Opening September 6, Aurora’s Fall exhibitions explore humanity’s relationship to the land that sustains us physically, culturally, and spiritually.

Jessica Hays started photographing wildfires after a fire burned the foothills of her hometown in Montana in 2020. Since then, Hays has traveled the American Southwest to create the series The Sun Sets Midafternoon, which captures the state of solastalgia, an emotional and existential distress caused by negative environmental change. The exhibition combines immersive, floor-to-ceiling mural prints of fire clouds, large-scale framed photographs of fires, and the artist’s written word to deliver an urgent reminder of our world’s fragility. The artist will be present in the gallery for the opening on September 6. In Aurora’s Main Gallery until December 15.

The exhibition Timbered Virtue, featuring work by artist and educator Lamar Richcreek (1947-2018), explores changes in American rural life and family farms, as seen through adult eyes and childhood memories. In Aurora’s Efroymson Gallery, the exhibition celebrates Richcreek’s thought-provoking images as well as his life modeling values of lifelong learning, the power of the arts, and the importance of integrity and respect for all. The exhibition Timbered Virtue will be accompanied by an essay written by celebrated photographic artist Linda Adele Goodine, who was Richcreek’s mentor, colleague at Herron School of Art and Design, and close friend. In Aurora’s Efroymson Gallery until October 15.