Brian Fies, American, born 1960
A Fire Story, page 10, 2019
A page from graphic artist Brian Fies’s graphic novel, A Fire Story, that provides insight on his personal journey as an artist and displaced person after his home burnt down in 2017. Before becoming a book in 2019, Fies published A Fire Story online, generating massive support for his work and for the aid in rebuilding his community affected by the fires. Fies chooses not to color any of the debris and wreckage that his small figure walks through, depicting Hell here as a place with much to avoid. The figure is not heading to a place of refuge either, but rather seems to be preserving the life inside himself by finding a path away from things that were. Despite the bleak text and imagery, the figure moves forward, observing and seeking a way out of Hell. Fies’s work reminds us that the implications of wildfire often prompt personal trauma and that ways we internalize loss are difficult to conceptualize even with photographic evidence. Label by Kristin Rheins