04 . 23

wildfire redwood : april ’23

Wildfire Redwood Charcoal was gathered by artist Shinehah Bigham at the site of the CZU (short for “San Mateo — Santa Cruz Unit”) Lightning Complex fires that burned in Northern California beginning in August 2020, and continuing to smolder well into 2021. That year, more than 4 million acres of land burned — about 4% of California’s 100 million acres of land — making it the largest wildfire year in the state’s recorded history.  The August Complex fire has been described as the the first “gigafire,” burning an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. Most of the massive, 300-foot, 2,000 year-old, old-growth redwoods survived this burn as they have survived so many, scarred but now green with new growth.

contributor: Shinehah Bigham

Shinehah Bigham writes: “I use locally foraged earth pigments from stones, ochres, clays and botanicals found around Santa Cruz and Watsonville to make abstract and representational paintings. They come from wild, windy cliffsides, serene creeksides deep in the forest, and 500 feet deep under the ground, unearthed by the digging of water wells. After the intimate process of foraging these pigments from our nearby environment, I grind, levigate and mull them into paints, using the traditional tempera technique with egg yolk as binder or handmade watercolors with foraged binder of acacia or plum tree gum. When using the handmade mixtures, I try to let the expression of the paintings embody the nature of the pigments themselves, as what they are made of is a part of what they are about.

www.shinehah.art