Joan Giroux, born 1961, Syracuse, NY

Lisa Marie Kaftori, born 1960, Santa Maria, CA

Live and work in Chicago, Santa Barbara, & New York

In 2000, Lisa Marie Kaftori and Joan Giroux began collaborating as Compassionate Action Enterprises to create art | interactions geared toward ecofeminism and environmental ethics. CAE works with communities and humble gestures to bring art into the everyday. CAE’s projects, and the individual practice of both artists, image and unpack experiences of loss, absence, thresholds, survivorship, nurturance, and mortality. 

In 2007, CAE began the ongoing “jasmine series” to encounter and re-imagine quotidian environments through poetic means. “from there to here, from then to now” chronicles the artists’ peregrinations through southern California landscapes deeply marred by the Thomas Fire. During 39 earth rotations, as 2017 turned to 2018, it burned over 281,000 acres. At the blaze’s height, 10,000 firefighters traversed mountainous landscapes in the foothills of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. In evacuation, Lisa received a texted image: her home in Los Padres National Forest was on the news, a silhouette against flames. As 2018 began, torrential rains precipitated mudslides, further ravaging the community. The artists’ walks and filming followed unpredictable paths of fire and silt.