04 . 22

wandering winterkill : april ‘22

Contributor Daniela Naomi Molnar writes: “This pigment consists of the carbonized bones of winterkilled animals gathered during the winter of 2021-22 in various regions: elk bones from the Oregon Coast Range; cow bones from the Oregon Outback; Pronghorn Antelope bones from the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming; and owl bones from the Washington Cascades. These animals were both domesticated and wild, native and non-native to their ecosystems; they were all members of our current complex, impure version of nature. They all foraged, flew, ran, ruminated, altered and were altered by their ecosystems. They all lived until the moment they succumbed to the brutal force of winter, weakened by old age or disease or injury. This pigment contains an enormous amount of violence. I was often overwhelmed with grief and love while making it. Both violence and cooperation form the web of life. What can we learn from their overlap? How to live ethically and honestly as animals in our world?”

contributor: Daniela Naomi Molnar

Daniela Naomi Molnar is an artist, poet, and writer working with the mediums of language, image, paint, pigment, and place. She works across and between forms including painting, poetry, prose, site-specific intervention, editing, and teaching. Regardless of genre, her goal is to shape and nurture generative new questions, feelings, and ethics about what it means to be human at a time of socioecological crisis.

Her work for the past several years has focused on issues of climate justice and climate grief. The materials she uses are themselves bearers of meaning. She makes many of her paints from pigments gathered from urban and wild public lands, combining these pigments with water from rain, rivers, hot springs, taps, and oceans. She is also a wilderness guide, educator, and eternal student. She can be found in Portland, Oregon, exploring public wildlands, or at  www.danielamolnar.com/ Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar