Glen Ellen curator Rina Faletti organizes fire anniversary exhibition

An art exhibition, film event and series of public gatherings are scheduled for the one-year anniversary of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.

Rina Faletti, the Glen Ellen-based curator of “Art Responds: The Wine Country Fires,” built her dream home at the top of Trinity Road (on Cavedale) with her husband three years ago. Her home survived but her family was displaced for seven months as they worked to slowly rebuild their rural utilities and log out acres of totally destroyed trees.

“To find a creative way to handle my sense of grief, I began looking for established artists who started making art about fire also as a way to process and heal from it,” said Faletti.

“The 11 artists and three filmmakers in my invitational exhibition are a collection of the most sophisticated visual responses I could fit into one gallery,” she said.

The participating artists include: Julia Crane, Oscar Aguilar Olea, Andrea Dale, Lowell Downey, Brian Fies, Jeff Frost, Linda Gass, Edmund Ian Grant, Norma I. Quintana and Kristi Rene.

Four of the participants lost everything, including their home studios and artworks.

“Fire, climate and environment have always been topical, social and political issues in California, but with last year’s wildfires these environmental issues exploded in personal importance,” said Faletti.

Works in the exhibition vary from hand-drawn pages of a graphic novel illustrating a family’s escape, to time-lapse wildfire scenes unfurling under starry skies; from wall installations and resin paintings made of ash, to scorched object portraits, textiles stitched into blackened topographies, and aerial photographs of incinerated mountain landscapes.

First Street Napa is hosting the space for this exhibition as a way for the community to gather and reflect on how far it has come in the past year since the fires.

Public programs include the world premiere of the film “California on Fire” by photographer Jeff Frost at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 21, at the Napa Valley Opera House. Frost qualified as a wildland firefighter so that he could film behind fire lines. He has transformed 500,000 still photographs into

a time-lapse film that shows the stars cycling in concert with the fires.

A screening of the new documentary, “Wilder Than Wild: Fire, Forests and the Future,” by Stephen Most and Kevin White, will follow.

Faletti is an art and photography exhibition curator and California art and environmental historian, with a PhD in Art History.

She is now working on a book on the topic of art and wildfire in California.

“My work is now focused intently on the ways personal losses from fire and environmental crisis affect and change society and culture,” she said.

The opening reception for the exhibit is from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 1252 First St., on the side of the Archer Hotel. The exhibit runs through Saturday, Dec. 15.