Project Statement
 

I have never seen an empty Yosemite Valley.

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Between 2014 and 2016, I visited Yosemite National Park nineteen times with a 35mm camera, photographing rangers, workers, volunteers, families, and the millions of visitors who descend upon the park each year. My series, Yosemite People, began as a portrait of the park's human presence but evolved into an exploration of fading traditions and the impact of human activity on the environment. By the project's end, I was struck by an absence. Long before tourism, the Ahwahneechee lived in seasonal bark houses made from sugar pine, cedar, and grapevines, and cared for the valley for thousands of years.

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In 2022, while exhibiting Yosemite People at the Haggin Museum, I encountered Albert Bierstadt's monumental Yosemite Valley paintings: Yosemite Valley, Looking Up the Yosemite Valley, and Sunset in the Yosemite Valley. These exceptional works are just a few among the more than sixty grand Yosemite landscapes he created. With only one or two exceptions, Native people and their dwellings are notably absent.

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In his writings, Bierstadt is empathetic, claiming it is an artist's duty to tell their history, but when he does include people in his Yosemite paintings, they appear as contemporary European travelers on holiday. He was a witness to uncharted lands and an ancient civilization, yet his artistic license perpetuates a vision of Yosemite as a pristine Eden awaiting possession — aligned with the ideals of Manifest Destiny.

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My Yosemite Bark Houses respond to this omission of a people. I paint solitary bark houses, approximating Bierstadt's palette, light, and scale, on transparent acrylic panels installed a short distance in front of his Yosemite Valley landscapes. As viewers move to align the bark house with the painted scene, they are invited to imagine layers of time and a different Yosemite — one that acknowledges both the beauty Bierstadt celebrated and the people his paintings left out.