Fresh!AIR Artist Liz Toohey-Wiese, July/October 2020

 

About LizLiz Toohey-Wiese is a visual artist exploring relationships between identity and place. Born and raised in the suburbs of Vancouver, her work seeks to intervene in the broader notion of “landscape” in her surroundings. Her recent series “Wildfire Tourism” considers overlap between landscape painting, the tourist economy, climate change, and resource extraction. Her work considers wildfires as a site of the sublime in nature, defined by philosopher Edmund Burke as “terrible beauty”. Her paintings frame wildfires as a challenging site of contradictions: at once they point to the devastating repercussions of climate change, and a site of renewal of landscape. Her pieces borrow tourism marketing strategies, creating tension between image and text, object and imagery, as wildfires emblazon postcards, commemorative posters, and souvenir objects. Her work frames wildfires as a wider metaphor for the human desire to control nature, and looks at the repercussions of man’s intervention on natural processes.Current ProjectHi! My name is Liz Toohey-Wiese, I am an artist at the Caetani Center from July to October!

I have been working on a series of paintings of wildfires over the past two years, and this summer will be focusing on landscape paintings of sites where wildfires passed through and are beginning to regenerate and grow back. Another project I am working on while at the Caetani Center is an artist book. It will collect visual art, writing, poetry, photographs, and basically any "printable" materials into an anthology on the topic of wildfires. This book will be self-published in the Fall of 2020.

Here's a quote from our website about the intention for the book: "Gathering a diverse community to use visual art, poetry, writing, and essays to look at wildfires as a container for more complex and experiential topics; grief, climate change, loss, new growth, renewal, changing ideas of landscape, resilience, economy, and resource extraction to name a few. For those trying to grapple with the reality of a longer, more severe wildfire season, wherever it may be, we want to hear from you."

If you have any interesting photos, stories, or are willing to chat wildfires with me, please contact me! My e-mail is liz.toohey-wiese@kpu.ca

You can read more about the book project on this website: https://fireseason.org/

My artist website is here: https://liztoohey-wiese.com/