MIDDLETOWN– Friday July 19 the Middletown Art Center (MAC) hosted “Good Fire Good Earth,” a talk with Scott Parady of the Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology Project. MAC director Lisa Kaplan pointed out that the EcoArts Scupture Walk at Trailside Park was destroyed by the Valley Fire in 2015. After some 40,000 hazardous tree remnants were removed from the area, the National Endowment for the Arts provided a grant for the restoration of the sculpture walk in 2019.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic made the completion of the project impossible. The new EcoArts Sculpture Walk RECIPROCITY opens on August 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. Parady has completed a new, large scale ceramic piece “Great Basin” for RECIPROCITY which is installed at the EcoArts Sculpture Walk.
Parady was influenced by the earthwork artists, Robert Smithson’s the Spiral Jetty (1971) in particular, during his MFA studies at Penn State. Smithson was inspired to create his 1,500-foot spiral by the indigenous peoples of the Great Salt Lake area who believed that the lake was a whirlpool connected to the Pacific. Smithson felt that his work occurred in a place, “where the ancient past meets the distant future”.
Fire itself provides that linkage for Parady. While the destructive ravages of wildfire are well-known in Lake County, indigenous peoples used fire to maintain the forests before European arrival. It is controlled fire that brings his ceramic work to life and that keeps the fuel load down on his 80 acres in Loch Lomond. Parady uses a drip torch to process up to two acres a day in the park-like setting of the Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology project, where he conducts his own prescribed burns on a forest floor largely spared by the Valley Fire.
The project’s three large kilns require the focused attention of the eight or so artists-in-residence. Firing their ceramics during 11 day marathons, fueled by the dozens of cords of wood produced by Parady’s forest management, they transform wildfire threat into a productive resource. Thinning the forest in regenerative stewardship of the land literally fuels creativity at the Art and Ecology project. Parady points out that the particulate level produced by the kilns is negligible as the extreme temperatures (1100 to 1400 degrees) make for nearly smokeless output. Adding to the sustainability of the complex, he recently installed 52 solar panels.
Parady teaches sculpture and ceramics at Sacramento State and engages his students in ecology as well as aesthetics and craft. Students create ceramic pots and collars to protect native plants and saplings during his prescribed burns. They rake pine needles away from the designated growth and cover them with protective earthenware while fire reduces fuel load and removes unwanted plants.
The practices of Parady and the Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology Project illustrate that the conscious engagement with the object of our fears can be a wellspring for creativity and a source of regeneration.
Parady’s “Great Basin” can be seen at Trailside Park when the EcoArts Sculpture Walk RECIPROCITY opens on August 10. RECIPROCITY is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, through the Upstate California Creative Corps program with additional support from the County of Lake Public Services Department and District 1 Supervisor Moke Simon.
Middletown Art Center is a Lake County nonprofit dedicated to engaging the public in art making, art education, and art appreciation. Through exhibitions, performances, workshops, and community events, the Art Center provides a platform for diverse voices and perspectives, striving to create an inclusive and accessible space for all.
