Land Art in Portland

evergreen_web_banner.png

KBOO is open to the public! To visit the station, contact your staff person or call 503-231-8032.


Hosted by: 
Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Tue, 08/09/2022 - 11:30am to 12:00pm
More Images: 
land_art_002_ptfe_08102022_skateboards.jpg
land_art_001_ptfe_08102022_heads.jpg
land_art_003_ptfe_08102022_alice_walker.jpg
pxl_20220806_015218438.jpg
pxl_20220806_013814867.jpg
Merridawn Duckler and Alice Walker talk about Sighted Land

On Tuesday, August 9, 2022, Joseph Gallivan interviews artists Merridawn Duckler and Alice Christine Walker about Sighted Land, a land art show at an undisclosed location in North Portland. Duckler talks about her love of the great land art works of the west and how she came to curate something more modest on four acres of private land in North Portland. Walker walks through some of the pieces and comments on them.  

These interviews were recorded by Zoom video conferencing software and a Pixel 6 phone on August 5 and 8, 2022, engineered by KBOO volunteer Ray Bodwell. https://kboo.fm/blog/55224

https://www.blackfish.com/

 

From the press release:

Welcome to the land art show at Blackfish Gallery, the first one in Oregon. I confess it is

somewhat surprising there hasn’t been one before this, given our famously strong PNW

attachment to the land. Like all attachments this is a complex web of ownership, reverence,

exploitation and responsibility. Discussions about the land, decisions about shared land come

from many voices: policy makers, activists, scientists, nature-lovers. I wanted to hear from the

artists. An important tenet of the early land art artists, and one that deserves to be remembered,

was that an artist’s perspective on land and nature is primary. Nancy Holt said, “I am putting

“centers of the universe” wherever I go.” Not as a perspective but as an aesthetic fact. Robert

Smithson dreamt of monuments to entropy. “Instead of causing us to remember the past like the

old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.” Nature is endlessly

reproducible and still we cannot duplicate it. Forget snowflakes, every printmaker knows no two

creations are exactly alike. “I planted rice, chained trees and buried my poetry without keeping a

copy,” wrote Agnes Denes, in as good a description of artistic process as I’ve read. The works

you see here were made with intention, choices, values. They are all translations of thoughts into

objects presented often without judgement but always with vision. The world is our material. We

don’t have to be reminded of our dependence on it. Artists move from mistake to mistake.

Sometimes we go back to square one and other times we are deeply pleased with the results.

There is no design flaw in a forest.

 

Merridawn Duckler

Curator

land art show at Blackfish Gallery

 

 

THE BIG ASK

Are you listening? 

KBOO Radio is a volunteer-run nonprofit, and it needs your money if you are listening. 

Go here to donate. https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-kboo-foundation

It’s like an old school version of smashing the like and sub buttons. 

To hear previous episodes of this show or any of our KBOO public affairs programming, just go to KBOO dot F-M or listen on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently a Feature Writer. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com

josephgallivan@gmail.com

Download audio file
Topic tags: 
Genre(s): 

Audio by Topic: