Marc Dion designed Neukom Vivarium, agreenhouse housing an eighty foot nurse log near Seattle's waterfront. The Olympic Sculpture Park is designed to provide experience in “archetypal” land areas. The archetype framed by the nurse log is one of forest renewal…..as the old form dies, it provides nourishment for the new life to come.
On Whidbey Island, Earth Day included wind, solar and electric car demonstrations; information tables for Castle Goat Farm, Whidbey Institute ( calculate your carbon footprint), Pam's Seed Saving, and Whidbey Watershed (salmon protection and outdoor classroom). Music celebrations happened throughout the day, culminating with Open Circle Singers who invited audience participation. The Earth Day art show contained sculpture, collage, assemblage, photography, painting, and multi-media.In the digital image, we are stepped back in layers: out of the forest, out
of the sidewalk greenhouse room, wanting to be close to the
Nature that
renews.
The window reflects the ripples of photographer’s grip
overlaid
on the distorted image of the nurse log with the plant life it
supports.
Reflections of the street lights in silhouette, a green traffic
light and a
street that “reads” green in the image demonstrate the levels of
activity in
this
urban forest. The old cedar supports sword ferns, baby
big leaf maple,
Oregon grape, lichens and fungus. We view the old log
juxtaposed with the neon
sign for The Old Spaghetti Factory. Both
“factories” offer their own kind of
nourishment with sound reminders of the
incessant gaze of the city itself, as
the nurse log continues on its
now-very-public quest to support renewal.
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