2021 - Looking Back and Forward - A Note From our Director

Season of Smoke, the Journey - photograph by Ward Ruth - Yosemite Renaissance 36

2020 is fading away like a disturbing dream, an accident passed on the highway, growing ever smaller in the rear view mirror.  The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on all aspects of our lives, compounded by catastrophic wildfires and political discord, creating additional concern and hardship. 

Yosemite Renaissance 35 reception - February 21st 2020 - Yosemite Museum

Today, February 21st, 2021, is the one year anniversary of the Yosemite Renaissance 35 reception at the Yosemite Museum. The reception has been a tradition in Yosemite for decades, taking place in the heart of the valley in the heart of winter.

Interpretive ranger Ben Cunningham-Summerfield playing Native American flute at the Yosemite Museum

On a typical night, snow blankets the valley floor, ice crystals sparkle in the trees, and Horsetail Fall shimmers in the twilight, drawing photographers from far and wide.

The event was well attended. Many artists and supporters came, gathering outside in the cold to greet old friends, sip wine, snack on cheese and shrimp (lots of shrimp…also a tradition). As the evening light faded the crowd packed into the museum, elbow to elbow, a bit too warm for most, (…another tradition) to celebrate the presentation of awards.

It was a lovely night, full of good humor and warm feelings. There was no way to know that it would be one of the last public gatherings most of us would attend for many months, and that our lives would change in so many ways.

Yosemite Renaissance 35 sign by Betty Tikker Davis and Trowzers Akimbo

It is a new year, but the core issues we faced in 2020 remain. The Covid pandemic is a warning sign that as populations grow and natural resources diminish, future pandemic diseases could be much worse. As Covid vaccines become available, we look forward to a time when we can gather together safely again, but it will take some time to recover from the damage done.

It is very likely that climate change will lead to more fires, severe storms and other environmental disasters. Our impact on the planet must be addressed. While the 2020 election is over, it is clear that the political divide in our country is still a concern. We need to find ways to work together despite our political and personal differences.

We must learn from the trials we have faced, and set our sights on a brighter future. There is hope in the idea that “adversity leads to innovation”. There has been progress learning to cope in a world where we are forced to physically distance from each other. In business, education and the arts, solutions have emerged that allow us to collaborate and interact remotely. As the pandemic recedes, it is likely that many of these ideas will persist, and will continue to enhance our lives.

Sequoia Cones and Granite - photograph - Jon Bock 2020

With the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine pulsing in my arm, I ask myself, “What can one person do? What can I do?”. The challenges we face can be overwhelming. I believe we need to choose our battles, and do our small part, ultimately contributing to the whole. In the case of Yosemite Renaissance, we do our part through the arts. Artists express some of our deepest beliefs, values and desires. By doing so we can find hope, solace, and a vision of what the future can be, and can share our vision with others.

• Jonathan Bock - Director, Yosemite Renaissance

I chose this photograph by Yosemite Renaissance 36 artist Ward Ruth for this post. To me, it represents the tragedy of the past and hope for the future. It also expresses the importance of finding beauty in the world, even in times of difficulty and loss.

The artist states, “For a week in the latter part of October I walked in and around some of the canyons in the North Eastern corner of Yosemite. I had been trying to schedule the trip for over a month, but kept having to push it back due to the devastating fires in the Sierra this summer and fall.

Finally towards the end of October the smoke from these seemed to moderate somewhat — but this was only relative. The smoke was a continual looming presence on my trip, pervading the views to the south and flowing north up the canyons. I was dismayed standing on a southern ridge how impacted the vista was — grand peaks only a few miles distant were almost completely obscured from view, visible if at all as only dimly looming shapes in the oppressive smoke.

And yet the profound beauty of the Sierra emerged even from this veil of gloom. At times I felt a deep melancholy, such as when wandering by the shore of a small desolate lake, cloaked in the amber hues of smoke and autumn. The stillness spoke to me of passings, stillness, the depths of the earth, and time.

But other moments linger also in my memory: distant ridges flattened into delicate overlapping shapes … shafts of late afternoon light flooding into a deep glacially carved canyon below me … a still evening at a rugged campsite, the moon and stars high above glowing softly through vaporous smokes, tall peaks sweeping up from the sides of the canyon below.

There is magic, the wisdom of the wild, here still and forever. I try to catch some of it if I can.

• Ward Ruth

The Drowning of Hetch Hetchy - YR33 PROGRAM COVER ARTIST - Jennifer Fosgate

The Drowning of Hetch Hetchy - YR33

Program Cover Artist - Jennifer Fosgate

March 29, 2018

This year, the image for our program cover was chosen for its engaging graphic composition, and its content.  The piece combines images and text related to the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, for the point of view of someone directly influenced by the event. 

"My parents, both artists in their own right, took a photograph of me propped against a pine tree in Yosemite Valley when I was six months old. 64 years later this special place is still stimulating my senses in a multitude of ways. It invites me to follow its paths and explore its vast wonders. It asks me to share its beauty with my family and friends. It tempts me to photograph its plunging waterfalls and towering cliffs. And it inspires me to draw and write and paint and create, something I've been doing my whole life. For me drawings and words and paintings are little windows to show others what I see and hear and feel, and to celebrate inspiration.

Without the inspiration of places like Yosemite, for me, there would be no art. Along with the sky, moon and clouds, equine forms, rocks and moving water, and the contrasts and movement of nature, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada continue to be an enduring source of inspiration. Yet as beautiful and precious as these sources of inspiration are, sometimes inspiration comes in a different form. Sometimes it is the exact opposite, a need to express the pain of grief, the despair of loss, the wretched sacrifice of perfection.

Hetch Hetchy Valley before the dam.

Many years after the photograph under the pine tree was taken, I drove into a forgotten corner of Yosemite National Park. What I saw when I steered around a particular bend in the road has left an ache in my heart that has never gone away. A magnificent granite valley, astonishingly similar to Yosemite Valley, lay before me. But this perfect beauty had been damaged beyond belief. I couldn’t imagine how we as a people could let this happen. Although the upper reaches of the valley were pristine and breathtaking, the lower half was covered with the fluctuating waters of a reservoir which left a disgusting “bath-tub” ring on the valley’s granite cliffs. What should have been a lovely lake was instead an abomination. The water was contained by an enormous concrete dam which blocked the flow of what was surely a once magnificent the river. This place is Hetch Hetchy, and the dam is the infamous O’Shaughnessy.

The Drowning of Hetch Hetchy - detail

Over the decades my need to share the abhorrence I feel over the loss of the Hetch Hetchy Valley has been expressed in various ways. There have been the letters written to politicians and media sources, the research into the history of the area, contacting and sharing with others who find the drowning of Hetch Hetchy intolerable, and most importantly, the creation of art. By studying old photographs of Hetch Hetchy Valley before it was flooded, drawings and paintings have been produced and shared and exhibited and given away. Photographs have been taken and displayed and published. Prose and poetry have been written on the subject, and partnered with those photographs and drawings and paintings."

- Jennifer Fosgate -