from the Cameron Peak fire. I am quite sure I will be weaving more sketch tapestries or other work about wildfire. While forests need to burn from time to time to stay healthy, apocalyptic fires like the ones we’re experiencing all over the world this summer are not normal. Fueled by drought and climate change, those fires are holding a mirror to humanity asking us when we’re going to realize we have to change something before we destroy our one and only home.
I wove four Cameron Peak Fire tapestries. I wove part of each of them live on Change the Shed and you can find them linked on THIS and THIS page of my website (hint, look for the photos).
Each of the tapestries is about 3.25 inches square woven with weaversbazaar wool at 12 epi on cotton warp.
The first one is an image of a tree on a trail I loved to hike in the Rawah Wilderness. I was sure this tree burned early on in the fire, but it did not and I was able to revisit this area a few years later.
Rebecca Mezoff, Cameron Peak Fire 1
The second tapestry was what I imagined the wilderness peak looked like surrounded in a firestorm.
Rebecca Mezoff, Cameron Peak Fire 2
In the third tapestry I was thinking about regeneration probably because I couldn’t stand any more destruction. The earth does recover though parts of this fire burned so hot they won’t recover in my lifetime. In this tapestry I wove the peak without trees and used silk for the flowers that I knew would grow back first.
Rebecca Mezoff, Cameron Peak Fire 3
In the last tapestry also about regeneration, I put a big flower in the foreground. It represented hope to me.
Rebecca Mezoff, Cameron Peak Fire 4
When the huge fires started across Colorado earlier this summer, I pulled these tapestries out intending to make some new work about wildfire. As I think about that, I’ve been doing the finishing and wondering how I’ll mount these for display. I think I’ll likely mount them all together as a unit.
Do you use art-making to think more deeply about events in the world?