Using art to explore post-fire ecology; event this Saturday
On Saturday, March 27, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Plumas County Fire Safe Council is sponsoring a
unique event for the community. Participants will visit a burn area from the North Complex Fire
and learn how to use art to make sense of how fire affected this landscape. All ages are invited
to attend and make drawings to closely observe burn severity, recovery and regrowth.
The artist that will lead this event is named Laurie Wigham. She teaches art at San Francisco
State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and is a regular guest instructor in John Muir Laws’ Nature
Journal Club classes. She enjoys using art to understand wildfire. She has attended a post-Rim
Fire artist residency with Stanislaus National Forest, taught in the California Naturalist Fire
Ecology program and has participated in a pilot Cal-TREX prescribed fire training exchange
nature journaling program in 2019 in Klamath National Forest. To see some of her artwork, visit
her site at www.lauriewigham.com.
The art workshop participants will meet at 11 a.m. at the Feather River College main public
parking lot. This workshop is part of the Plumas County Cal-TREX prescribed fire training
exchange, and will meet the fire trainees at the college campus on Saturday. Participants are
also encouraged to join the TREX participants on Sunday, March 28, at Feather River College
at 2 p.m. to share observations, drawings and discoveries.
The event is free, although donations to the Plumas Fire Safe council is greatly appreciated to
offset the cost of the workshop. Please bring your favorite sketching materials, this can be as
simple as a pencil and a few sheets of paper on a clipboard, plus some way to add color —
pencil, watercolor, markers, etc. A chair or something to sit is nice to have, along with water,
snacks, sunscreen and warm layers. Note that all instruction will be outdoors; covid protocols
will include wearing a mask, caravan in personal vehicles to burn site, and maintain 6ft social
distance from one another when possible.
Please visit https://www.plumasfiresafe.org/registration.html for registration on this event.
