Four Artists Turn to Clay, Steel and Story to Hold a Wounded Landscape

In the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, what does it mean to care for scorched ground? A new exhibition at the Armory Center for the Arts sits with that question. “all the ways to hold this tender land” opens Friday, July 10, bringing together four artists whose work reaches toward nature, ancestral memory and healing.

The artists — Anais Franco, Francesca Lalanne, Maddy Inez and Brie Ruais — work across ceramics, steel, wood, film and living, more-than-human material to consider reciprocal relationships with the environment. Engaging in ways of living that forge connections to land, community and the self, they treat craft as a means of restoration and return, weaving together the spirits of living beings as a path toward cultural and ecological preservation.

The exhibition takes shape against the backdrop of worsening climate catastrophes — the Eaton Fire among them — that damage landscapes and uproot communities. It draws on a poem from bell hooks’ “Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place,” which calls for collective listening as a way of understanding how to care for the land. Together, the artists suggest, connection to the earth can become a form of repair.

The Armory, a longtime anchor of contemporary art and community arts education in Pasadena, opens the show to the public at 1 p.m. Admission is free.

“all the ways to hold this tender land” opens Friday, July 10 at 1 p.m. at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena. Admission is free. For more information, visit armoryarts.org.