Ghosts of the Flame: Hanging in the Balance artist Jennifer Gilla Cutshall’s experiential installation opened ta few days ago at Building 5, a 5,000-square-foot space that hosts large-scale art installations.

“The idea of a Ghost of the Flame appeared over time and grew from observation, making, and dreaming,” Cushall said. “The series is my response to what I feel when I gaze at our periled surroundings. For me the term signals what is left behind and what remains to haunt our conscience.  

“I am responding to the expansive swatches of our landscape, once lush and green, that have turned into huge cemeteries of blackened spires,” she continued. “They stand like upright skeletal remains of the woods with countless fatalities that include old growth wonders. It’s devastating and heart-wrenching to see, but also hauntingly beautiful perhaps because the emptiness forces a deeper reflection.

“The Hanging in the Balance subtitle speaks to that precarious moment before complete disaster … being at the edge … the tipping point … an ecosystem that is suffering by our hands and it’s up to us to not ignore the skeletons around us. It is a metaphor for the uprooted upside-down trees that hang above the sight line like ghosts of the forest hovering over us, out of sight, out of mind.”

The doorway of Building 5, in industrial Northwest Portland, opens onto the installation, which is a panorama of light and shadow. The lighting is low, accented by candles seated on stumps. Images of fire and burned trees are projected on large screens, while fog floats up from the floor and curls around pieces of art made of hanging bundles of desiccated plants, scales and sculpture.

The installation is laid out in tableau. It is a memento mori. A graveyard. A harbinger. A psychopomp. It is a warning of what will happen to the earth if devastation and destruction of the climate isn’t stopped.

Cutshall has gathered dead and dying brush and shrubbery, tree stumps, dried weeds, her paintings and sculptures of the Ghost Brides and mythical white beasts and has placed them in a broken Golden Mean that leads away from a dried-up riverbed and circles into an altar dedicated to the Sacred Beast. She has created a necropolis of vegetative bones.

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“My installation includes the remains of excavated dead trees that I altered with flame, but creatures and lone figures pepper the bleak landscape, too.  The idea of the solitary figure is important here to describe the way conveniences and technology have forced more isolation (in addition to the environmental devastation it inflicts on the planet,” she added.

“On a purely aesthetic level I have always been most attracted to the wind-swept barren branches on the craggy edge of the sea, or a series of old posts from a disappeared pier that pepper a river’s shoreline.  Both formations create a kind of mathematical design to exclaim, ‘we were there’ like time-based graffiti for the soul.”

While the center piece of the installation immediately draws the eye, the viewer’s attention is pulled from one vignette to another trying to take it all in. A path is laid through the forest cemetery. It is a morality play that reminds the viewer that the reward for feigned ignorance is devastation. The forest stands in for the Earth. The Brides are the broken promise of a “happily ever-after” fairytale ending.

It is an immersive experience that requires the visitor to participate in the installation. Walking along the trail, the viewer sees the forest’s devastation and must confront their own participation in its death and destruction.   

The Brides resemble Valkyries, shining brightly, ready to swoop in and take the mortally wounded to Valhalla. They embody psychiatrist Carl Jung’s Anima or Mother archetype.

They are dressed in white wedding gowns lit from the inside by flames and are placed alongside the dead and dying. The striking juxtaposition drives home humanity’s responsibility for the climate crisis.

“The Ghost Brides are realized in a different way. They’re having a conversation with the Ghost of the Flame and the sense that death, a sort of Matriarch in the forest, the sleeping ghost ride, dreaming, maybe, of a better world. They represent the overarching theme of loss.

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“They are always linked to the forest because they have trees and bits of nature (in them),” Cutshall said. “The Ghost Bride’s Galloping Truth inflamed, her train goes forward instead of trailing behind. It’s hoping for something new ahead.”

The sculpture is representative of Cutshall’s hope that her installation will inspire viewers.

These motifs are an ephemeral presence and are reminiscent of the thin veil between life and death. The viewer’s reaction to the presence of death is visceral. It is cinematic and immersive.

An underlying narrative runs through the installation. Cutshall gives the viewer clues in the titles of each piece, and in her artist’s statement she boldly condemns the consumer culture that has so far been the theme of the Twenty-First Century.

“The resulting installation weaves elements of home in a precarious setting where they hang by their roots, and nests and fires litter the floor area,” she writes. “The dinner table is set with the consumption of vapid things. Lone figures are the ghosts of the flame. They remain as doom-scroll-screen-watchers, to sit or stand frozen, and to sleep while old growth giants and rivers disappear.”

There is more happening within this thematic presentation. It is a place where Psyche resides as well. Psyche is the name of Cupid’s wife, who was made immortal by Venus after many trials. Her name is translated as soul, life and spirit. She is called Ghost by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey and is used to refer to the ghosts or souls of the dead that he meets during his journey. Her name is used to refer to the mind and its study. It was Latinized by the Romans to Anima.

There are so many mythos playing tag in this installation. The Lady in White, the tragic spirit grieving the horrific loss of her children or the betrayal of her lover, can be found in the images of the Ghost Bride sculptures. They have lost their children, the fauna, and their lover, the forest flora. The image of the Green Man shows up in the sculpted stumps she has adorned with candles.

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It is not surprising that these references have made their way into Cutshall’s work. Her bachelor’s degree is in psychology. 

Here we come to the root of the story; figures in both realistic and metaphorical death; Ghosts inhabiting a ghostly plane. The detritus that humans see; burned, scarred trees, bleached wood, dried and wilting plants, are what remains of lives and homes. They are a prediction of what is coming unless humanity embraces a post-consumer world view.

Art and the instinct to create is driven by our mental psyche, the subconscious. This vast space is the mind’s underworld home of our dreams, demons and ghosts. This is the source of Cutshall’s Brides.

“They would haunt me,” she said of her sculptures, “when I was going to sleep. Sometimes I get these images” or dreams, she said. These resulted first in sketches and then in paintings.

“I did the Empress series. I always did these women, and their dresses were houses and stairs. I did hundreds of these women. It kept coming to me as a sculpture in my mind, and I thought, well, that’s going to take a long time for that. Then I woke up one day and said, ‘No, I’m making them starting today’,” Cutshall said.

Cutshall reinforces this in her website bio: “My current working process relies on references from the subconscious and dream states. These elements of my work may at times be recognizable or conversely may be mostly obscured. My primary concern when I work is to follow impulses just below the surface.”

“They lived” in her dreams and subconscious, she said, “and I work intuitively. I don’t have to know everything.”

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Cutshall attended NYC Museum School, a public high school that integrates museum-based learning into its curriculum, and then went on to study at Mason Grove School of the Arts at Rutgers before transferring to Hunter College and changing her major to psychology. She has written and illustrated children’s books, worked as the gallery director at Mount Hood Community College, worked as an art librarian for the Art Center College of Design, and has taught art at two different elementary schools. She owns Verum Ultimum, a contemporary art gallery in Portland.

Most artists would be daunted by the prospect of filling 5,000 square feet of space, but those artists aren’t Cutshall. Rather than being intimidated, she is comfortable taking on such big projects. Which she has demonstrated with this installation.

“I have painted close to 300 murals and public art projects, and I did some scenic art for theater.”

These experiences not only whetted her appetite and prepared her for large installations.

“The murals gave me some wings,” Cutshall said, referring to large-scale projects. “The bigger, the better. Something, about spatially … sets me aflame, being in here, the temperament, the tempo (of the space) it’s exciting. I’ve felt so happy.”

This experience and her love of large-scale projects helped prepare her for Ghosts of the Flame.

“I push the limits,” she said. “I’m always, like, teetering on the edge of this won’t work out, that’s the place I live. Every time I take a project, I (say to myself), “Okay, you’re going to fail this time. Just be ready, because here it is, you do it and you want to push it, and this isn’t good, Jen, like, what are you doing?

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“I think the scale is part of the mystery. When I was in here, the flood of ideas … I could have gone on forever (with the installation). I like the endlessness; it’s that thing when you’re driving and suddenly the road opens up and there’s nothing blocking the way, and you’re like, ‘OH!’ It’s like creativity lives in those big spaces for me. It’s an expansive playground.”

She holds out hope for the future of the planet. As part of the installation experience, she asked everyone who attended to consider making a pledge to do one small thing that would help address climate change. For their pledge, the participants were given small prints of original art.

“I think I’m talking about the huge loss that’s happening, but I’m also hopeful,” Cutshall said. “There are elements of hope, like the nest and the scale that is tipping; it’s empty, but there’s light in it. It’s like, ‘let’s look at what we can do, because we have so much power in the decisions we make every day’.”

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• Ghosts of the Flame: Hanging in the Balance by Jennifer Gillia Cutshall will be open from 3 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, November 12; 3-6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13; and 1-7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15. Contact Cutshall for appointments for individual viewing at fineartvu@gmail.com.
• Building 5 is in the former home of Northwest Marine Iron Works in the Northwest Industrial neighborhood of Portland, at 2516 N.W. 29th Ave. For more information about Building 5, visit buildingfive.org.