Kate Padilla ’23
Major(s): Biology & Visual Arts
Digital, Adobe Fresco (click image to enlarge)
Last semester I lived in Grand Lake, Colorado, a town just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Occasionally, gusts of smoke would blow in from distant wildfires obscuring the sky for a few days at a time. One day, the smoke became particularly thick. Later, I found out a new fire had started, and it was the closest one yet- it was in our county. That week, this fire grew from 18,000 to 87,000 acres each day, becoming the East Troublesome fire– the second largest and one of the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history. In one day, I evacuated from where I was living, and by the next day the fire was surrounding our home.
This digital drawing that I created on Adobe Fresco depicts a view of this fire based on a photo I took while we evacuated. The huge clouds of smoke from this incredibly destructive fire towered over us, comprised of overwhelming shades of red, brown and yellow.