The Landscape of Uranium Mining

The exhibit which combines art with advocacy runs from April 17 through May 30 and features paintings by Rebekah Nordstom and Jerrel Singer. It is accompanied by a series of documentary panels prepared by a class in the Sustainable Communities program at NAU. The panels tell the story of uranium mining and its effects through archival photography, interviews, and other documents. Peter Friederici, director of the Sustainable Communities program, coordinated their production.

Nordstom’s “Language of the Land” includes 100 plein air paintings of the Navajo Nation just south of Cameron which were painted between February and July 2017.  She is a participating artist in the current show at the Museum of Northern Arizona, Voices for the Colorado Plateau: An Intimate Expanse.

Jerrel Singer is a Diné painter from Cameron whose family has been directly impacted by the toxic legacy of mining in the area. His work captures the daylight and nightscape colors and shadows of the Navajo Reservation, depicting scenes that are recognizable as desert, sky, and clouds, but are represented in abstract fashion.