This week we’re looking at the joint exhibition by married artists Becky Evans and Robert Benson, born from their exploration of Ironside Mountain and the sacred spot where a historic lookout tower burned in the Monument Fire. And we’ve got advice from Tanya Schrum on taking your dog to parks, beaches and trails for conflict-free […]
Becky Evans
‘Come Back Young Again’
Lightning struck Trinity County on July 30, 2021, and sparked a fire that burned for 88 days. Before it was fully contained, the Monument Fire consumed 223,124 acres, according to Cal Fire. One of the 28 structures destroyed was a lookout on Ironside Mountain (Tse:nding, as it is called by the Tsnungwe people). “This mountain […]
Packed with Color
It all started with two 4-by-4-by-4-foot boxes of wood wool — great piles of curly, hay-like wood shavings — marked “FREE” outside Miller Farms Garden Center. Artist Becky Evans saw the boxes and thought her friend and fellow artist Lori Goodman might want to use the material in her paper-making practice. Eventually, they transformed the […]
The Return of ‘30,000 Salmon’
In mid-September of 2002, tens of thousands of fish (mostly Chinook salmon) turned up dead on the Klamath River. Attributed in part to low water flow from the Iron Gate Dam, the devastating fish kill left an enormous impact on the local community, artist Becky Evans included. A self-described “land-based artist,” Evans tends to let […]
Mapping Seven Artists, Seven Paths
The exhibition Seven Artists, Seven Paths is back. The exhibition reopens this week at the Morris Graves Museum of Art after a months-long virtual interlude due to pandemic restrictions on social gathering. The seven Humboldt artists whose work it features — Leslie Anderson, Becky Evans, Mimi LaPlant, Sanderson Morgan, John Pound, Emily Silver and Karen […]
We’re All Land Artists Now
Moon-shaped pools, underground flows and springs long-buried by sand inspired the poems, paintings and vessels in Jerry Martien and Becky Evans’ new exhibition at Piante Gallery (and the gallery’s final show before closing), Water and Power. Evans explained that she and Martien both grew up in Southern California near Los Angeles, where water and power […]
The Basket and the Blade
I have reiterated tendencies, certain go-to forms,” Robert Benson said. “It’s like with any artist: You get caught up in your own style. With me, it’s the tension between angles and curves.” The trope has been evident “forever” in art made by Indigenous people of far northwestern California, as Benson, a Tsnung’we elder, observed. In […]
