“Waters of the Anthropocene” is a reflection on my experiences with rivers and streams and thoughts about those unseen but essential aquifers that we rely upon for our existence.
Family camping trips while growing up in Southern California and, since the early ’70s, wading the rivers of Northern California as a fly fisher, and for their truly regenerative qualities, have influenced most of the artworks I have produced to date. Fishing has offered a way to discover the richness of life in and around the water and the need to think about how we humans have impacted these riparian areas.
The multi-paneled wall pieces are formatted on a bar graph. “Wading a Measured Flow” was the first in the series and speaks to both the beauty of immersion and the abstract constructs and actual human structures imposed upon that experience. “Cantara” is an image of the Upper Sacramento River on July 14, 1991. At home in Rodeo, on the morning of the 14th I awoke to my radio alarm hearing the unbelievably horrific news that there had been another train derailment early that morning at the infamous Cantara Loop RR crossing upriver from the town of Dunsmuir. Many derailments had happened here, but this time a tank car of metam sodium — a soil fumigant soluble in water — was in the river and had leaked all of its contents into the water. Over two days the lime-green metam sodium moved slowly down river, unstoppable in the current, killing every living thing in its path for 40 miles and into Lake Shasta. The people and pets living along the river awoke to the fumes and suffered as well. Full recovery of the area is still ongoing. This piece, “Cantara,” catches the edge of the spill with its wall of death.
The smaller “Water Sample” wall works depict moments while wading along in the river: findings underwater of human activity and lost items; or fleeting glimpses of birds and fish.
Thoughts about the aquifers we are currently affecting, and the legacy we leave, inform the works on pedestals. “Shard Pile” is an imaginary “aquifer” form based in part on the history of ceramics and the many shard piles left from countless kiln sites around the globe. However the “liquids” it contains depict patented, unknown chemicals. “Westlands” speaks about the excessiveness of capitalism and water extraction in the San Joaquin Valley.
Finally, the basin shaped pieces are in some ways metaphorical containments. The two large elongated forms, “Backwash” and “Winter Willow” are older pieces from a series based on the shape of an ancient Native American spoon. Reverence for the environment is implied by the form which acts as a containment for what is inside “Backwash.” In contrast, “Winter Willow” is a celebration of the necessity of winter flooding to replenish life.
I continue to find inspiration from contemporary artists’ works that I admire, works by the early American landscape painters, and from the long and wonderful history of ceramics.
— Pam Peck