Born from ashes

SABRINA GRIMALDI

Viola Award winner Bryan David Griffith is partnering with Creative Flagstaff and ARTx to share Envision, a visual art piece representing Flagstaff’s community, rising from the ashes.

Envision is an installation that exhibits a cloud of thousands of aspen leaves rising from a shadow of charcoal and stone that was gathered from recent fire and flood sites It is a large art piece that works off of the space and incorporates a variety of interactive elements. Developed in a short amount of time, Griffith said something of this scale could be planned to a certain degree but then must rely on the space it is built within. Griffith is also collaborating with the welding program at Coconino High School to have students fabricate some of the installation hardware.

“We won’t know the exact final shape until I get into the space and see what’s working and what’s not,” Griffith said. “I can design things on paper that look good, but we’re talking about a largescale, three-dimensional piece Sometimes a few inches make a difference. I have no way of testing it here beforehand–my space isn’t big enough, and I don’t have enough time I’m going to have to build it on-site and have to be able to make adjustments on the fly.”

This project not only had to be created on the fly but also relied on the use of aspen leaves, which Griffith said is more difficult than it may seem.

“Fortunately, before I got this project, I had gathered aspen leaves in the fall–thousands and thousands of them,” Griffith said. “I have been carefully drying them Aspen leaves are one of the most difficult leaves to preserve because if you try to press them like you would a maple leaf, they will turn brown. I’ve done a couple of installations with aspen leaves before, so I have figured out how to do it. They only last for one to two years when they are preserved and then the color fades away, so it will be an ephemeral thing for ARTx… it has a limited lifespan.”

Griffith is known for visual art installations with environmental undertones, often representing the ecological hardships Flagstaff has gone through with its cycle of fire and floods. The cloud of aspens in this piece stem, literally, from the stubborn science of how aspen trees react to fires. Unlike conifers, aspen trees can sprout from existing roots and these root suckers grow faster than coni- fers, meaning that aspens can dominate in a grove for many years after a fire.

“Aspens have underground root stems, so they regenerate immediately after a fire,” Griffith said “That’s a metaphor for our community We generate, rise and adapt from these environmental and social challenges that our community is facing. This [aspen] cloud is all of the people and ideas that we have–can we forge new connections and relationships within that? This matrix of leaves is exploding outward, as you move around it, you’ll see different groupings of leaves. Those are the possibilities within our community if we can see those through and work together in new ways.”

Not only is Griffith’s Envision a dialogue on the environmental challenges the Flagstaff community faces, but it also pays homage to the social challenges the community is working through. The Flagstaff housing crisis is a hot topic and is creating a cycle Griffith wants to lead viewers to talk about. In Griffith’s eyes, urban growth will lead to the reduction of Flagstaff’s natural beauty, which is a driving force for its growing population.

“Our town is exceeding its capacity because it is growing so large,” Griffith said “It’s putting stress on our aquifer and the environment, but it’s also creating a housing crisis here in town. The way to fix that is to build more but that risks the very reason we moved here in the first place. How do we figure out that problem and do so in a way that all of the different parts of Flagstaff that have been historically neglected can participate in our economic growth in the future?”

This piece will also have an interactive component, in which community members are invited to materially contribute their dreams and concerns for Flagstaff’s future These thoughts and ideas will mesh together, much like the cloud of aspen leaves, harbored by fire and powered by one another.

With such a touching meaning, Griffith knows it will take a lot to reflect these thoughts within a visual piece. While reading about its meaning is great, he encourages readers to come see the piece for themselves and hopes it will speak to them in ways he never could.

“It’s hard to describe,” Griffith said. “You try to describe an installation in words, and it’s not inspiring to people. But then when they see it, they understand it’s something they want to be involved with That’s why visual art is visual art–there are things that we can say with visual art that we can’t say with words.”

Envision will be displayed during the ARTx Festival at the Nackard Pepsi gallery from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday May 26 and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday May 27 This project and all other ARTx installations were funded by a grant award from the City of Flagstaff’s Arts and Science BBB Fund.