Gallery Statement

Crooked Mile Gallery is honored to exhibit FIRESTORM, a powerful sculpture depicting human strength and resilience by artist Robert Barnum.  Mr. Barnum is a nationally recognized artist and retired Professor of Art who has public art murals or sculptures in ten U.S. States, and has received other significant distinctions. In his decades as a professor and working artist, he has been dedicated to the human story at the highest level. He is a graduate of Ashland High, Oregon College of Art, and Southern Oregon University. Additionally, he holds a Master of Fine Arts from Idaho State University.

Crooked Mile Gallery is aware of the recent outcry by some who felt FIRESTORM was an inappropriate and insensitive expression of their experience during the Almeda Fire and subsequent recovery process.  While we respect each individual’s expression of trauma and grief, we also acknowledge the imperative of giving voice to additional perspectives, experiences and healing processes.  Including ours.

Crooked Mile Gallery believes we are one people the world over.  We share in one another’s joy and pain.  The gallery exhibits art from local artists as well as artists from ‘out-of-the-area’ to enhance diversity of thought and expression crucial for intellectual vibrancy and social evolution.  Crooked Mile Gallery resists artistic hegemony and censorship.

Crooked Mile Gallery recognizes art’s important work in telling the story of the human condition, in all its complexity: the good, the bad, and everything else.  Art can bring wonder and delight, challenge emotion and thought, invigorate conversation, deepen our awareness and tolerances – and much, much more – constant and incomplete. 

The stories of the Almeda Fire persist in those who experienced it, directly and from afar, in those who had immense personal loss, and in all who continue to piece lives back together, one way or another.  FIRESTORM is faithful to this truth by depicting unrelenting strength in adversity, and acts as a reminder that the work endures, unfinished, and requires our awareness and participation.  For those who want to share their Almeda Fire experiences, or thoughts about FIRESTORM, we want to know more. *  

Alison Fairbanks, owner
Crooked Mile Gallery

* Please write your experience (in any language).  Include your name and contact information
(phone number, email or address).  You may place your story or comment inside the FIRESTORM pedestal, or email to:  thoughts.crookedmilegallery@gmail.com
If you have comments about the sculpture, we respectfully request you first view FIRESTORM personally.  
Please see ‘contact’ information for gallery hours.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.