Review of Strand at Shoreline Community College

Ian Terry, Photo Editor

Amy Shook wrote a thoughtful review in the Ebb Tide for my show Strand at Shoreline Community College. Read it here.

You Tube Video for my work at AAAS

AAAS - Beneath the Surface-You Tube Interview

Mention of my work in Fate of the Forest, Whatcom Museum

click on article and and zoom-in to read

Water Shed Adjustments

Making the final adjustments to Water Shed at PAFAC in June 2010.

Inside Water Shed

Visitors to PAFAC enjoy and interact with Water Shed and respond to it's playful dark humor. Children of all ages are drawn inside for a photo. Others have commented on the irony of the expiration dates on the bottles. A few folks have responded by saying that they will never buy another plastic bottle of water again. On one occasion I came upon a group discussing plastic recycling statistics as well as the the plastics found swirling in the North Pacific garbage gyre.

3 Day Installation at Port Angeles Fine Arts Center

Over the next couple of days, June 17th and 18th, I reconstructed the Water Shed in Webster's Woods. Artists Margie McDonald and Gloria Lamson, as well as PAFAC volunteer Van Maxwell, helped me lift the roof supports up onto the side supports. James Lapp, while installing Blue Ascension, found me in the woods, pondering and struggling with the angle of the roof reattachment, so he lent me a hand holding up the roof while I loosened, realigned, and retightened the nuts and bolts. On the third day, the Friday before the opening day of Art Outside 2010, I poured black "sand" along the entry path to the Water Shed, creating the effect of a stream of petroleum, and attached more bottles that "shed" off the Water Shed onto the surrounding ground.

Laying the Foundation

Later in the day of June 16th, Margie McDonald and I arrived at Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, where Jake Seniuk helped me locate the perfect verdant spot in which to install Water Shed. We decided to nestle it under a gigantic Big Leaf Maple in a thicket of stinging nettles and invasive ivy! While Margie worked in the woods nearby, wrapping an elderberry branch with wire and colorfully painted "thorns", I laid out the the greenhouse base supports in the rough 2D shape of the Water Shed. I set to work clearing the masses of ivy vines and nettles for the foundation. Deanna Pindell was there putting the finishing touches on her Squiggle installation, Carolyn Law made and installed floral bouquets out of color-tinted convex mirrors, and Barbara De Pirro’s recently installed Fungo Plastica snaked up the grooves of the maple bark above.

Water Shed in Motion

I designed the Water Shed with detachable "rafts" of the plastic water bottles, so on June 16th Margie and I took the shed apart and sent it flying from the ramparts of the Centrum studio in Fort Worden's 205 building. We loaded up my friend Gary's fine red truck with heaps of the shed parts, and then headed ourselves to points west to install in the Webster's Woods of Port Angeles Fine Arts Center. It was one heck of a big truck full o' Bottles!

Kathie Meyer's "PT Leader" Article

Read the PT Leader article about the Water Shed at http://ptleader.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=27059&SectionID=101&SubSectionID=471&S=1

Roof and Siding!

Water Curtains

Recycled copper wire wound around #1 PETE bottles; strung like beads in a water curtain.

Hacking and Sawing

The Watershed takes form with the help of hacksaw, hand drill, and file. Working with the soot-covered aluminum to make the base structure feels like drawing with charcoal, and the shed-shape emerges as a 3D drawing in space.

"Chief Cook and Bottle Washer" - Centrum Studio

Working in the Centrum-for-the-Arts studio as Artist-in-Residence for the month of May, my first task is to clean and sort the PETE plastic water bottles that I have collected from local beaches and businesses, friends and acquaintances, and the town dump.

Greenhouse Salvage

Wednesday morning brought bright sunshine and high dramatic clouds while Margie McDonald and I salvaged the aluminum frame of a fire ravaged greenhouse for use as the base of my Water Shed sculpture.

The Water Shed Project - In the Beginning

I spent some time at our local recycling center today, collecting the raw material, the ubiquitous PETE water bottle, for use in my Water Shed sculpture project. In addition to finding art materials, water bottles galore, I had a chance to reflect on the lives and habits generating this post-consumer plastic and metal refuse.