Owed To The Mountain
Deluxe Box

Owed to The Mountain is a sculptural artist book – the box unfolds one leaf at a time, to reveal each of the four directions. The Mountain is featured in four different printmaking techniques: West face - etching, North face - wood engraving, East face - lithograph, and South face - reduction woodcut. There are four linoleum cut river prints and three handset, letterpress-printed stories from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. The box opens flat and in the center a paper mountain peeks through a cloud layer held up by five tree trunks. There are three handmade paper mountain skins nested inside one another. The outermost layer is made with celadonite pigment and accentuated with white ink exposing words. The middle surface details the dwindling glaciers and the innermost represents the volcanic strata. Beneath the mountain rests a fine press book. Animal ink drawings in various colorful ecosystems and habitats appear among the text, documenting the changing seasons. The stories weave multiple Native voices that underscore the value of friendship, reciprocity, interdependence, and cooperation.

Owed to The Mountain cultivates a powerful story that inspires knowing a place deeply, sharing Indigenous wisdom, and building a community that turns its love for a mountain into action. Mt. Hood has the 6th largest carbon stores of all National Forests in the country! By galvanizing a movement that advocates for the US Forest Service management plan to be updated, Mt Hood can be celebrated and treated as a living ecosystem and increase its climate resilience. Through this project’s research, interviews, and by spending time on the mountain, I understand how important it is that we protect clean drinking water, promote wildlife habitat restoration, support forest maturation, and prioritize the vision and cultural traditions of Native communities, including the practice of controlled burns. We owe it to the Mountain.