Forest Paintings

Julia Stoll and the Yale Valley

If you’re driving along Lewis River Road in Washington towards Mt. St. Helens as you pass between Woodland and Cougar there’s a tiny town you probably won’t see called Ariel, but you will see lush forests and mossy cliffs along the river that form the Yale Valley. I’d driven this road before I met Julia Stoll on the way to the Ape Caves and Mt. St. Helens, and once when taking a group of school kids to a performance of Native American stories and dances in a cedar house by the Lelooska family. But visiting Julia became my primary reason for returning. About 22 years ago she asked me to paint a picture for a show she was presenting at Blackfish Gallery about the forest behind her house. I wandered through the woods, took photos, and started painting. At that time most of my work was urban themed, fractured, and sometimes disturbing (often it still is) but when I started working on the forest paintings I had a sense of wholeness, of being restored, and I couldn’t stop painting until I had made a series of six paintings instead of one. Over the years I have returned many times and added to that series.

Julia struggled mightily to protect this forest from clear cutting and destructive development. She initiated the Yale Valley Arts Festival about 12 years ago to bring more art and music to the valley and to promote an attraction that would emphasize the nature of the area. She worked to pull diverse interests together, loggers, farmers, businesses, poets and families, to resolve conflicts, to educate people about forest ecology, to promote local businesses and enrich her community. Eventually, when the forest was logged extensively in 2011, she was part of the effort that helped preserve riparian areas along the waterways and insure diverse replanting rather than a monoculture of tree farms.

Julia was a great friend, a person of deep interests, integrity and commitment; she cared as much about the community of the valley as she did about preserving the forest. She promoted an oral history project of elders who tell the story of what life was like in the valley in the aftermath of WWI, the WPA building of the Merwin dam and in ordinary times. The Lelooska family has enriched the culture of our corner of the Pacific Northwest. I cannot begin to do her justice, but I want to honor her memory.