Old Growth Forest

I planned to take notes and photographs when out in the field at the Andrews Forest so I wore thin glove liners. My fingers quickly became too cold to do anything but shove my hands in my pockets for warmth. I eventually gave up on the idea that I would record anything and just left it all in Fred’s car.

We wandered around to a few locations without a specific purpose in mind. Fred, my favorite geomorphologist and willing collaborator, showed me some alluvial fans. When looking at a map I had to naively ask him to tell me what a fan is. We were in fact, practically standing on one without me even realizing that. I obviously know very little about geography. But mostly, Fred told me stories about the land, starting from a very long time ago:

• Huge rocks from glaciers in Canada helped block a watershed to create a lake that once existed where we were standing. Evidence of that lake was found in the smooth layered rock exposed by Lookout Creek;

• A very thin layer of ash from Crater Lake’s Mt. Mazama eruption 7,700 years ago covers some of the rock, helping to date the layers of rock where it is found;

• Countless signs of the 1996 flood are still found throughout the forest. The flood that rearranged some of the forest also clearly illustrated to Fred and other scientists how natural networks, like streams, are affected by man-made networks, like packed snowcat ruts on a snow-covered road.

Fred’s stories helped me see the forest in a slightly more nuanced way. But trying to tease out some place to start from the complexity of the forest has been challenging. It’s an overwhelming environment with the amount of textures and colors that it presents. A friend once commented as we were kayaking that he had never known that so many variations of green existed before moving here from Wisconsin via Texas. Which layer is a good one to start with when it is connected to so many other layers?

Usually, an overwhelming place finds some order in my mind through posing a simple question. But simplicity was eluding me once again in that place. There was too much to be able to focus on any one thing for long.

I asked Fred what he would like to see, something that he hasn’t seen before. His first answer was the verticality of the trees. It didn’t make much sense to me at first. We all know that trees are vertical. But I think that he’s on to something that could be quite interesting. At first look, it appears a pretty simple sounding question to ponder, and I like that. But it’s also a question that once you get to pondering it for a while, you find that it’s not as simple as it first seemed. As I played around with the idea in my head I thought that this is just the type of question that I had been looking for: a tangible starting point with the possibility to venture into deeper and deeper investigation. In other words, it can be the simple start I was looking for to a very long, complex project.

Looking at the differences in the verticality of an old growth tree compared to a plantation tree is a logical place to start. Fred said that I would need to go up — I would need to climb some trees. I agreed with this also. So, the next line of business is to find a willing person to help me climb a very tall tree or two. Any takers?

Trees point to a bigger concept that Fred is interested in seeing: networks and patches. How do the networks and patches of old growth trees compare with plantation trees? How do those networks and patches relate to other networks and patches found in the forest, both natural and man-made? How do the man-made networks and patches affect the natural ones, and vice versa? The questions beg for more questions to be asked.

Many thanks to Fred for helping to tease a starting point for this project out of the vast complexity of the forest!

Leah Wilson: Distillations of Place at PCC

The last question a student asked of my work after my Portland Community College lecture was, ‘What do you think scientists will gain from collaborating with artists?’ This was probably the most important question of the evening. I didn’t have a very good answer at the time because it’s a question I am still working through myself.

I told her that I don’t know. It was the honest answer. But I have some thoughts on what I would like to see happen through collaboration, some of which I attempted to explain.

I think that too many people are disconnected from their own creativity. This is a societal problem that causes discontent and stagnation.

I think that too many people have misconceptions about what art is, what it looks like, and whom it is that can make art. They conclude that it’s not them.

Ideally I would like more people, scientists included, to understand what art is, in the broad sense. Making a painting is not the same thing as making art. Paint is only a material. The art is in the idea and the process of manipulating and editing that idea into something worth manifesting in the world. The artist’s use of their chosen medium is a skill, it’s a tool used to transform the idea into a tangible form, but it’s not the art itself.

More importantly, I would like people to become better connected with their own creativity. I would like them to not edit or suppress their creativity because they think they can’t write a poem or paint a painting. But they are free to discover their own medium of choice, which may have no resemblance to their personal idea of what art is supposed to look like. I would like them to grapple with and refine their chosen medium, play with it and learn from it, and to have it within their grasp as the stage on which their ideas are manifested and transformed.

I do not think that everyone can be, or even should be, an ‘Artist.’ But everyone does have the need to be creative. Creativity is a human need. We are inherently creative beings. Too often our institutions fail to recognize this, including science.

So much emphasis is placed on what we know that it can be frightening to reveal to others what we don’t know. We do know some things, but the amount of knowledge we will ever possess will always be infinitesimal compared to what we don’t know. We should be able to embrace this as seeds of our own creativity. Creativity is infinite in its ability to unlock interesting questions about the unknown. Working creatively will help suppress the nagging voice of self-doubt that says you can’t do something because you don’t have the tools, or money, or background… or whatever your own personal inhibiting monster may be. It may give the scientist more freedom to spend some time playing, just for fun, with the idea she thought is too stupid to consider. But that stupid idea, if given ample creative consideration, may be the next big break-through that has eluded science for years.

What better way for a scientist to reconnect with his own creativity than to collaborate with an artist! The creative process may seem messy and unruly at first, but the great power in it will reveal itself. I admit I have feared that, as the artist in this collaboration, I have less to offer than the knowledgeable scientist does. But when I start to think about it in terms of possibly helping to unlock someone else’s pent-up creativity, I think that I have a great gift to bring to the table.

What else do you think that scientists (and others) can gain from collaboration with artists? Tell me your ideas.

HJ Andrews Experimental Forest is, in many regards, a lot like much of the forest in the western Cascade Range of Oregon. There are patches of old-growth forest within logged areas. But unlike any of the other forested land in Oregon, it is also a place dedicated to long-term ecological research. Scientists begin research projects with the intention that the inquiry will span 200 years. We can’t imagine now many of the questions that scientists will be asking about the forest in 200 years. As knowledge increases, so do the questions and the unknowns.

The premise of this place could not be more appropriate to finding an answer to my initial question. I can’t imagine now what questions I will be asking about the place, even a year from now.

Leah Wilson
Sky/Water: January 26, 2013; 1:48 PM; Road 1506 Bridge Over Lookout Creek Near Road 1508 Junction
oil on 6 wood panels
51 1/2 in. x 40 1/2 in.

Began January 26, 2013. Finished September 22, 2013.

Mapping is a theme that I have investigated for over a decade. With this project I wanted to see what the visual correlation is with the color patterns created by air and water in the creek below me (I was standing on a bridge) and the sky above on a snowy January day. The lines in the painting, visually similar to lines on a topographical map, designate color gradations rather than elevation.

When donating, please designate that you would like your donation to fund Leah Wilson — Distillations of Place HJ Andrews Experimental Forest project. Thank you.

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Works in progress — Water underpaintings

I have begun painting the 3 companion panels to the sky paintings. Water is much more irregular than sky, at least this is the case for this particular place at this particular time. The challenge with starting these paintings has been how to deconstruct and separate information about the creek into small, more manageable pieces that I will then be able to rebuild to make the paintings, much like a layered jigsaw puzzle. I have decided to share some of the process.

The image below is of two of the water panels (2 & 3 to be exact). The first step was to paint each panel a golden yellow. Some of that color can be seen between some of the reds. Step 2 was to paint the basic composition in an underpainting of light, dark and midtones. These paintings, like the sky paintings, will also be gray, but these grays will be predominantly more warm gray in contrast to the cool grays of the sky paintings. To enhance that difference, I began the paintings with reds and gold.

HJ Andrews Detail: 3 Sky Panels each 12 1/2 in. X 25 in.

These three panels are the sky panels of the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Project: Sky/Water, January 26, 2013; 1:48 PM; Road 1506 Bridge Over Lookout Creek Near Road 1506 Junction. It was a cold, snowy winter day. I’ve wanted to make some luminous gray paintings for a while — there is so much gray in Oregon winters that I feel like I need to explore the possibilities of muted gray tones. This day provided a great opportunity to start. The sky was an ominous gray and the water underneath the bridge, a varied mix of brown and blue grays.
The system that I developed for this place is designed to show the flow of air and water beneath me in the water and above me in the sky at the same time with bands of color like a topographical map.

When donating, please designate that you would like your donation to fund Leah Wilson — Distillations of Place HJ Andrews Experimental Forest project. Thank you.

Distillations of Place: HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Detail: 3 Sky Panels; Oil on wood panels; Each Panel is 12 1/2 x 25 in.; 2013

In October 2012 I was an artist in residence at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon. Beginning with the Average Colors of the South Yuba River: a mathematical determination of an aesthetic value project in 2007, I have completed several year-long projects that track changes in the environment over time. Now I have made the decision to adopt HJ Andrews Experimental Forest as a life-long project of investigation.

With this project I am exploring concepts of what it is to intimately know a place. How long does it take to develop a ‘sense of place’ with a particular landscape? What is the value of developing such a relationship with a particular place? What is the relationship between scientific knowledge of ecology and personal connection?

For more information on the Distillations of Place: HJ Andrews Experimental Forest project, please visit often and consider making a donation to support this project. Thank you.

Lane Arts Council

Lane Arts Council is proud to serve as the fiscal sponsor for Leah Wilson’s Distillations of Place: HJ Andrews Experimental Forest project and will include your donation in its support of this project. As required by law and accounting practices, Lane Arts Council retains full discretion and control over the use of these funds. This includes the right to redirect funds to a different beneficiary who can complete this project if for some reason Leah Wilson cannot. For more information, please contact Lane Arts Council at lanearts@lanearts.org or 541–485-2278.

In the past I may have struggled with it for a while. I may have dragged myself into the studio to try to revive a dying thing. But this time, when I realized that this painting and series didn’t have a future, I just stopped and walked away.

The hardest thing about doing this is knowing that I am back to the drawing board with no brilliant idea in the lineup. This is not a comfortable position to be in, especially after slogging through a barren desert of ideas for months. The second hardest thing is to start to calculate how much time I had put into a failed project. It’s almost like looking back at a failed relationship. It’s a masochistic endeavor.

The best thing to do at this point in time is to get right back into the studio to grapple with ideas. Just the act of working on the failed painting planted new seeds of  ideas that I wasn’t even aware were there. One took hold.

And the process starts again. I have made new sketches. I spent hours in the garage making new panels. They are ready now for the very first layer of paint. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this time a new project will develop and a new body of work will be created… and that I will remain engaged with the process.