The Green Curtain Roadshow will map a future “Green Curtain” of climate refuges across the country and amplify the voices of old-growth forests through the transformational power of music, writing, and visual art.
We will bring art and artists into the proposed Black Ram Climate Refuge in northwest Montana’s Yaak Valley, using music festivals and pop-up concerts for outreach and advocacy. The centerpiece of our journey is the Black Ram guitar, a craft guitar made by a master luthier from a piece of ancient spruce damaged by an illegal logging operation in the Black Ram Climate Refuge.
This project provides a model for communities interested in protecting old forests and other natural treasures. Our festivals engage musicians, poets, painters, photographers, ceramicists, documentary makers and more.
Along the way we will visit other sites on the northern tier that could join the Yaak as a national Green Curtain of protected old-growth forests to form a planetary green curtain, like a green halo or necklace encircling the globe.
The planet’s forests absorb up to 30% of our carbon emissions annually. Old forests are doing the lion’s share of that work.
When the Black Ram guitar travels outside Montana, she teaches other communities about the importance of mature ecosystems in preserving biodiversity and trapping vast amounts of carbon for long-term safekeeping.
Our quest to map a new geographical zone across North America, and to acknowledge and witness our shared history—both good and bad, the known as well as the forgotten—speaking through art, informed by science, will make a bold statement in the ongoing national conversation about who we are, where we’re going, and how we’ll get there.
Along with a “road album” recorded on the trip, the Roadshow will conclude six-months later with the literary publication, the Green Curtain Review, both of which will be highlighted during a celebratory public art event and fundraiser in Portland, Maine, leaving a lasting positive impact on our communities and our climate’s future.
Photos by Devang Saklani, Marius Berceanu and R A Beattie
