Art and the Animas River

I just found out that one of my fiber art pieces has been juried into the wonderful new show Eco Editions, which will be seen at my friend Laura Russell’s 23 Sandy Gallery, in Portland, Oregon, from November 15 – December 28, 2013. I’ve been in 23 Sandy shows before, and they’re always beautiful and thought-provoking examples of the book arts genre.

My piece is called ‘Watershed’, and is an embroidered and painted linen hanging scroll depicting the path of a nameless Every-river from headwaters to ocean, both its natural course and its man-made channels.

Some lines of admittedly old and awkward poetry, taken from one of my college journals, are embroidered on some of the painted linen strips:

From granite scarps, seven springs flow toward sunset.
Ripples on stone, silver braided through grass, bright river fed
By a thousand streams.
Out of a mirrored sun, three trout leap…
Cloud-veiled, nearby peaks seem taller, canyons trail back into blue mysteries.
Pines melt to juniper and golden hills and raven-haunted cliffs,
Rolling miles cobbled with glacial lees.
Below a roof of cottonwood, a floor of carp-flickering marshes.
The watershed remembers a million floods.
Winter horizons recall hard white ghosts.

Part of the inspiration for this piece came from one of my college-era treks to follow the course of the Animas River, in NW New Mexico and SW Colorado, as well as the documented plights of many less-fortunate rivers in the western United States. Around 126 miles from probable source(s) to its confluence with the San Juan, the Animas is the last undammed river in Colorado, one of the largest free rivers in the continental US, and a major destination for fly-fishing and whitewater rafting.

Expert rafters say it’s a mostly a well-behaved and gentle watercourse, but I remember staring down some unexpected cottonwood snags during my teenage rafting years – as with any river, it can show its dark side swiftly.

The Animas has been threatened with industrialization many times, but community groups and sane business folks have always (so far) rallied around keeping it relatively pristine. (People live near it, and it’s been polluted with mine tailings for 150 years. It’s not perfect, poor thing.) The worst anyone has done to it yet is build Lake Nighthorse next to it, the government’s way of saying ‘please don’t sue us anymore’ to the Utes who lost their water rights in typical Bureau of Indian Affairs skullduggery. I’m glad to see more and more Native groups fighting to get back water rights – and winning. (If you don’t live in the American Southwest, take a little something from the fictional but accurate The Milagro Beanfield War: water is one of our most priceless resources out here. Climate change, population growth, and industrialization may soon make it worth more than blood.)

Though ‘Watershed’ doesn’t precisely depict the Animas, it is my affectionate homage to one of the enduring memories of my youth. I’m glad to see it in a show of this caliber, alongside some 30 other artists whose work I know and admire.

And yes, the piece will be available for sale at the show.

Update: the show was lovely. ‘Watershed’ sold to the University of Washington.