Steve Terrill still tears up thinking about the eruption of Mount St. Helens nearly 30 years ago, and how, if it weren’t for the intuition of his then-7-year-old son, he wouldn’t be here today.
Terrill, a Portland photographer, had set up camp with his son, also named Steve, near Spirit Lake on May 17, 1980, to capture images of Mount St. Helens. He was happy with the location, but his son felt uneasy and wanted to move.
“He had a premonition,” said Terrill. “He just thought something wasn’t right. He did not want to stay there.”
Terrill finally acquiesced, and they moved to the other side of the mountain, near Yale Lake. The next morning Terrill heard on his car radio that Spirit Lake was gone, completely engulfed in ash and mud. Both he and his son would have died had they stayed there.
“I looked at my son and I gave him a big hug and told him I loved him so much,” Terrill recalled of that moment.
From his vantage point by Yale Lake, Terrill captured images of Mount St. Helens erupting. One of them was given to President Jimmy Carter, and Terrill was told it hung in the White House.
Those images, including two previously unreleased photos and a limited-edition 30-inch-by-30-inch eruption photo, will be on display throughout May as part of the “Disturbance and Resilience” exhibit at Art on the Boulevard in downtown Vancouver. The show, which opens May 7 as part of First Friday Art Walk, marks the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
In addition to photos he took before, during and after the eruption, Terrill will showcase two cameras he had with him on the mountain on May 18, 1980. Also on display will be ash and pumice collected from Mount St. Helens, and a copy of his Red Zone permit.
Beyond Terrill’s work and artifacts, the exhibit features paintings by Ridgefield mixed-media artist Jennifer Williams and text by McKenzie Bridge, Ore., science writer Valerie Rapp. Terrill, his son, Williams and Rapp all plan to attend the May 7 opening.
The goal of the exhibit is to show not only the destruction of the eruption, but also nature’s ability to rejuvenate, said Art on the Boulevard Director Kevin Weaver.
“I thought it would be cool to talk not just about the eruption but how far the mountain has come 30 years later,” he said. “It’s healed itself in many ways, but in other ways you can still see the devastation.”
The artists featured in the exhibit all explore this theme, but in different ways based on their own experiences with the mountain. While Terrill had an intimate encounter with the eruption, Williams viewed it from a safe distance with a child’s innocence and wonder.
Williams was 8, enjoying a cousin’s birthday party in the yard of her parents’ home near Amboy, when the mountain erupted.
“We all just ate cake and played games and it was like the entertainment for the day. It was just wild,” Williams recalled. “I didn’t understand the devastation until much later.”
Today Williams has an appreciation for both the trauma the mountain endured and the beauty that sprung from destruction.
“Thirty years after the eruption, when you hike the trails at the monument, the awe is no longer about the destruction,” she said. “It’s about nature’s awesome power to renew itself.”
Williams’ work focuses on changing environmental landscapes, and she’ll have 14 recent pieces on display as part of Art on the Boulevard’s Mount St. Helens show.
Williams’ paintings are done on wood panel, with acrylic paint layered over collaged maps and text. The element of words in her paintings provides a bridge between her art and the excerpts of essays by Rapp featured at Art on the Boulevard.
Williams and Rapp have partnered before on an environmental exhibit and find that together they’re sometimes able to express the idea of ecological recovery better than with just images or just words, Rapp said.
Rapp’s text will be hung alongside groups of Terrill’s photographs and Williams’ paintings throughout May. She hopes they give people another point of entry into the overall message of the exhibit.
“They key message is hopeful,” Rapp said. “That out of the incredible devastation — the landscape has been burned, blasted and buried — nature has astonishing resilience.”
