Environmental Impact Statement
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is a collaborative multimedia project that seeks to bring attention to land management issues on public lands. This year EIS will bring dancers, visual artists, writers, sound artists, and musicians to Mt. Hood National Forest to visit areas threatened by logging and development. Artists will create work in response. This work will be presented publicly throughout 2015, with the goal of increased public awareness for protection of wildlands and increased engagement with environmental activism within the Portland arts community. The name of the project is derived from the required documentation that the government must collect to show potential impacts on the environment before developent occurs. This process has been increasingly dismantled by industry and removed from public involvement. The project seeks will reimagine and redefine the form, scope and potential impact of an environmental impact statement through artist research and response. Through this process EIS will create spaces for expression and conversation around ecological, social and political issues central to public land management on Mt.Hood. The project also questions the role of the artist in the debate of managing public lands.
Are artists there merely to contribute in an aesthetic sense, or can they directly influence the course of this conversation? If artists are activists, instead of merely aestheticists, they become more central to the outcome of this debate.
Are artists there merely to contribute in an aesthetic sense, or can they directly influence the course of this conversation? If artists are activists, instead of merely aestheticists, they become more central to the outcome of this debate.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
As curator-in-residence at Surplus, the EIS collective will take the opportunity to engage the local community with the work of EIS artists and their concerns with land use, threatened wild places, Pacific Northwest aesthetics, and Oregon public land use practices. EIS will hold events throughout the course of the exhibit that engage the public. These events will include readings of EIS' writers' work, performances, and discussions.
EIS' partnership with Surplus Space presents an exciting opportunity to share our work in a space that is activated and sustained by community, and the EIS project similarly depends on community engagement. To be a good neighbor is to be aware of one’s place in the world. A good neighbor has an awareness and respect to the shared spaces they inhabit. Such as, their immediate surroundings where they live, the larger area that exists near by, and radiating outward. Being a good neighbor is a willingness to knowing where you live, its history, the people, and their stories. EIS acts as a good neighbor by providing space to make our community more aware of the threats to the surrounding wild places in their larger neighborhood, such as the Mt. Hood National Forest.
EIS exhibit and events at Surplus will feature work from artists Danielle Ross, Heather Treadway, Sidony O’Neal, Jodi Darby, Jodie Cavalier, Daniela Molnar, Alison Clarys, and project directors Lisa Schonberg, Leif J Lee, and Amy Wheeler Harwood.
EIS' partnership with Surplus Space presents an exciting opportunity to share our work in a space that is activated and sustained by community, and the EIS project similarly depends on community engagement. To be a good neighbor is to be aware of one’s place in the world. A good neighbor has an awareness and respect to the shared spaces they inhabit. Such as, their immediate surroundings where they live, the larger area that exists near by, and radiating outward. Being a good neighbor is a willingness to knowing where you live, its history, the people, and their stories. EIS acts as a good neighbor by providing space to make our community more aware of the threats to the surrounding wild places in their larger neighborhood, such as the Mt. Hood National Forest.
EIS exhibit and events at Surplus will feature work from artists Danielle Ross, Heather Treadway, Sidony O’Neal, Jodi Darby, Jodie Cavalier, Daniela Molnar, Alison Clarys, and project directors Lisa Schonberg, Leif J Lee, and Amy Wheeler Harwood.
Parlor
Money Tree and Give Guide
Leif J. Lee
T-shirts
Welcome Home, Sexy Beast
Amy Wheeler Harwood
In May 2015, a collared wolf, known as OR-25 sent a signal from a location on Mt.Hood National Forest. In the winter of 2014, a confirmed wolf footprint had been found near the White River. These are the only two signs of wolves in the forests of Mt. Hood since 1947 when the last wolf was shot in Oregon. The first returning pack traveled into northeastern Oregon in 2008 and have been making their way to the Cascades ever since.
Map of Mt. Hood National Forest
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Questions for the Community
Leif Lee
Collage
White box
No/Zones: Photographs Along Portland's Urban Growth Boundary
Jodi Darby
In 1977, Metro's predecessor, the Columbia Region Association of Governments, proposed an urban growth boundary (UGB) for the Portland region. Under Oregon law, each of the state's cities and metropolitan areas created a boundary around its perimeter - a line to control urban and suburban expansion onto farm and forestlands.
Oregon's UGB was not intended to be static. Since the 1980s, the Portland metropolitan area boundary has been expanded over three dozen times to accommodate housing, jobs, and industry.
This spring Darby traveled along the eastern edge of the boundary and took photographs of the area. She concentrated on the eastern margins of Gresham, Troutdale, Wood Village, Damascus, and the southern edge of Happy Valley. Darby also visited the areas around the Airstrip Timber Sale on Mt. Hood looking for other examples of human generated borders. She found small pockets of thriving forest ecosystem flanked by clear cut private land on one side and 2,000 acres of logged Forest Service land on the other.
These images are of the liminal spaces that exist at the intersection of conservation and development, natural processes, and synthetic systems of control.
Oregon's UGB was not intended to be static. Since the 1980s, the Portland metropolitan area boundary has been expanded over three dozen times to accommodate housing, jobs, and industry.
This spring Darby traveled along the eastern edge of the boundary and took photographs of the area. She concentrated on the eastern margins of Gresham, Troutdale, Wood Village, Damascus, and the southern edge of Happy Valley. Darby also visited the areas around the Airstrip Timber Sale on Mt. Hood looking for other examples of human generated borders. She found small pockets of thriving forest ecosystem flanked by clear cut private land on one side and 2,000 acres of logged Forest Service land on the other.
These images are of the liminal spaces that exist at the intersection of conservation and development, natural processes, and synthetic systems of control.
Zig Zag Burn I - V
Gary Wiseman
Handmade paint on paper
The pigment used in these drawings was hand crafted with charcoal collected from burnt snags (dead or dying standing trees) in the Mount Hood National Forest Zig Zag watershed near Rhododendron, OR.
Timber Sales
Leif J. Lee
Colored pencil drawings
Kitchen
Five Sky(s) (Mt Hood)
Jodie Cavalier
Video
Airstrip
Amy Wheeler Harwood
Photo
Hallway
Fieldguided
Lisa Schonberg
Black box
Resilience
Alison Clarys, Sam Pirnak, Danielle Ross, and Lisa Schonberg
Video installation
Resilience is an exploration of two complex systems that have personal relevance to the artists: the infrastructure of the Portland music scene and the management of ecosystems of power are effecting these systems. We have represented these ideas in dance, music, video, and text. This is a work in progress.
Resilience aims to create a platform for healthy discourse surrounding these issues. As artists and environmentalists, we feel we have a personal responsibility to consider the effects of these systems, our role in them, and how they are affecting the integrity the music scene and ecosystems on Mt Hood. We focussed on two locations: Airstrip Timber Sale, in the Clackamas Watershed, and the Know and adjacent development on NE Alberta Street.
Resilience aims to create a platform for healthy discourse surrounding these issues. As artists and environmentalists, we feel we have a personal responsibility to consider the effects of these systems, our role in them, and how they are affecting the integrity the music scene and ecosystems on Mt Hood. We focussed on two locations: Airstrip Timber Sale, in the Clackamas Watershed, and the Know and adjacent development on NE Alberta Street.
Outside
ATV
Heather Treadway
Sound engineering by Katy Davidson
Audio Installation
EIS ATV perfomance from Surplus Space on Vimeo.
Opening Night
ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES
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JODI DARBY
www.jodidarby.com Jodi Darby is a media educator and producer specializing in experimental documentary video and photography. Her work reflects an interest in re-purposing history, mapping the changing north American landscape and finding beauty in that which has been discarded and abandoned. Her projects focus on the stories of individuals and groups who are struggling to maintain their traditional ways of life and live with dignity in the United States. She has collaborated with members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the Dine'h Nation and the American Indian Movement. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. For this project I'm interested in walking and photographing Portland's Urban Growth Boundary (EGB). The ever-changing boundary creates an invisible line that separates urban development from designated natural areas. I'm interested in photographing the liminal places at the boundary's edge- the newly created, ambiguous and disorienting land that exists at the intersection of conservation and development. |
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HEATHER TREADWAY
www.heathertreadway.com Heather Treadway is a fashion designer, musician and dancer living in Portland Oregon. She studied traditional West African and Caribbean music at the Evergreen State College. She has performed in the bands Explode Into Colors and Secret Drum Band, and HITS. Her love of music is matched by her obsession with textile, costume and fashion design. Treadway has been producing handmade sportswear since 2002, as well as designing costumes and wardrobing for television, dance companies, individual dancers and musicians. Her clients have included Portlandia, Big Freedia, The Northwest Dance Project, Mirah and Kimya Dawson. |
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JODIE CAVALIER
http://www.jodiecavalier.com/ Jodie Cavalier is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in video, sculpture, research, collaboration, and curation. Her work engages site and objects to recontextualize images typically seen within the everyday and to draw attention to experiences both in and out of the gallery. Jodie received an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art and a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2011 she was selected by the Regional Arts & Culture Council to install a public work in the Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon. Most recently she was a resident at the Center for Land Use Interpretation Residency Program in Wendover, Utah making work and investigating questions of how images, objects, and histories in landscapes affect and influence our behavior and movement in them. She has exhibited work at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, CoCA in Seattle, EXO Project Space in Chicago, and Washington State University in Vancouver. |
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LISA SCHONBERG
www.lisaschonberg.com Lisa Schonberg is a musician, artist and natural historian whose work explores questions around environment, ecology and sound through writing, percussion, field recording, and collaboration. She earned her Masters in Environmental Studies at the Evergreen State College, with a focus on conservation biology and tropical entomology. She currently performs in HITS, STLS, Newman/Schonberg/Reyna Group and solo, and composes for her percussion ensemble Secret Drum Band. Lisa is the author of The DIY Guide to Drums, The Hylaeus Project, and Fieldguided, a series of books on insects and their habitats. She is a regular contributor to Tom Tom Magazine and is the magazine's Northwest Correspondent. Her past bands include Explode into Colors and Kickball, and she has performed or otherwise collaborated with DUBAIS, Thao With The Get Down Stay Down, Peter Broderick & Gabriel Saloman, Mirah, Tara Jane Oneil, Tuneyards, The Need, Cloud Eye Control, and Janet Pants. She has performed at MOMA PS1, the Centre Pompidou, High Desert Test Sites, The Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and The Time-Based Arts Festival. Her work has been supported by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Regional Arts and Culture Council, and The Oregon Arts Commission. Lisa lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches private drum lessons at Revival Drum Shop. |
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LEIF J LEE
http://leifjlee.tumblr.com/ Leif J. Lee is a queer feminist artist born in the Pacific Norhtwest and is currently based out of Portland OR. She attended the Evergreen State College where she received her BA in Art and the Pacific Northwest College of Art where she received her MFA in 2014. PNCA is where she focused on the contemporary landscape image through the lens of queer subculture. She is currently a co-collaborator on a Precipice Funded project Environmental Impact Statement, is an editorial correspondent for the web based magazine Central, local curator and member of the art band duo ‘The Outfits’. Her studio practice includes creating hand drawn patterns in ink on fabrics that are hand dyed for custom clothing, soft sculpture and wall hangings. Her collaborative performances include both the 2013 &2014 TBA festivals, PICA’s Resource Room Residency performance in 2014, Zenna Zeeza’s ‘Soup and Tart’ 2015 event, and live digital drawing with ‘The Secret Drum Band’. She has shown her fabric paintings in several solo exhibitions in both WA and OR. She has also given lectures on queer theory as it relates to her visual work at PNCA, Surplus Space, and the Ford Building in Portland. |
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AMY WHEELER HARWOOD
https://walkietalkiefieldreports.wordpress.com/ Amy Harwood has been involved in forest conservation and public lands advocacy since 1998. She has been involved with the watchdog group for Mt. Hood National Forest Bark for over 12 years. She has led hundreds of hikes and backpacking trips, educating people on the threats that face our ancient forests. In addition, she has developed and led trainings for activists to learn how to engage in public lands decision-making and continues to help Bark's efforts to hold federal land agencies accountable to environmental laws. She is also the co-founder of Signal Fire, an organization committed to engaging artists in our remaining wild places through backcountry travel. She is a writer and collaborates on a small press out of Tucson. |
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DANIELLE ROSS
http://daniellerossdance.com/ Danielle Ross is a Portland-based choreographer. She received her BFA in Dance and Performance Studies from University of California, Berkeley, where she was the recipient of the Sara Huntsman Sturgess Memorial Prize for Outstanding Artistic Accomplishment in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. Since moving back to Portland, Ross has created her own dance and performance-based work. Most notably, she presented Make The Air Thick at Launch Pad Gallery in July, 2010 and Home/Body at Appendix Projects Space in December, 2010. Her work has been shown at the Richard Foreman Festival, No. Fest, and the 1Festival. In March, 2011, she curated the twelfth installment of Performance Works Northwest’s Alembic Series. Her work, To Remember Is To Jump Around There, was presented in January, 2012 at the Headwaters Theatre, and her collaboration with Composer Christi Denton, The Loveliest Landscape, was selected to be a part of Conduit Dance’s Dance+ Series in July, 2012. Ross has collaborated with Linda Austin and Zoe/Juniper in the Time Based Arts Festival. She is also one of the founding members of FRONT, a newspaper dedicated to contemporary dance and performance and on the board of the Creative Music Guild, a non-profit dedicated to experimental sound and performance. In Spring, 2013, Ross was selected as one of four Artists-in-Residence at Studio 2 in Portland. There, she began her latest work Togetherness, which is a collaboration with poet Stacey Tran. Along with Tran, she curates the series Pure Surface at Valentines. |
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ALISON CLARYS
Alison Clarys is a musician and artist with an interest in ecology and environmental issues. After spending several years as a worker in a wildlands fire crew in Montana, she moved to Portland, Oregon to pursue music. She performs as a multi-instrumentalist in the bands Tiburones and Secret Drum Band. |
BARK
