Edie Dillon

Artist Bio

I am a sculptor, painter, writer, and mother whose work seeks to honor the beauty and mystery of the world.

My life has been shaped by remarkable experiences in beloved wild places as an environmental educator and advocate. I was privileged to serve as the first full-time woman ranger in North Cascades National Park, develop recycling education for the City of Bellingham, Washington, and join art and nature in community outreach for the Verde River in Arizona, among other projects.

Over time, communicating through the language of visual art became as important to me as communicating through the scientific language of environmental education. In order to answer personal questions about art’s role in cultural change, I focused my master’s research on the transformative power of art, with particular attention to environmental art.

My studio practice is a search for a personal visual language that can speak to human and environmental predicaments potently, authentically, aesthetically, and with the needed urgency. I hope to help people see and understand the beauty we live in, and to create a vision of healing that is still in our power.

Essays published in Nature Love Medicine: Essays on Wildness and Wellness (Torrey House Press. 2017) Real Ground (Natural History Institute, 2020), Ecopsychology (Mary Ann Liebert Publishers, 2020), and Women’s Eco-Art Dialog (WEAD, Taking Action, 2021) among others.

Artist Statement

I engage our human and environmental predicament at the meeting place between serendipity and intention; where the beauty of the sacred found is enriched by fabrication. My art responds to crises in order to be a force for healing – on both individual and community levels.

What we pay attention to, and how that affects what we choose to keep or throw away, be they materials, ideas, people, or specifics of the natural environment, can change the stories we tell and the potentials we allow. Old things, everyday things – long used, or used and discarded – possess a resonance of memory and time; they are rich with meaning, nostalgia, and reference. I make use of these references, enhancing, enlarging, and redefining their meanings through combining the unexpected.

This process allows me to see how we might deflect a disheartening and destructive trajectory and generate different possibilities for our story.