a slight setback

Last Saturday I fell off a ladder...or more precisely, the ladder fell out from under me.  Stupid mistake middle age guys make all the time.  Cleaning gutters.  Ladder was set on a slippery deck, no one spotting me at the bottom.

I get near the roof and notice the ladder slipping out from under me.  Wiley Coyote moment mid-air, thinking 'this can't be happening', then nothing.

Awaken minutes later with my son standing over me saying 'Dad, don't move...'

Couldn't if I wanted...so much pain.  Sirens wailing in the distance, getting closer.

Medics check me out, strap me to the gurney.  Then off to Harborview where I'll be slid from one CAT scan and x-ray machine to the next over the next several hours.

Finally, after 14 hours in the ER, they release me with a fractured clavicle, 5 broken ribs and a load of oxycodone.

tracing for engraver

Each image requires an accurate trace as an EPS file so the engraver can reproduce a realistic fossil on the stone.  It's a painstaking process but will result in a naturalistic effect...

fossils: telling an evolutionary story in stone

Through careful selection of 4 iconic moments of the evolution of life on earth, I want to create story with fossils and spatial relationships.  Placement of each fossil within the series and location within the park provides the viewer some sense of scale of geologic time. 

Starting with the Cenozoic and working back to the Precambrian, these calcified records provide clues about adaptation and climate change that place our extremely brief Anthropocenic period in stark contrast. 

trilobite

reptile

bird

vendian protist

7 stones cut layout

7 stones layout

Went to Marenakos today to examine the 7 selected stones laid out...

eco-art resource

The Curating Cities Database maps the increasingly important and emerging field of eco-sustainable public art. It is developed as a resource for researchers, academics, artists, curators, educators, commissioning agencies and sponsors working in the field as well as those interested in promoting sustainability via public art. In addition to descriptive information, the database evaluates the aims and outcomes of each project as well as the external constraints (and subsequent negotiations) that influence the production of public artworks.



http://eco-publicart.org

selecting stones

Ella and I went to Marenakos today and selected the 7 stones for cutting.  Since we had a 20-ton limit and igneous river rock weighs 165# per cubic foot, we needed to be conscious of size.  To accommodate the overall weight limit while maintaining sufficient sculptural scale in relation to the site, we chose a range of sizes from 7' x 4' x 3' to 4' x 3' x 2' (6 tons to 2 tons).  We also looked for 'cool-hued' blue-green stones that would help reinforce the water theme we're developing throughout the overall project.

I'll return Wednesday to mark cutting lines and locate fossils.

  

scientists discover plants can hear

"When you go out into the forest, into an estuary, or a different ecosystem, where you're going to be harvesting a plant, food, or medicine, is you want to get yourself into a space of respect and understanding that we are interacting with the plants who are considered our second oldest ancestors that we have after the rocks, which are called the grandfathers and the plants are referred to as the grandmothers. Those offerings are meant for the plant and meant also for the ancestors who walk beside us when we go out and harvest on the land."

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/hearing-plants-awkward-bees-arctic-gems-farting-fish-and-chicken-bones-1.4234437/indigenous-stories-lead-scientist-to-discover-plants-can-hear-1.4234449

elemental haiku

A review of the Periodic Table composed of 119 science haiku, one for each element, plus a closing haiku for element 119 (not yet synthesized). The haiku encompass astronomy, biology, chemistry, history, physics, and a bit of whimsical flair.

http://vis.sciencemag.org/chemhaiku/

Is our environmental future better than we think?

If the political world is divided between the globalisers and the localisers, so too is environmental thinking. And never more so than in these two compelling tracts.

In Inheritors of the Earth, ecologist Chris Thomas says that we are witnessing a virtual recreation of the single continent that dominated the planet until 175 million years ago. The subtitle to his book invites us to celebrate how “nature is thriving”, rather than buckling under the strain, with extinctions more than compensated for by a sudden upsurge in evolution, driven by globetrotting migrant species.

On the other side of the environmental aisle is Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, a series of touchingly written, but deeply pessimistic essays. Here, former eco-activist Paul Kingsnorth retreats into a world of nativist angst, offering an extreme version of the environmental longing to protect what is local, whether it is an endangered species or a traditional way of living. He mourns “the breaking of the link between people and places”.

Both authors have been on a long road. In 2004, as a young ecologist, Thomas made front-page news for a prediction that up to a third of species would die out due to climate change. He stands by that apocalyptic forecast, but now reckons the plus side is even bigger. While most ecologists bemoan the sixth great extinction in the planet’s history, Thomas says we are also “on the brink of a sixth major genesis of new life”.

we should never have called it earth

Before we existed, and after we are gone, the ocean will continue to whisper to the atmosphere. Weather patterns will change back and forth with the natural oscillations of air and water. But we do exist, and we are treating the atmosphere as a limitless dumping ground. A signal of our handiwork is emerging against this cacophony of noise. Things are changing.

https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-should-never-have-called-it-earth/

Pacific Northwest Meadowscaping

Pacific Northwest Urban Meadowscaping (PNUM) is a collaborative effort to develop lawn alternatives using native bunch grasses and wildflowers well suited to the Pacific Northwest’s Willamette Valley. As homeowners become more aware of the environmental impacts of their landscape choices, naturescaping programs are receiving more requests for lawn replacement options. Although common, lawns provide little benefit to storm water infiltration, water quality, or wildlife habitat and require polluting inputs such as fertilizers and mowing.

The goal of PNUM is to provide public education, technical support and assistance with the planning, planting and monitoring of meadowscapes on residential landscapes and in public parks to increase wildlife habitat and stormwater infiltration in the urban realm. Continuing analysis of available data will be used to determine best management practices for installing and maintaining urban meadows. In addition to answering practical questions, PNUM aims to cause a paradigm shift in what people think of as a beautiful “lawn.”

https://wmswcd.org/programs/pacific-northwest-urban-meadowscaping/

our lawns are killing us

Pristine turf grass lawns are as synonymous with America as baseball and apple pie. For those of us who grew up in the suburbs, waking up to the lulling drone of lawnmowers signaled the start of a summer Saturday with all of its anticipated pleasures. I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t enjoy the smell of fresh-cut grass. And deep down, even those of us who are staunchly anti-herbicide harbor a secret hatred of dandelions, if only for the glares they evoke from our neighbors: Do they think I’m lazy? Or letting my property go downhill?

Yet despite what Scotts®, Bayer, TruGreen®, and other corporations in the so-called green industry would have us think, lawns are far from green, environmentally speaking. (They’re not American, either.) We’ve known for decades about the harm lawns cause, but we are still mowing and blowing: Irrigated turf grass covers nearly two percent of the land in the United States, more than 40 million acres. Every square inch of it replaces diverse habitat for wildlife with a monoculture of nonnative plants, and we keep it going with fossil fuels and chemicals toxic to most living things.

http://www.ecolandscaping.org/07/lawn-care/lawns-killing-us-time-kick-habit/

icon of the anthropocene

Gameboy, circa 1983

the subtext of stone

So my previous post is what I'd consider a primary reason for the selection of stone as my medium for this project.  Stone stands the test of time and acts as a marker for climatic and geologic change.  As Walter Benjamin put it so succinctly in Art and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: 'Art remains, the world vanishes...'

But I'd like to offer another, more optimistic reading...

Perhaps the world that is vanishing is our old, out-dated industrial model based on fossil fuel exploitation.  Maybe this sculptural stone row with its fossilized imprints, angular seating and ephemeral words writ in water marks a new chapter in the anthropocene.  A time when we begin to recognize our common humanity and kinship with all living things on this precious blue orb.

To chart this new path, we must reduce our collective imprint...

The Uninhabitable Earth

"The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a slate-wiping of the evolutionary record it functioned as a resetting of the planetary clock, and many climate scientists will tell you they are the best analog for the ecological future we are diving headlong into. Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high-school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 252 million years ago; it began when carbon warmed the planet by five degrees, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane in the Arctic, and ended with 97 percent of all life on Earth dead. We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate; by most estimates, at least ten times faster. The rate is accelerating. This is what Stephen Hawking had in mind when he said, this spring, that the species needs to colonize other planets in the next century to survive, and what drove Elon Musk, last month, to unveil his plans to build a Mars habitat in 40 to 100 years. These are nonspecialists, of course, and probably as inclined to irrational panic as you or I. But the many sober-minded scientists I interviewed over the past several months — the most credentialed and tenured in the field, few of them inclined to alarmism and many advisers to the IPCC who nevertheless criticize its conservatism — have quietly reached an apocalyptic conclusion, too: No plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster..."


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

stone circle memories

Recalling our '06 trip to England, Scotland and Ireland and some of the stone circles we visited.  Stonehenge, Castlerigg, The Hurlers, etc.  The kids loved climbing on the stones while we enjoyed the tranquility of simply sitting on warm stone and contemplating the surrounding countryside.

Could I bring a little of that feeling to Oak Tree Park?

adventures in photographing water

Jenn has been digging into the photography the past few weeks and has come up with some pretty interesting stuff.  This series with water, ripples and smoke is especially evocative.  Feels primordial, volcanic, atmospheric.  Could relate well to themes I'm working out with the stonework...