When glass and metal artist Susan Madacsi moved back to Idaho after a time away, she drove through wildfire smoke in the desert near Twin Falls.
“[I] started hitting some of the wildfire smoke, and it was actually this very comforting, familiar smell to me. And also I guess the fog over the sagebrush steppe. It just made me realize that I felt really connected to the land through the fires,” she said.
This eventually led to her latest body of work, The Incineration Project. Madacsi collects wildflowers, leaves and sagebrush that grow after wildfires and presses them between glass which she then fires in a kiln. In the incineration process, the organic material releases gas, creating a bubble between the layers.
“And the result of that is inside of that bubble. It creates smoke and fumes the inside of that glass,” she said.
The moisture from the plants also creates smoke. Once out of the fire, the ghostly imprint of the wild grass, sage or flowers remain – trapped in a delicate chamber.
“Wildfires, I would hope, remind us of that, that our time is limited here and you just get a moment,” Madacsi added.
The pieces look like Victorian cameos, or plant specimens found in century-old botany museums, fragile relics frozen in amber.
The artist also experiments with the bark of ponderosa pines: coated in tiny glass shards, the pieces turn into black shiny jewels once fired.
When the large trees, endemic to the mountainous west, sense the heat of wildfires coming, they shed their scaly skin.
“It's an act of self-preservation. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's trying. It's actively trying to stay alive,” she said.
Madacsi said this work is in part a reflection on letting go, accepting the unpredictability of what will remain after incineration. Some plants vanish completely in the firing process, while others, charred and transformed, retain their shape.
“[The plant] is being turned into a different object but it still has the essence of what it was,” she said.
Wildfires are a key foundation of many ecosystems’ survival, helping to clear overgrowth, return nutrients to the soil and promote rebirth.
In this work, the artist captures the beauty of our natural landscape, resilient and ephemeral, both blackened by fire and ready for life to return.
“And it always does,” Madacsi added.
The Incineration Project is showing at The Common Well until Jan. 30, 2026.
The Common Well co-founder, Katherine Shaughnessy, is the spouse of Boise State Public Radio General Manager Tom Michael. Neither were involved in this story’s editorial process.
The audio of fire used in this story was collected by Mountain West News Bureau reporter Murphy Woodhouse while reporting on cultural burning by Karuk fire practitioners in Northern California.
