Eirik Johnson – Forests, Foraging + Fires

A large selection of photographs by Eirik Johnson will be featured as part of the group exhibition Forests, Foraging, and Fires at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, Idaho. 11 pieces from The Mushroom Camps and Sawdust Mountain are included in this exhibit.

Forests, Foraging & Fires
August 23 – November 21, 2014

Forests, Foraging and Fires offers our community the opportunity to participate in an in-depth conversation about our relationship to one of our most significant natural resources: the forest. The northwestern United States has long looked to its forests for sustenance, renewal and recreation. Our forests not only provide us with trees that heat and shelter us, but they are also a place we look to for spiritual and physical renewal. They are where we recreate and where we retreat. In the Wood River Valley, our forests are our lifeblood; their majestic beauty attracts people to our resort
community.

The forest is a place of mystery and magic, too—the setting for many a fairy tale. For Shakespeare and other authors and playwrights, the forest is a place of transformation.

And it’s a place of extraction, providing much more than wood. Today in addition to game hunters, people are going into the forest to seek out its wealth, foraging for everything from mushrooms to edible greens to poultices for healing.

Simultaneously, the forest is becoming a significant threat as federal fire suppression policy coupled with years of drought has created an explosive tinderbox that poses a danger to our homes and communities.

This project asks not only what we take from our forests, but what we need to do to sustain and nurture them.