Simple Objects: An Excavation

In November 2018, a wildfire struck Butte County, a Northern Californian foothill town 90 miles north of Sacramento. The loss was catastrophic and unprecedented. "Simple Objects: An Excavation" is a collaboration between artist, Stephanie Taylor, and writer, Christy Heron-Clark, who were both born in the area. Together, they visit Christy’s two adjacent family homes to find objects that might have survived. While Christy responds to these simple objects with what she remembers, Stephanie ponders each as it exists now, transformed and mutilated. This is a story about what we retain when we lose, and how we can move forward with resilience. This might be a story about California. “The tragic Paradise fire left a once beautiful town in utter shambles blanketed in sorrow. Stephanie Taylor, one of northern California’s finest artists, visited Paradise following the inferno with Christy Heron-Clark, whose childhood homes were destroyed by the fire. There, Taylor saw something in the blackened ruins that only a person of her creativity could visualize and embarked on an artistic collaboration with Heron-Clark. Charred common place objects like a pair of eyeglasses fused into its protective case, a hammer head without its handle, hub caps, shattered glass, and blackened fishing flies have taken on a new life of unparalleled beauty and uncommon expression.I had the pleasure of visiting Taylor’s studio where I saw the photographs that she had produced and the mesmerizing drawings she had created using charcoal from burnt Paradise lumber. It gave me both a hollow feeling contrasted with utter astonishment over her genius in conceiving of this exhibit.”Gary F. Kurutz, Curator Emeritus, California State LibraryPast Library Director of the California Historical Society Former Curator of Photography at the Huntington Library