Fire Season: Collective Sense-Making Around Wildfires
Artists Amory Abbott and Liz Toohey-Wiese have published two editions of the book “Fire Season”. Their books gather a diverse community to use visual art, poetry, writing, and essays to look at wildfires as a container for more complex and experiential topics like grief, climate change, loss, new growth, and changing ideas of landscape. Join them as they share some works from their publications, and discuss how creative voices can help make sense of the increased prevalence and severity of wildfire on the landscape. Learn more about their book project at fireseason.org.
Our conversation with Liz and Amory will be followed by a panel discussion with Whistler’s wildfire and climate experts:
- Luisa Burhenne, RMOW Climate & Environment Manager
- Member of Whistler Fire Rescue
- Councillor Arthur de Jong
Copies of both volumes of Fire Season will be available for purchase at the event via cash or card; the books are $35 each or $65 for the pair. You can also borrow these titles from the library:
Registration is encouraged – email publicservices@whistlerlibrary.ca to sign up!
This event is presented in partnership with the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s Climate & Environment Department.
About the speakers:
Amory Abbott is an American visual artist, illustrator, and author living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia. His recent research has landed him in artist residencies in Olympic National Park in Washington, Glacier National Park in Montana, and along the northwest coast of Ireland at the Boghill Centre. Amory’s creative practice primarily addresses the modern West’s relationship to wild places. Through dark and dramatic charcoal landscape drawings, Amory blends folkloric and mythic themes with contemporary ecological concerns to reveal new perspectives about wilderness. Amory holds an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art (2016), and a BFA in Illustration from Herron School of Art and Design (2004). He has been core faculty in the Illustration department at Emily Carr University since 2017.
Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist residing on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is a graduate from the MFA program at NSCAD University. She completed her undergraduate degree in painting at Emily Carr University, also undertaking coursework at the University of Victoria and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. She has taken part in solo and group shows across Canada, and was the artist in residence at the Sointula Art Shed (2019), the Caetani Cultural Center (2020/21/22), Island Mountain Arts (2021) and the Similkameen Artist Residency (2023). Deeply interested in the history of landscape painting, her paintings explore contemporary relationships between identity and place. Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal.
