MARINA ZURKOW
Been busy working on a few aspects of SS Chai. For one thing, with TLAAG as design partners, we have a design proposal. If anyone is interested in reading… we’ve created a long proposal as well as an “executive summary.” Here’s a really topical overview: Sampan Super Chai is a prototype for a floating art/science platform…
Walking through WC – the crown jewel of the LWG – with Sara Huston and John Paaninen of tlaag. Stay tuned for summer workshops and outings.
Went kayaking with Joan Lundell, recent grad from PNCA MFA in Collaborative Design and Sasha Davies of Cyril’s fame; Joan generously hauled her boats up to Cathedral Park where we set off, and in 4 hours of drifting and poking around, got as far as the edge of Swan Island. It’s doleful out there, especially…
1. Talked to Dr Elaine Ingham, chief scientist at the Rodale Institute in PA (formerly at OSU). She’s a Soil Diva: an energetic, brilliant, committed soil expert and the author of my favorite quote from the film Symphony of the Soil*: “It’s Times Square on New Years Eve in the soil, all the time”. I…
Drawing is a way of knowing – that’s such an obvious statement but it’s true. I started work on a way to visualize the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, flanking North Portland, the 11 mile superfund site and the startling fact that so many uses and agents (typologies, species, agendas, wants and wills, actions and reactions) are…
YEP. How is this possible? From Oregon Metro today, Zoo releases 850 endangered butterflies into wild Precious excerpts: Once common along the Oregon coast, the Oregon silverspot was reduced to four Oregon populations by the 1990s. The species was listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1980 – one of two Oregon butterflies…
Start by replicating Antonie van Leeuwenhoek‘s famed microorganism (a rotifer) (replete with crowns). Continue on a folk art expedition to make heroes out of our invisible microbial community members. There is no reason to the system yet, whatsoever. Don’t know where it’s going, but they are REALLY fun to draw:
10 days ago I went to the OR coast – around Astoria, the mouth of the mighty Columbia River, with 15 Japanese continuing ed students to survey the beach plastics and look at and for tsunami debris. Oregon is twinned, connected to Japan through a strong east/west current. In addition, long-livin’ plastics suspended in the…
(in progress, running list. Thanks to Peter Schoonmaker, Kimberlee Chambers, David Johns, Mike Houck, Nancy Nowacek, and Kathleen Sayce for their suggestions) BOOKS: Montgomery, David R. Dirt: the erosion of civilizations. Univ of California Press, 2012. Lewis, Wayne, and Jeff Lowenfels. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web. Timber Press, 2010. Solomon,…
Here’s a mishmash of maybes, that got me really excited last week. Meeting filmmaker Matt McCormick: Seeing his awesome studio on River St between the cement and grain silos, just S of the Fremont St Bridge. With a hole in the parking lot chain link you have sneaky in/out access to the Willamette River, and…
Very little, I’m slightly embarrassed to confess, makes a place more vibrant than knowing how much of it is edible. Since I went on Becky Lerner’s First Ways foraging tour near Alberta Street last week, neighborhoods and lawns have come alive. One of the many things I appreciated about Becky is her blindness to speciesism:…
A Superfund site is an abandoned hazardous waste site that poses enough risk to human and environmental health that the Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in to lead a clean-up effort. It’s also the name of an actual fund that no longer has any money in it* – http://www.epa.gov/superfund/about.htm A blindingly bright star bursts into view in…
SO tempting to call it superfun/d, but the marvelous Christie Leece with her Superfund Salvage oh so subtly or accidentally came to a similar etymological epiphany already. Look:
As for the clay, now I am teaching myself how to process it. I’m using the best online explanation I could find here. So first, yeah, I found some clay. I was simply excited to touch the stuff and recognize it as clay: silky, powdery, and if you wet it and rubbed it between your fingers, you could…
Found a boat on Craigslist belonging to a retired lineman named Kent; he took me and Peter out from Cathedral Park, up through Multnomah Channel, around the top of Sauvie Island, down the Columbia along the south side of Hayden Island, down to Government Island, and back around Kelly Point to our start. Photos…
OK. I feel like I started this string of posts airdropped, as I was, in the middle with very little context. I won’t say the fog has cleared, but I do have some more thoughts to add. As I posted in July, I’m starting a new project in Portland Oregon. It’s a result of a…
The soil and the organisms living on and in it comprise an ecosystem. The active components of the soil ecosystem are the vegetation, fauna, including microorganisms, and man. – Vegetation: The primary succession of plants that colonize a wethering rock culminates in the development of a climax community, the species composition of which depends on the…
Yesterday I met with Heather Julius, who’s a bright star of a human, a researcher and chef who works with The Center for Genomic Gastronomy conceiving meals . These artists are kindred spirits. Heather’s knowledge of food nutrition, systems, and histories is deep, as is her info on the Missoula Floods and other deep time events,…