Lara Felsing, Blanket Ceremony for the Forest, May 21, 2023.
Lara Felsing, Gratitude Blanket detail. Second-hand cotton thread, linen, canvas and floral broadcloth dyed with spruce cones, Saskatoon berries, Sweetgrass, tobacco, cedar, sage, Chaga, strawberries, dandelion and bee pollen, 2023.
Given the recent unprecedented Alberta wildfires, I wanted to show gratitude for the forest where I live with a blanket ceremony. The blankets are made from plant pigments I harvested and hand-dyed onto second-hand fabric from the community where I live. The large, abstract squares of fabric represent land from above, and are stitched in the tradition of Métis patchwork quilts. The blankets were placed in the forest near my home as a gesture of care and reciprocity.
Each Gratitude Blanket measures approximately 80″ X 65″ and is sewn onto a civil defence blanket from 1952. The civil defence blankets were part of the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS). They have been held with food, medical supplies, and other resources in the event of a nuclear attack since the early 1950s in Edson, Alberta. The civil defence blankets were wrapped in bundles and stored in burlap sacks in the town’s Post Office basement. Last year they were discovered and are currently being sold as a fundraiser for the Galloway Station Museum.
The civil defence blankets are repurposed for this project as a gesture towards honouring forests and bringing awareness to the importance of more-than-human communities.
Lara Felsing, Under a Witness Moon. Plant medicines and wildfire castoffs collected in the forest near my home, repurposed synthetic mesh, cut-out wood frames found at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity wood shop. 11.5″ X 11.5″, 2025
Lara Felsing, Forest Baskets. Pine needles, twigs, plant-dyed second hand fabric, Sweetgrass, bark, sinew and flagging tape. Approximately 2” X 3.5” each, 2023.
I make small woven baskets using castoffs from the forest floor near my home. Alberta Wildfire EWF031 caused extreme damage to the area, yet there are still gifts embedded in, and on, the land. These small Forest Baskets represent the resiliency of the land, and also the necessity to care for and live in kinship to the natural world.
Lara Felsing, Alberta Wildfire EWF031 (a timeline through photographs). Cyanotypes on handmade paper, harvested plant pigments, remnant embroidery thread, wildfire charcoal from Alberta Wildfire EWF031, dandelion tea, clay and found paint. 7″ X 5″ each, 2023. (Created at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity)
Lara Felsing, Wildfire Rattle. Elk hide, charred branch with flagging tape from Alberta Wildfire EWF031, charred pine needles, sinew, transferred image of wildfire sky, 2026.
During our first evacuation in 2023, the wind was so intense that it carried wildfires over 23 km towards our home overnight, raining charred pine needles and ash down on our house. I’ve made a wildfire rattle filled with charred pine needles, echoing the sound of the falling needles. The handle is a burnt branch found at the burn site, already wrapped with flagging tape. The rattle has an image of a pink sun in the smoke sky, taken from the front window of our home during that time.
Lara Felsing, Wildfire Timeline Windows. Photographs on second-hand fabric and handmade plant pigments on cut-out wood frames found at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity wood shop. 11.5″ X 11.5″, 2024
During the wildfires in 2023, I found myself constantly looking out windows. The sky was everchanging, thick with smoke and tinted with unusual pinks, blues and oranges. At one point, charred spruce needles rained down hard against our house, and air quality was so poor we stayed inside for weeks. I took photos from the windows in our home and car before, during, and after our evacuations. The photographs are framed in found wood cut-outs to replicate the uneasy feeling of observing a strange, new but familiar landscape with limited visibility.
Lara Felsing, Wild Fire Country, Alberta. Secondhand licence plates painted with wildfire charcoal and oil paint, 2026.
Alberta is getting ready to roll out new Strong and Free (provincial motto) licence plates this year. (For over fifty years, Alberta’s licence plates displayed the slogan Wild Rose Country.) In response, I’ve made six Wild Fire Alberta licence plates, one for each community in Alberta where I, my friends and family have been evacuated from/affected by wildfires over the past few years. The yellow licence plates were in use from 1975 to 1983, and I fondly remember them on vehicles when I was a kid, as yellow was my favourite colour. I now see the yellow on the plates as a warning, indicating a need to proceed with caution during a time of extensive wildfire activity and to prioritize our relationship to the land.
Lara Felsing, Fireweed. Found window with yellow spray paint, dye made from fireweed harvested at Alberta Wildfire EWF031 burn site, wildfire charcoal, secondhand floral broadcloth, thread and sage, 2024. Made at the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, Fireweed honours the strength and resiliency embedded in the land. It encourages viewers to consider their relationship to the land and more-than-humans where they live and beyond.
Lara Felsing, Alberta Wildfire EWF031 Baskets. Gifted to delegate leaders at the 2025 G7 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada.
Lara Felsing, After the Fire. Photographs taken with analog filter made with plant medicines, 2025.
Last year, my neighbouring community of Jasper experienced extensive fires, claiming over 358 structures and causing over 20,000 people to evacuate with little notice.
I created an analogue filter by staining thin layers of fireweed and pine onto a glass lens. The season after a wildfire, the land begins to heal under an open canopy where sunlight touches newly dispersed seeds. My photographs capture the forest in an optimistic, dream-like state, where the land prepares for renewal under the witnessing eyes of the mountains.
Lara Felsing, Mother and Daughter. Wildfire charcoal, sage, Sweetgrass and pine pigments, secondhand embroidery thread and paint on found curtains, 2024. Created at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Mother and Daughter is a life-size painting of two deer painted from a photograph taken by my sister. The photograph was taken one year after we had evacuated twice because of encroaching wildfires. We noticed the deer where we live had less offspring after our community experienced wildfires. Reduced food source, moving habitat and stress affect a doe’s ability to have multiple fawns. This painting is a nod to traditional portraiture, honouring the relationship between parent and child. It acknowledges the more-than-humans with whom we share community, and how they adapt to survive during a time of wildfire.
Lara Felsing, Listening to the Land, (Gratitude Blanket). Plant-dyed secondhand fabric and thread hand-stitched onto a NESS civil defence wool blanket. 80″ X 65″, 2024.
Five months after wildfires burned through the forest just over a kilometre from my home, I visited one of the areas where my family and I often spend time. Created at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, this medicine wheel blanket was placed onto the burnt land as a gesture of kinship, and acknowledges the knowledge and gifts embedded in the land and what we can learn from listening.
Shallow Breaths, (Air Quality Blankets Photographed at Alberta Wildfire EWF031 burn site). Secondhand fabric dyed with fireweed, sage, Sweetgrass and pine needles, wildfire charcoal and thread.
For the past three years I’ve been tracking the air quality where I live. During my residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts I stitched hand-dyed fabric together to create abstract patchwork blanket landscapes, and since returning home I have begun applying a layer of wildfire pigment representing the recorded air quality data.
Wildfire smoke contains fine particulate matter invisible to the human eye, which is extremely hazardous to all living beings, soil and waterways. LA County health officials have recently shared that toxic dust is not always visible or detectable on air quality monitors. During the wildfires where I live, I read when exposed to wildfire smoke one should take shallow breaths to prevent particulates from deeply entering the lungs.
Shallow Breaths, Exhibited at Listening in Relation Equinox Roundtable, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BC, 2025
Lara Felsing, Early Fire Season. Saskatoon berry-dyed second-hand fabric, embroidery thread and pink gouache on an unsigned oil painting purchased at a thrift shop. 2024 (Text from a conversation I overheard while at the local Walmart)
This painting explores concern over the announcement of an early fire season and how it affects the whole community. It voices empathy for the plants, birds, and animals who live in the forest and their well-being during wildfires.
Wildfire contemplates our shifting relationship with fire. The experiences surrounding wildfires are increasingly shared, regardless of the country or region in which we reside. The effects ripple far, and wildfires are becoming more prevalent and severe. This exhibition features diverse, critical work from artists based across many areas and nations, and includes both urban and rural experiences. There is an emergent sense of relationship, care and loss that suggests both the need for critical responses to the climate crisis and an increase in kin-centric thinking and living.
Wildfire is on exhibit mid-winter, the most insulated moment of the year to feel distance from wildfire. The smoke from the summer has probably worked its way through our systems, and perhaps our lungs are nearly clear (or as clear as they ever are). But in a couple of months, another early fire season may be announced. Or maybe, if we are lucky, there will be enough snow in the bush, and still more to replenish our dry lakes and reservoirs. If we get the chance, perhaps this is the year we all find ways to change the things we can, to care more, and to take the time to find paths that, at first, tend to seem impossible. Collectively, we are all learning to mourn, to ignore, and to meditate on a wound that won’t heal.
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