Carel Moiseiwitsch, “The Bandit Queen arrives in her Tiger Plane to fight the fires,” 2019
mixed media, 5′ x 3′ (destroyed by fire in Lytton, B.C., on June 30, 2021, courtesy the artist)
Artist Sheldon Pierre Louis, who lives with his wife and young son in Six Mile Creek in the B.C. Interior, fled his home as the immense White Rock Lake wildfire was bearing down on them.
They had been on a lengthy alert, so he relocated some belongings to safety before officials ordered their evacuation from the west side of Okanagan Lake on Aug. 4.
“I was able to move some of my wife’s paintings and some of my paintings, and the very basics of our art supplies, into a storage unit in Vernon,” Louis, a councillor for the Okanagan Indian Band, said in a recent interview. But he had to leave 14 paintings behind and has lived with uncertainty about their fate since then.
It’s shaping up as a record year for wildfires in British Columbia, a grim reminder to artists living in the driest parts of the province about the risks of rural tranquility and isolation. Many who live in the forest – or close to it – face not only the potential destruction of their homes, but also setbacks to their livelihood, whether through loss of inventory, supplies or studio time.
As the provincial state of emergency continues into September, the BC Wildfire Service says some 1,560 wildfires have consumed about 8,653 square kilometres of land in the province. Cooler weather at the end of August helped contain their spread, but 218 fires were still burning as of Aug. 31, with evacuation orders and alerts in effect for more than 9,500 properties. The eye of the firestorm was, and remains, the arid terrain of the Thompson-Okanagan Region in the southern part of the B.C. Interior.
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This 2020 acrylic painting on canvas by Sheldon Pierre Louis was displayed at the Kelowna International Airport as part of his recent exhibition
“puti kʷala – we are still here,” which celebrated the beauty of the syilx / Okanagan Nation’s history and culture. (courtesy the artist)
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The concept design for a mural by Sheldon Pierre Louis for the Kelowna Gospel Mission. (courtesy the artist)
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A mural by Sheldon Pierre Louis is in progress on the side of the Kelowna Gospel Mission. (courtesy the artist)
Louis, an up-and-coming artist whose style is influenced by his street art roots as well as his syilx / Okanagan Nation culture, moved his family to the coast for their safety. But the fire has disrupted his schedule. He’s now back in the Okanagan painting a huge mural for the Kelowna Gospel Mission, which assists the homeless. It's one of two commissions.
“Amidst all of this crisis and heartbreak, I still have to meet this deadline,” he says.
“These two are time sensitive. Not knowing the impact of the fires, I may very well need the funds to keep my family out of harm’s way. At the moment, we’re just accessing the emergency support services that are offered to everybody.”
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Carolina Sanchez de Bustamante weaves a 3D tapestry in her home studio in happier times. (courtesy the artist, photo by Yuri Akuney)
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Carolina Sanchez de Bustamante’s home in Killiney, a small community on the west side of Okanagan Lake, where 78 properties were destroyed or damaged by the White Rock Lake fire in August. (courtesy the artist)
Artist Carolina Sanchez de Bustamante, who lives in Killiney, south of Six Mile Creek on the west side of Okanagan Lake, fled her home, where she has her studio, with just moments to spare on Aug. 5.
“They fought part of the fire from my property,” she says.
“I only had enough time to get out of there with my important papers, some photographs and my two dogs. Everything was left there because we didn’t have time to move it.”
Now living with friends in Vernon, on the other side of Okanagan Lake, she doesn’t know when she will be able to return to her home, which firefighters managed to save.
Carel Moiseiwitsch, “Amelia Earhart comes back to help fight the wildfires,” 2019
mixed media, 6′ x 5′ (unfinished, destroyed by fire in Lytton, B.C., on June 30, 2021, courtesy the artist)
Artist Carel Moiseiwitsch and her partner, Gordon Murray, weren’t as lucky. Known for her acerbic black-and-white drawings, Moiseiwitsch lost her life’s work when flames suddenly engulfed the Fraser Valley town of Lytton, on June 30.
The couple escaped with sketchbooks, their dog and one of their two cats. The fire reduced much of the community to ash, leaving many of the town’s 250 residents homeless.
A video posted on YouTube shows the harrowing drive Carel Moiseiwitsch and her partner, Gordon Murray, took as they fled the wildfire in Lytton, B.C., on June 30, 2021. (courtesy Gordon Murray)
A GoFundMe campaign to help Moiseiwitsch rent a temporary studio and replenish her art supplies has exceeded its $20,000 goal. Meanwhile, she has filed a class-action lawsuit against Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, alleging sparks from a passing freight train set the town ablaze. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
“I don’t really think any kind of money will compensate for this,” Moiseiwitsch, who has worked as an illustrator and comics artist, told the Vancouver Sun from her daughter’s home in Vancouver.
“I don’t even know if I even want to live there again. I love the area, I have some very good friends there, but I would be too afraid. The ferocity of that fire, the speed at which it came through, was terrifying.”
Fern Helfand’s lightbox “Interface: Disaster as Spectacle,” based on the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire in 2003
is on view at the Kelowna Art Gallery until Nov. 21 as part of the exhibition “A Year From Now: Works from the Permanent Collection.” (courtesy the artist)
Other artists express fear, apprehension, even resignation. Many have made art about the fire – whether as a catharsis for their anxiety or as an exploration of it as spectacle.
Penticton artist Glenn Clark, who lost 45 paintings in a gallery fire 14 years ago, seems surprisingly calm. “I’ve got them spread out a bit,” he says. He prefers to keep his paintings close to home “Some are at my mum’s, but a lot of the work I did over the years are eight-foot canvases and I’d never be able to get them out.”
Ann Willsie, “Into the Meadow,” from the “Guardians of Eternity” series, 2021, oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″ (courtesy the artist)
Lake Country artist Ann Willsie also seems untroubled.
“I think I’d just throw the really good ones in the back of the van,” she says when asked what she’d do if ordered to leave town. “They’re replaceable. I can paint more paintings. What I’d be sorely missing is my paints and brushes.”
A similar divide exists among the area’s galleries and museums. The larger public institutions in Vernon and Kamloops feel secure behind their fireproof brick and concrete structures, downtown locations and proximity to fire fighters.
“The safest place for our collection is where it is right now in our building,” says Charo Neville, curator at the Kamloops Art Gallery. The gallery has no plans to relocate its 3,100-piece collection.
Joice Hall used photos she took from her deck for the oil on canvas painting “Impending Firestorm,” which shows the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park Fire on the east side of Okanagan Lake. (courtesy the artist, photo by John Hall)
Paul Crawford, director and curator at the Penticton Art Gallery, also feels safe.
“You’d have to burn a lot of the town to get to us,” he says. “We’re on the edge of a lake.”
He’s realistic when asked what he would do with works in the gallery’s collection in a worst-case scenario. “They’re all priceless,” he says. “Which of your children do you save? But given enough advance warning, we could certainly look at ways to mitigate the losses.”
It’s galleries in smaller communities that feel most vulnerable.
The Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery, north of Vernon and dangerously close to the White Rock Lake wildfire, consists of a museum, an art gallery, community archives and a book shop. A popular venue for local artists, the old wooden building is highly combustible.
“Yeah, fuel for the fire,” says director Lark Lindholm. There is a 50-square-foot steel vault to protect Armstrong’s municipal records and family histories. That doesn’t leave much room for paintings and artifacts. But given enough warning, the gallery would return artworks to owners.
Andreas Rutkauskas, a professor at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna
has been photographing wildfires in Western Canada for several years. This photograph, “Looking at a Wildfire (Adirondack Chairs),” was taken near Kaleden, B.C., in 2020.
Mischelle Pierce, president of the Nicola Valley Community Arts Council, says a similar policy is in place for the council’s gallery in Merritt, also housed in an old wooden structure. Merritt was placed on a week-long evacuation alert that was lifted Aug. 21.
“It’s just not possible to pack it all up,” says Pierce. “If the evacuation alert had turned to an evacuation order, we would have asked the artists to pick up their pieces.”
The issue in Salmon Arm, northeast of Merritt was smoke, not flames. The Salmon Arm Arts Centre cancelled its outdoor workshops in early August. But in the event of a more direct threat, the primary concern of the centre is making sure people are safe.
“Nothing is more important than the lives of our staff and volunteers,” says Tracey Kutschker, the centre’s director. “We would just leave. We wouldn’t save anything. We wouldn’t move the collection.”
Headbones Gallery, a private gallery on the rural fringes of Vernon, simply returned works to artists and closed its doors. Owner Julie Oakes decided the threat from the White Rock Lake fire was too dire. She plans to reopen Sept. 30.
Galleries in other parts of the province were keeping their eye on smaller, less threatening wildfires. For instance, George Harris, the curator at the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, remains vigilant during fire season. “It’s not something we take lightly,” he says.
Still, artists are getting used to living with the wildfire threat. It’s the “new normal” says Penticton’s Glenn Clark. “Living in B.C., you become hardened to it.” And to some degree he’s right. Except when it happens, as it did this year, with unrelenting ferocity simultaneously in many parts of the province, raising concerns about how climate change will impact the province in years to come.
The threat has abated somewhat in recent days, and the BC Wildfire Service says it hopes to contain the White Rock Lake fire in a week or so, if the weather continues to cooperate. Still, artists displaced by the fires were unsure if – and when – they could return home and resume their livelihoods.
Carel Moiseiwitsch doesn’t know where she will settle. Carolina Sanchez de Bustamante still has her house and studio. Sheldon Pierre Louis remains cautious.
“My intention was to build a studio space,” he says. “But I think we’ll just hold off on that until we see how things go.” ■
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