SHIFTING TOPOGRAPHIES: Extracting the Landscape

October 18 – December 20, 2025 in the Main Gallery

SHIFTING TOPOGRAPHIES: Extracting the Landscape features projects by Carol Hartman (Red Lodge, MT), Jeff Schmuki (Stateboro, GA), and Klee Benally in memoriam (Diné, Black Mesa, Navajo Nation; Flagstaff, AZ). In a rapidly changing climate, we are witness to and complicit in irreversible scarring of the land. There are eight National Parks and Monuments within a 2-hour drive of Flagstaff that face potential threats to their preservation, due to the proposed federal reopening of protected sacred lands to mining. This timely and relevant exhibition theme—extraction—takes on a markedly different approach depending on the geographical and cultural perspectives of the represented artists. Hartman’s large-scale abstract paintings respond to the many phases of oil drilling and the environmental impact of fracking in the western U.S. Schmuki’s ceramic tableaus combine locally sourced clay and discarded porcelain figurines with glazes containing mine tailings and lithium oxide to portray the broader environmental impacts of mining including air, land, and water contamination along with deforestation and wildlife disruption. The late Klee Benally dedicated his unfortunately brief life to art and activism that expose the impact of uranium mining and waste on regional Indigenous communities. Benally’s work includes video projection mapping, banners, and activist performance that expose the degradation to the regional landscape and disproportionate impact on tribal communities.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING

Saturday, October 18, 6 pm

Opening Reception & Artist Talks

Thursday, November 5, Doors 5pm Show 6pm Theater

Wild Arizona Film Screening & Live Music from Tha ‘Yoties

In Defense of our National Monument: Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah kukveni – Ancestrial Footprints of the Grand Canyon

Saturday, November 15, 11am-12pm & 12:30-1:30pm

Protecting Our Landscape with Recycled Art

This is a free one-hour workshop for kids ages 7-14 and no experience is necessary! All supplies provided. Please register at coconinoarts.org.

Shifting Topographies: Extracting the Landscape, explores how mining is harming the earth and those who inhabit it. In this workshop, youth will explore ways we can help care for the earth, such as recycling. Using items that are NOT recyclable, such as berry containers, coffee cups, and other single-use plastics, we will put our creativity to use and transform them into beautiful and useful objects or sculptures, keeping them out of the landfill!

Wednesday, November 19, 5:30-7pm Gallery

Thin Air- NAU Literary Magazine Poetry Workshop

Registration required at coconinoarts.org

Thin Air Magazine proudly cultivates a Flagstaff-based, MFA student-led literary community with global reach to publish emerging authors with intriguing ideas. On November 19, Thin Air will host a poetry workshop led by poet and writer, Sherwin Bitsui. Participants will explore poetic forms that are in conversation with the works displayed in the “Shifting Topographies: Extracting the Landscape” exhibition.

Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry, Dissolve, Flood Song, and Shapeshift. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, and the PEN Book Award. His poems have appeared in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. He is Diné of the Todích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan), and has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Native Arts & Culture Foundation.

Thursday, November 20, 6-7pm Project Gallery

Tin Can Conversations: Artist Talk with Neal Galloway

Flagstaff artist Neal Galloway’s Tin Can Conversations uses the core motif of a tin can telephone to explore the fragility, complexity, and profound value of interpersonal communication. Galloway is an artist and educator serving as the Associate Director and an Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Art + Design at Northern Arizona University.