Fern Helfand
Documenting B.C.’s forest industry during troubled times.
Fern Helfand poses in front of "Log Pile," part of her exhibition, "Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home," at the Grand Forks Art Gallery in British Columbia. (courtesy of artist)
When Fern Helfand moved from Toronto to Kelowna two decades ago, she had a “mythic idea” about British Columbia and its forests. She chose to live amidst the trees above Okanagan Lake, and was soon watching developers as they razed nearby hills for new suburban neighbourhoods. She marvelled at log booms floating on the lake and passed rumbling logging trucks as she drove to teach photography at what would become UBC Okanagan.
Over the years, Helfand has made work about the forestry industry – important to the province’s economic health, but also the source of environmental worries. The issues are complex: Forests are important to Indigenous peoples, of course, and the forestry industry has provided countless working-class jobs and created wealth for business elites throughout the colonial era. Globalization has seen wood exports soar, as well as protests over the logging of old-growth forests, a vital bulwark against climate change and biodiversity losses.
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Fern Helfand, “Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home #2,” 2020
photographs on archival cold press fibre paper, 32" x 44" (courtesy of artist)
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Fern Helfand, “Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home #1,” 2020
photographs on archival cold press fibre paper, 32" x 44" (courtesy of artist)
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Fern Helfand, “Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home,” 2021
installation view at Grand Forks Art Gallery, showing lift of lumber and digital prints (courtesy of artist)
Helfand’s latest show, Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home, on view until Aug. 7 at the Grand Forks Art Gallery, a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the B.C. Interior, had its genesis in her large-scale photo assemblage of a log pile. When Tim van Wijk, the gallery’s director and curator, saw the piece installed at the Kelowna International Airport, and invited Helfand to exhibit, she decided to spend time at the Interfor mill in Grand Forks. It was a productive relationship – Helfand shot many photographs there and was loaned a lift of two-by-fours that sits like a minimalist installation in the centre of the gallery, exuding the odour of freshly milled wood.
Fern Helfand, “Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home,” 2021
installation view at Grand Forks Art Gallery, showing lift of lumber and video animation (courtesy of artist)
For Helfand, the show’s centrepiece is a projected video animation that shows a static skyline near Grand Forks topped by an ever-changing sky, where clouds mass and disperse at a sped-up pace. The sky, she says, is a metaphor for the boom-and-bust cycle of the forestry industry. It's also a reminder about human hubris and carries a subtle environmental message, reminding viewers that however much we may think we can shape the world, ultimately, nature will show its force.
“People need to be aware of the environment and the power of the environment on us – and our power on the environment,” says Helfand. “With climate change and all that, we have incredible storms, we have incredible droughts, we have forest fires … but at the same time, the things we do impact what happens.” ■
Fern Helfand: Timber, Lumber, Wood, Home at the Grand Forks Art Gallery in British Columbia from May 8 to Aug. 7, 2021. Watch an exhibition tour here.
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Gallery 2 – Grand Forks Art Gallery
524 Central Avenue, PO Box 2140, Grand Forks, British Columbia V0H 1H0
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