WILDLAND: Ethan Turpin's 
Collaborations on Fire and Water

Image of people walking into three-screen projection showing images of wildfire and brush.



 

January 9 - March 22, 2025
Opening Reception: January 9, 4-6pm

Ethan Turpin's works are grounded in the natural cycles of wildfire, devastation, and recovery and regrowth. Turpin is a multi-media artist and fireline-trained, press-credentialed photographer. His collaborations include other artists and scientists at the UCSB Bren School, and works with the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council to provide educational programming about wildfires.

Turpin brings artists, scientists and educators directly to communities to create powerful experiences that broaden perspectives and deepen awareness of underlying natural forces where we live in Southern California. Turpin’s personal artistic practice has explored ways of perceiving climate change, leading to 10 years of collaborations and the founding of The Burn Cycle Project, which focuses on the complex relationships between fire, water, and ourselves. WILDLAND will engage with the paradoxical entanglements of beauty and risk present in the exhibit’s location, the Westmont College campus. Using a wide range of immersive and participatory media, Turpin and his collaborators will share modes of orientation toward wonder and resilience within a mighty landscape.

 

 

 PROGRAMMING

 

Nighttime image of an oak tree with projected red embers, so it appears to be glowing with fire.

Ember Trees

Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 6pm
Grove of Stone Pines in the Westmont College Formal Gardens

Join us for a special, site-specific installation event featuring glowing ember trees, testimonials from firefighters and community members, and a special musical piece by Westmont Director of Choral Activities Daniel Gee.

The installation is created by Ethan Turpin and Jonathan PJ Smith of The Environment Makers. Using multiple video projectors and mapped footage of glowing embers, Turpin and Smith make trees appear as though glowing with fire from within. The installation site will be a grove of pine trees scarred from the 2008 Tea Fire, located east of the Museum by the Dining Commons.