On the Nature of Fire

Click here for an interview about climate artwork

On the Nature of Fire, 65" H x 85" W
Embroidery on silk, velvet.

click on each image to open a larger image

Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff

Fires of Change: the art of fire science is an artist/scientist project that explores how fire as an ecosystem process is impacted by climate change and societal development. The work is from an artist/scientist project during which artists, fire scientists and land managers participated in a week of education on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The project link is here

Bonnie Peterson's Fires of Change “blog” page explains the artistic process in engineering this complex artwork:

The title of this work comes from the first century BC didactic poem On the Nature of Things (latin, De rerum natura), by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c.?99 BC – c. 55 BC) in which it is demonstrated that the material universe was formed not by a Supreme Being, but by the mixing of elemental particles that had existed from all eternity governed by certain simple laws. His work was an attempt to show through poetry that everything in nature can be explained by natural laws, without the need for the intervention of divine beings. Lucretius maintained that he could free humankind from fear of the deities by demonstrating that all things occur by natural causes without any intervention by the deities.

Fires of Change Catalogue

Fire Ecology Journal Sept 2020 (has a photo of this work), "Integrating art and science to communicate the social and ecological complexities of wildfire and climate change in Arizona, USA"

Fires of Change was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Joint Fire Science Program and organized by the Flagstaff Arts Council.

Selected Exhibitions venues:
University of Arizona Museum of Art 2016
Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff 2015
516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM 2017