Remembered Light: The Essence of All That Remains at Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, 2026
Encountering Dr. Charlotte Pearson and Dr. Bryan Black’s samples of a Mt. Mazama ghost forest introduced me to the research of dating the catastrophic volcanic eruption that formed Crater Lake (the symbol for the state where I no longer resided, the pain of that loss, and the difficulty of returning). These specimens wrapped in duct tape, showed the cycles of a life lived and one lost: “5640 - 5639 BCE Winter” simultaneously marked a mountain’s death and a lake’s birth.
I photographed Dr. Black’s notebook citations where he first encountered the trees at Lemolo Lake and printed the scanned image of a sample dissected for radiocarbon. He determined that the ancient bark-bearing tree I found at the same location two weeks later, was a 35-year-old pine, the same age I was when I left Oregon.
Brent Cole responded to these discoveries by recreating the environment that formed the ghost forest in a glass studio. Pieces of wood were placed on a puddle of hot glass and then hermetically sealed within an equally hot bell jar. For 12 hours in a 950ºF kiln, the pine slowly carbonized because it lacked the oxygen to burn (similar to how the ghost forest was preserved when entombed by pumice and ash). The sculptures move through the chaos of the eruption to the present-day caldera.
7,665 years pass as witnessed through the lens of scientific discovery and autobiography in a parallel reflection on cataclysm and rebirth.
- Jacinda Russell