WIP: Sadie Wechsler

Wildland

Before man discovered fire, lighting was nature’s tool to start fires and it did, often igniting flames that would create wildland fires to clear and renew the land – creating a clean slate of sorts for fresh, new growth. Today fire and flame are largely viewed as a danger to civilization, something to be extinguished or at least extensively controlled.

My ultimate interest lies away from the front line, not in the tragedy and the newsworthy event but back inside the fire line where smoke and blackened earth transform the way one is able to see the land before them. I look at the land and how it accommodates the forces that influence and try to hinder it. One is able to see the temporary influence of fire emerging and then disappearing, sometimes as quickly as it came but what evidence is left in the wake?

Sadie Wechsler received her BA from Bard College. She is continually interested in the way the landscape shapes and is shaped by the human presence. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington Sadie has been working in her home city for the last year. She will return to the east in the fall to begin the MFA program at Yale University.