In August and September this year we had an uncomfortably close experience of a forest fire burning only a few kilometers from our home. The Mt. Hilliam fire at Notch Hill consumed many hectares of forest while blanketing the area with smoke and it came within spitting distance of some homes and businesses . . . but the firefighters build guards around it and extinguished the fire within that guard . . . and our winter rain and snow will extinguish any smoldering pockets that remain by that time.
I have wanted to express the fire in fibre art and this postcard is the size that I chose. This postcard is 4" x 6" and is created on a piece of hand-dyed dark blue cotton. The branches on the trees are dark green hand dyed cheesecloth and the fire in the tree tops and the bit on the ground is created by needle-felting dyed wool roving. A few fibres of orange cheesecloth flare up. The ground cover foliage is created with little snips of cotton and a few bits of the orange cheesecloth representing the falling sparks. It is then covered with black tulle and then quilted to Timtex. There is a beige cotton backing for writing my message and the edges are couched with black rayon cording and then a black yarn that looks just like the ashes of the needles from the fir trees that landed on our deck during the fire. The photo is pretty dark in spite of my photographing it outside on this sunny afternoon . . . please click on the photo to see the detail.
The Salmon Arm Gallery of Art is currently accepting art postcards from around the world and I will send this one in (even if Salmon Arm is only about 25km from here -- I am from "out of town") in recognition of the residents who were evacuated from their homes, farms and businesses in the area and of the firefighters from our local area as well as those who came from across Canada and from as far away as Australia and New Zealand to fight the fire.
