PACT talks to Signal Fire

PACT: ELEMENTAL

Signal Fire provides opportunities for artists and creative agitators to engage with our remaining wildlands.

Sunday April 22 10am-12pm

Location: Bridge Lab at PNCA 511 NW Broadway Portland, OR 97209

Signal Fire’s 2018 theme ELEMENTAL looks to the earth beneath our feet: the materials we need, the minerals we’ve killed for, and the matter we still have so much to learn from. Our programs span the West, examining how mining has impacted the culture and ecology of diverse communities, as well as looking at these landscapes through the broad and patient lens of geological time. At each site we visit, we will learn of the present-day threats from extraction and exploitation, and meet people who have dedicated themselves to standing in defense of the Earth.

Our projects foster self-resilience, creative energy, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We utilize public lands to advocate for equitable access, and protection of, wild and open places.

Signal Fire was started in 2008 by activist Amy Harwood and artist Ryan Pierce. Both wanted to find a way to bring their communities closer to foster more collaboration. As avid backpackers, they imagined small groups traveling together into threatened wildlands, discussing ways to shift the dominant views of land in the American West. They gathered together a group of friends for dinner to ask for input, and Signal Fire was born.

Within the first year several people joined the group who would become instrumental in evolving Signal Fire into a value-driven arts organization while maintaining its integrity. Artist and poet Daniela Molnar, filmmaker and activist Julie Perini, and environmental attorney Greg Dyson formed the founding Board of Directors. In 2011, Signal Fire held the first “Guide Training” on the north slope of Mt. Hood, bringing together ten past participants who were interested in guiding a trip for Signal Fire. This brought new perspectives on curriculum and started the formal training for leading safe, educational, and ambitious backcountry trips.

Today, Signal Fire leads trips year-round, throughout the American West. Based in Portland, OR, we maintain a regular presence in the thriving arts community through exhibitions and events.

Ryan Pierce, Co-Director, Field Coordinator

Ryan is an artist whose work draws on ecological theories to portray possible futures. He exhibits internationally, and has received recognition from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Art in America, Art Papers, and The Oregonian. He has completed numerous residencies, including Ucross, Caldera, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, and Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Norway. He has taught art at several colleges and universities and lectured as a visiting artist throughout the U.S. Ryan is a life-long backpacker, an occasional essayist, and a certified Wilderness First Responder.

www.ryanpierce.net
ryan@signalfirearts.org

Ka’ila Farrell-Smith,Co-Director, Community Coordinator

Ka’ila is a contemporary Klamath/Modoc visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. The conceptual framework of her studio practice is focused on channeling research into a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness that is rooted in Indigenous aesthetics and Abstract formalism. She works as an Adjunct Professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies program at Portland State University and is a co-director and co-guide for Signal Fire. Her work has been exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum, King Street Station, Linda Hodges gallery in WA, Missoula Art Museum in MT, and is in the permanent collection of the Portland Art Museum. She has recently been selected for Caldera Artist-in-Residence, Djerassi Residency Artist Program, IAIA Artist-in-Residence and Ucross Foundation Residency Program. Ka’ila Farrell-Smith received a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practices Studio from Portland State University.