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.