Bryn Burningham is a printmaker, poet, book, and fiber artist based in Utah. She is trained as a fine artist and printmaker, first at Snow College then at Utah State University. The eldest of nine children, she volunteers on her town’s fire department along with three of her brothers, her dad, and one of her sisters. She spends much of her free time in the house she grew up in, though she dearly loves her own home with the pink-tiled kitchen and various plants growing in every window. She strives to do better by nature both in her life and artwork.
Artist Statement: "The Great Salt Lake is integral to health of the Salt Lake valley, the surrounding Wasatch Mountain snowpack, and to migratory routes of land and sea birds. Bryn Burningham has chosen to connect the lake to imagery of in her artwork for Embodied Ecologies to lungs, referring to the toxic dust uncovered and dispersed by evaporating water levels.
Although currently society and humanity feel separated from nature and ecosystems, it’s impossible to disconnect the land from humans, and from our bodies.
Our bodies are built out of the air, water, and food around us, and our bodies are shaped by the landscape we choose to live in, whether from pollution, topography, elevation, or humidity levels. Ecosystems impaired by human activity -in the case of the Great Salt Lake; a waterway disrupted by human consumption upriver and within the lake itself- lead to impairment of our bodies. Humanity exerts our will upon our landscapes, but the landscape returns the favor."
