Landscape Architecture Master's Thesis - Revealing a Trashed Landscape by Alex Zatarain

REVEALING A TRASHED LANDSCAPE A L E X A N D E R E . B . Z ATA R A I N 1

REVEALING A TRASHED LANDSCAPE: E X P L O R I N G T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L R E A L I T Y A N D C U LT U R A L R E P R E S E N T A T I O N O F A P O S T- I N D U S T R I A L S I T E

A L E X A N D E R E . B . Z ATA R A I N

Submitted in Partial Fullfillment for the Degree Master of Landscape Architecture Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon

ABSTRACT

The visualization of landscape â&#x20AC;&#x201C; how landscapes are seen, imagined, and drawn â&#x20AC;&#x201C; underlies all of design and planning. This project questions the assumptions and limitations of the visualization and representational modes of idealized landscape images that designers have inherited. These limitations are particularly apparent when dealing with post-industrial sites and their recuperation. Using the Whilamut Natural Area, formerly the Day Island Landfill, as a case study, this project examines how the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School color the way Americans visualize and value nature and wilderness. The Arcadian vision of the Hudson River School diminishes our appreciation of non-Arcadian landscapes and continues to shape and limit the design and restoration of post-industrial sites. Places like these call for representations and interpretations that are more complex and multivalent in the ways they represent the landscapes in which they are situated. This project tests emerging methods of landscape site analysis and understanding, using photography, collage, and photomontage to probe and explore the Whilamut Natural Areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural and biophysical underpinnings. In addition to traditional landscape analysis, artistic practice can lead to a successively richer ability to engage and think about post-industrial sites, informing richer, more refined landscape designs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

THE WHILAMUT NATURAL AREA

CATALOGUE

CREATIVE PRACTICE

114

DISCUSSION

120

REFERENCES

I N T RO D U C T I O N

As landscape architects, we construct nature. Through our designs, and a mediation of cultural and biological systems, we influence and direct people’s everyday experience of the world. We choose what is emphasized, what is buried, and what is revealed. How can we use this position of aesthetic influence to enhance the meaning and significance of post-industrial sites? Underlying this project is the assertion that landscape has the capacity to critically engage with the society in which it functions, that landscape architecture is not simply a reflection of the dominant culture but can be a more active instrument in the shaping of modern society. With their profane mix of nature and culture, post-industrial sites provide a perfect opportunity for design to become an active instrument. Yet many landscape designs today miss this opportunity. I argue that the narratives and aesthetics of the 19th century Hudson River School paintings continue to have a tenacious hold on the way Americans view and construct landscapes over a century later. The Hudson River School’s enduring influence can be seen in a diverse amount of media: from nature calendars, and beer advertisements, to the shaping of the landscape itself. Their romantic vision of wilderness has come to define the meaning of America. Today, however, “pure” wilderness has and continues to recede, overtaken by cities and factories that have subsequently fallen into disuse and neglect. These former industrial sites form a growing part of the human environment and often become sites for the imposition rather than the generation of meaning. Landscape Architecture’s role is often touted to be one of “healing the earth.” This is true and needs to be done, but oftentimes the lumpy scar tissue that is a result of this healing is hidden beneath the cosmetics of pastoral design and restoration that attempts a return to some idyllic wilderness or prior state. The use of the pastoral in design is not bad in all situations, and of 10

course we want unsightly elements be screened and hidden from view. But in the current era of global climate change, we can ill afford to conceal the unpleasant environmental truths contained in post-industrial sites. Post-Industrial sites require a new aesthetic response, one that compels visitors to reflect upon these sites and, by extension, our relationship to industry and industrialism. Reminding us that we are part of the social and economic system that is responsible for the condition of such places. Landscape architecture possesses the ability to reinvent the relationship we have to the land. Many have already been exploring this. The work of landscape architects like Peter Latz and Julie Bargmann and artists like Robert Smithson deal directly with postindustrial sites. I have learned much from their work and have used their experience to reflect and expand on my own approach. Using the Whilamut Nature Area (formerly the Day Island landfill) in Eugene, Oregon as a case study, I created artworks in the mediums of photography, collage, and photomontage to explore the cultural underpinnings and contradictions of the Whilamut Natural Area and to ask the question: whose nature and what nature is being restored? If we seek to make a future in the image of an ideal past it is important to understand the particulars of that past. For this reason I will investigate the popular aesthetics of the Hudson River School, Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first â&#x20AC;&#x153;officialâ&#x20AC;? school of painting in order to examine the ideas embedded therein and get closer to what and whose nature we are trying to (re)create in the Whilamut Nature Area.

THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

ARCADIA FOUND: REVISUALIZING THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS The 19th century produced the largest profusion of landscape painting in the history of art (Crandell 142). From this creative proliferation emerged the United State’s first indigenous school of painting: the Hudson River School (metmuseum), so called because many of the artists lived in New York and found their favorite locale for painting in the nearby Catskill Mountains of the Hudson River Valley. Here “they sought to capture on canvas their preoccupation with nature and its invasion by civilization” (Merchant, 2007 p.77). The paintings of the Hudson River School enjoyed an immense popularity in their time, shaping the young United State’s conception of nature and nationhood (Crandell, 1993; Howett, 1997; Solnit, 2001). The Hudson River School along with transcendentalism was part of a shift from 18th century rationalism towards romanticism (Merchant, 2007). To the romantics nature evoked a spiritual truth. Thomas Cole, considered the Hudson River School’s founder, preached that scenes of pristine nature “affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator--they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things. ” To these artists, wild untouched nature was a visual trope for the sublime. Romantics suggested that lofty mountaintops, deep canyons, and towering waterfalls could bring one closer to God (Magoc, 2002). The 19th century sublime, largely interpreted through Edmund Burke’s definition, was associated with fear, gloom, and majesty, having to do with scale and size of such magnitude that it provoked in the viewer intimations of infinity and insignificance accompanied by terror, dread and an ineffable sense of nature’s, and therefore God’s power. 12

FIG. 1/ THOMAS COLE, THE CLOVE, 1827 OIL ON CANVAS 25 ¼ x 35 in

The Hudson River School sought to capture this wild sublimity through composing landscapes filled with chaotic forests of gnarled, twisted trees, jagged peaks of impossible verticality, and dark threatening clouds (fig.1). They also deftly used light to heighten the drama of a scene, “their dark landscapes of the wild were backlit by brilliant skies of divine luminescence (Merchant, 2007).” Their compositions depicted “a New World wilderness in which man, minuscule as he was beside the vastness of creation, nevertheless retained that divine spark that completed the circle of harmony” (Howat 1972, p. 23). The Hudson River painter’s rough rocks and stormy skies followed in the style of 17th century landscape painter Salvator Rosa, whose works were often associated with the sublime (fig. 2) (Brosnan, 2011; Novak, 2007). However the Hudson River School did not depend solely on Salvator Rosa for their artistic inspiration. They deftly combined the mood of Rosa with the other pictorial hero of the moment, Claude Lorrain (Novak, 2007). The French painter’s pastoral is in stark contrast to Rosa’s sublimity. His bucolic landscapes of perfect harmony were easily recognized by the trees and vegetation framing the lateral edges of the composition, as well as the dark foreground coulisse, the middle ground scoop of water, and the distant mountains – a set of motifs that could be endlessly rearranged to compose an ideal view. (fig.3) Claude’s romanticized landscapes oftentimes explicitly referenced Virgil’s pastoral. Virgil’s poems, the Eclogues, created a symbolic landscape, a delicate blend of myth and reality that was a celebration of the simple over the complex and the rural over the urban. Another pastoral poet, Sir Philip Sidney, summed up the setting of the pastoral as “a civil wilderness, and a companionable solitude,” a paradoxical ideal that was to be particularly relevant to the American experience (Marx, 1964; Solnit, 2001).

Claude had for Americans and Europeans the “feeling and discernment of a great artist,”so it is not surprising that his compositional motifs became major artistic convention (Crandell, 1993; Novak, 2007). “On it [the landscape] could be loaded all the connotations of ambition, of competition with European culture, that American artists not so secretly harbored” (Novak, 2007 p.196) The citizens of the United States had labored under a mighty inferiority complex when they looked back across the Atlantic (Solnit, 2001). Europe’s landscape possessed great meaning due to its long history, clearly legible in its antique ruins and impressive monuments. The American landscape lacked all of this; there was no ancient Parthenon or soaring cathedrals, only illegible dark forests and wilderness. To early European settlers, the wilderness was a foreboding savage place, devoid of the taming mechanisms of civilization,

FIG. 2 / SALVATOR ROSA, ROCKY LANDSCAPE WITH A HUNTSMAN AND WARRIORS, 1670 OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

FIG. 3 / CLAUDE LORRAIN, PASTORAL LANDSACPE, 1648 OIL ON CANVAS 15.5 × 21 in

a barrier to movement and progress (Crandell, 1993; Shepard, 1967). But as romanticist traditions took hold in Europe they helped promote an enthusiasm for the recent discovery of the New World. This new land, rather than conjure up images of difficulty and wasteland as it had in the past, now evoked an earthly paradise, complete with material riches, beneficent soils and climate, and scenic beauty (Anzai, 2005). The popular paintings of the Hudson River School echoed and amplified this ethos, providing a new aesthetic lens through which Americans could view their nation’s bountiful wilderness. By framing nature in the traditional pictorial conventions of European landscape painting, particularly those of Claude, the artists ushered in a distinctly American strain of Romanticism that transformed the nation’s wilderness from a bane and hindrance into a source of national pride (Howett 1997). The New World, with its impressive mountaintops and immense primeval forests could now rival the cultural antiquity of Europe with its natural history (Crandell, 1993, p.143). In the Crayon, painter Asher Durand extolled the virtues of nature while condemning the pernicious effect of human culture, pronouncing that America’s “untrodden wilds, yet spared from the pollutions of civilization, afford a guarantee for a reputation of originality that you may elsewhere long seek and not find” (Durand, 1855). From this new nature aesthetic, a new Yankee credo arose, in which the monuments and landmarks of Europe were now evidence that the Old World was weary, used up, soiled (Novak, 2007; Solnit, 2001). In contrast, the supposed newness of America demonstrated that it was fresh, young, and pure. The United States was a child of promise, its future laid out before it, “a tabula rasa on which a glorious history would be inscribed” (Solnit, 2001, p.17). Thomas Cole expounds on this notion, “I will now venture a few remarks on what has 16

been considered a grand defect in American scenery, the want of associations such as arise amid the scenes of the old world…But American scenes are not so much of the past as of the present and future. And in looking over the yet uncultivated scene, the mind’s eye may see far into futurity.” (Cole, 1836) The Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau joined Cole in extolling America’s newness: “As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country”(Thoreau, 1862). For Thoreau Adam was the key figure in the new American credo, represented now by the pioneer, and the past a burden to be dumped on the road leading West (Solnit, 2001, p.17). Thoreau goes as far as to describe the Atlantic as the Lethe, the mythical river of forgetfulness, “…in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget our Old World and its institutions.” The Hudson River School’s landscape paintings celebrated this notion of America as the setting of a heroic new beginning, while depending on highly civilized and traditional artistic conventions to convey their vision (Crandell 1993). In Pictorializing Nature Gina Crandell describes how cultural conventions were and are critical in establishing our view of nature, “The very notion of a ‘new world’ obviously presupposed the presence of an ‘old world.’ This old world did the defining, and provided a way of seeing which was then superimposed on the vast terrain of the United States.” (Crandell, 1993 p.144) Why did Claudian conventions persist so stubbornly even when American artists wanted to create their own distinct art and national aesthetic? Barbara Novak explains, “They annexed a museum culture they could only experience as visitors. Thus the Claudian mode remained a vital force in America long after the so-called Classical tradition in European landscape had been modified. Also, the pastoral aspect of Claudian convention reinforced those myths of America as a new Eden that were 17

so important in the 19th century”(Novak, 2007 p.229-30). By adopting Claude, and thus Virgil, Cole and others infused the wilderness with a moral vision; on this “new” continent they were able to step backward into a landscape in which the change that soiled Europe had not yet occurred – infusing in America’s vast landscape an image of Arcadia, a return to origin. In his 1836 Essay on American Scenery, Cole describes the beauties of the American wilderness as a metaphoric Eden. “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly” (Cole, 1836). With the linking of God nature and nation, romanticism in America became a statement of nationhood defined by the founding myth of America as Eden (Willette, 2010). The apparent contradiction of using traditional aesthetics to celebrate their country’s newness allowed Americans to both celebrate the purity of their native land yet produce stable and reassuring paintings that minimized the rapid changes occurring in the American landscape (Crandell, 1993). Michael Heiman points out that the Hudson River School “often overlooked or screened out with vegetation the burnedover fields, stinking tanneries, polluted streams, clamorous sawmills, and other production intrusions” in their nature images. Heiman continues, “The popular acceptance of the Hudson River School as portraying a wilderness condition actually found in the Valley and in the adjoining Catskill Mountains was itself mistaken” (Heiman, 1989, p.194). In fact, during Coles’ very first trip up the Hudson in 1825, the river was already supporting one of the most crowded commercial routes in the nation and its thick hemlock forests had been chopped down and re-grown multiple times (Heiman, 1989). Tanning industries had concentrated in the Catskills due to its abundant supply of hemlock, whose bark 18

provided the tannins required for the tanning process (Merchant, 2007; Ostow, 2013). Between 1824 and 1850, the mountains above Cole’s studio supported the largest tanning industry in the nation (Heiman, 1989). The Hudson Valley’s mountainous terrain was also home to vigorous lumbering and mining activities: downriver from the village in which Cole worked was the nation’s leading quarrying and brick manufacturing centers, which supplied much of the materials used to pave and build New York City (Heiman, 1989).

FIG. 4 / THOMAS COLE SAVAGE STATE, 1836, OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

FIG. 5 / THOMAS COLE PASTORAL STATE, 1836 OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

To his credit, Cole was not oblivious to the desecration of his favorite sketching and painting areas. His paintings often included unsettling undertones of the encroaching urban and industrial menace (Cronon, 1992; Heiman, 1989; Merchant, 2007; Howat, 1972). Cole dealt with this most explicitly in his five panel series the Course of Empire. 19

This epic work traces a metaphorical civilization through eons of history from its rise to its fall. The first panel in the series is titled Savage State (fig. 4). In it, figures half naked and swathed in animal furs dash to and fro across a tumultuous landscape. Succeeding this savagery is the Pastoral State (fig. 5), in which the frenzied inhabitants of the previous panel have become contemplative shepherds, the ring of rude teepee-like structures is replaced by a circular stone monument and the troubled sea is smoothed out and serene. It is this rather than the next panel Consummation (fig. 6) that seems to represent Coleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideal, for in Consummation, all the landscape but for a mountaintop has been obscured by a resplendent version of ancient Rome. This leads to Destruction (fig. 7) where the decadent inhabitants of the previous scene lay waste to their city and each other. In the fifth panel

FIG. 6 / THOMAS COLE, CONSUMMATION, 1836, OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

FIG. 7 / THOMAS COLE DESTRUCTION, 1836 OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

Desolation (fig. 8) wilderness conditions have returned, now graced by a few ruins. These fragments of the fairytale city are the only remaining human presence, the previous inhabitants apparently successful in having extinguished themselves. Cole’s intent seems clear: to educate his countrymen on the importance of appreciating the landscape. Vitality, he implies, is sapped in proportion to a society’s diminishing appreciation and distance from the wilderness (Nash, 2014).

FIG. 8 / THOMAS COLE DESOLATION, 1836 OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 in

This veneration and celebration of the wilderness and “nature” in 19th century America coincided with the relentless exploitation of natural resources and the frenzied transformation of the landscape into real estate. (Crandell, 1993; Heiman, 1989; Solnit, 2001) In the same year Thomas Cole painted the Course of Empire he also proudly predicted a utopian future strikingly close to Europe’s: “Where the wolf roams, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise the temple and tower – mighty deeds shall be done in the now pathless wilderness; and poets yet unborn shall sanctify the soil” (Cole, 1836). Cole could not completely affirm the American wilderness nor could he fully embrace American progress. Yielding to the harsh reality of growing industry Cole and others began to include more towns and railroads in their compositions, but often buried them in the background of bucolic scenes (Merchant, 21

2007). Cole sought a happy medium, an idealized combination of the wild and civilized, the sublime and beautiful (Nash, 1982). Cole’s seminal work, popularly known as The Oxbow (fig. 9) serves as an example: the painting reveals what Cole called “a union of the picturesque, the sublime, and the magnificent.” On the left, an untamed wilderness depicted by dark forest and dramatic clouds is juxtaposed with a pastoral landscape, where smoke from chimneys drifts lazily into the clear sky and cattle graze peacefully in the fields. However, even in this Arcadian vision Cole warns of the perils of progress: in the distant hills, bald scars from tree removal and the smoke from factories are visible. The stark contrast of the image emphasizes the future possibilities of America’s landscape and clearly speaks to the ideology of manifest destiny and westward expansion, which were much discussed issues at the time (Avery, 2000). Cultural geographer William Cronon suggests that the bend of the river, painted in the shape of a question mark is Cole’s way of asking, “what does the future hold?”(Cronon, 1992, p.40) Yet when the topical subjects of industrialism and certain special attitudes toward nature are stripped away the Hudson River School’s motifs, like many Romanticist conventions, prove to be a modern version of an ancient artistic and literary device (Marx, 1964). It is a variation upon the contrast between two worlds, one identified with rural peace and simplicity, the other with urbanity and sophistication, which has been used by artists and writers since antiquity. (Marx, 1964; Solnit, 2001). Leo Marx in his book The Machine in the Garden describes this as a “sentimental pastoralism” referring not so much to an aesthetic as to an ideal, “an expression less of thought than of feeling” (Marx, 1964,p.5). Marx explains the phenomenon: “What is attractive in pastoralism is the felicity represented by an image of a natural landscape, 22

FIG. 9 / THOMAS COLE, VIEW FROM MOUNT HOLYOKE, NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS, AFTER A THUNDERSTORM (THE OXBOW), 1836, OIL ON CANVAS 55.9 x 75.6 IN.

either unspoiled or, if cultivated, rural. Movement towards such a symbolic landscape also may be understood as movement away from an ‘artificial’ world [the city]…when this wish is unchecked, the result is a simple-minded wishfulness, a romantic perversion of thought and feeling” (Marx, 1964, p. 23). THE REMOVAL OF EVERYTHING UNCOUTH & DISCORDNANT “Sentimental pastoralism” manifested itself in a variety of ways: one example was the flight of wealthy 19th century Americans from New York City. Seeking to escape the heat, congestion, riots, and other discomforts of the city they retreated to the Hudson Highlands and the Catskills where luxurious mountaintop hotels were built to provide a comfortable experience for these would-be wilderness travelers. (Heiman, 1989). The celebrated Catskill Mountain House, built in 1823, was one of the nation’s first major vacation resorts that was not associated with medicinal waters. Perched 2,250 feet above the Hudson Valley, wealthy guests could gaze across a rural landscape that when viewed from the right perspective might still give way to the more harmonious even sublime scenes made famous by Cole and his peers. “Clutching ubiquitous guidebooks, visitors were advised of exact times and positions when best to view God’s creation,” writes Michael Heiman, “so as to avoid the disagreeable facts of production owing to tanning, mining, logging, and subsistence farming”(Heiman, 1989, p.197). This recreational escape to the rural countryside gave rise to a new landowner in the Hudson Valley, less concerned with utilizing their property for rent or productive investment, than acquiring land for their own residence and leisure consumption (Heiman, 1989; Mercahnt, 2007). 24

Celebrated American landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing was closely identified with the design of the Hudson River estates. Downing prompted landowners to consider their land as a venue for artistic expression. In his book Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America, Downing introduced Americans to the idea that house and grounds form a seamless composition, presenting a picture of beauty, explaining that landscape gardening “is in short the Beautiful, embodied in a home scene. And we attain it by removal or concealment of everything uncouth and discordant, and by the introduction of forms pleasing in their expression, their outlines, and fitness for the abode of man” (Downing, 1841). Thus Downing acknowledges the artifice and abstraction of his work. His designs were not meant to be an experience of “real nature” but idealized landscapes in the tradition of Rosa, Claude, and the Hudson River School. (Howett, 1997) By removing everything “uncouth and discordant” Downing’s designs deposited the idyllic portrayal of a place removed from the city and civilization, onto the physical landscape itself. Downing was also the first to propose the concept of a suburb, or planned community where wealthy citizens, after laboring all day could retire amongst a cultivated park-like nature (Heiman, 1989). Fredrick Law Olmsted, the founder of landscape architecture in the United States, was adamant that poor people, unable to afford vacations in the mountains, should have access to urban parks so they could exercise their “intellectual and moral forces.” Olmsted’s 1866 design for New York City’s Central Park reflected this vision by drafting a design of wooded hills, lakes, and undulating pathways (Merchant, 2007). In conceiving Central Park, Olmsted stated, 25

“It should be given such character as while affording contrast and variety of scene, would as much as possible be confluent to the same end, namely, the constant suggestion to the imagination of an unlimited range of rural conditions… Considering that large classes of rural objects and many types of natural scenery are not practicable to be introduced on the site of a park, - mountain, ocean, desert, and prairie scenery for example, - it will be found that the most valuable form that could have been prescribed is that which may be distinguished from all others as the pastoral” (Olmsted, 1973, p.46). There is no better example of the influence of the scenic habits we have examined (from Virgil to the work of the Hudson River School) than the development of the public park designed to embody a pastoral, rural ideal in the midst of the city (Crandell, 1993). Central Park and its variation across the country tried to fulfill the dream of American pastoralism by combining the solitary wilderness experience, so important to the 19th century, with the pictorial conventions of Europe. However it is in suburbia that America’s confidence in pastoralism reached its full potential. “Here, individuals can purchase their own piece of the pastoral dream without becoming shepherds themselves or abandoning entirely the benefits of the city. (Crandell, 1993, p.156)” Screening neighboring households with generous plantings reflects the same tendency exhibited by the Hudson River School of screening out those industrial elements that did not conform with the ideal of Marx’s “sentimental pastoralism”. This resistance to change is still apparent in contemporary pastoral designs that aim to screen out and disguise rather than 26

FIG. 10 / GEORGE INNESS, THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY, 1855, OIL ON CANVAS 33.8 in × 50.2 IN.

honestly confront today’s technological intrusions (e.g. cars, cell phone towers). The paintings of the Hudson River school comfortably fit into Marx’s “sentimental pastoralism.” However, George Inness, a member of the Hudson School, turned this “simpleminded wishfulness” on its head with his masterpiece The Lackawanna Valley (fig.10). The composition of Iness’ painting, from the figure reclining in the foreground (symbolizing the pastoral mode) to the elegant lacy trees placed near the edge of the frame, strictly adheres to the dictates of Claudian convention. However, Inness catapults his image into modernity by having the locomotive rush headlong out of the background into the stump filled foreground. This single move “aptly embodies the moment of juncture between nature and civilization.” (Novak, 2007 p.147) In doing this, Inness seamlessly weaves technological artifacts with the rest of the landscape, directly addressing one of the most pressing issues of his day. Curator Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., who has written at length on The Lackawanna Valley, writes Inness’ feelings “are directly opposed to one of the central concerns of the Hudson River School - the pictorial hymning of America’s purity and power through wilderness landscape.” (Cikovsky, 1970) Inness painted The Lackawanna Valley within a few years of the first use of the term landscape architecture. Gina Crandell explains, “this small historical coincidence states much: landscape architecture is a profession inextricably linked to compositional conventions that make pastoral and even wild landscapes scenic” (Crandell, 1993 p.154). Inness has illustrated that the landscape must allow contemporary culture to intrude upon its conventions, to provide a counterforce to the idyllic vision of sentimental American pastoralism (Marx, 1964). Acknowledging the less than ideal aspects of the present is no easy task. 28

The images of the Hudson River School have framed American expectations of nature. These expectations are not necessarily wrong, but the Acadian vision of landscape endowed by Hudson River School and romanticism struggles with more complicated places. There is no longer any room for westward expansion, no “virgin territory” left to conquer or praise. As wilderness and rural land continues to recede and cities continue to grow former industrial sites—played-out mines and quarries, shuttered factories, abandoned landfills—form a growing part of our environment (Maskit, 2007). These derelict landscapes are fast becoming the new standard of open space, especially in urban situations. The Whilamut Natural Area part of Alton Baker Park in Eugene, Oregon serves as an ideal example.

THE WHILAMUT N AT U R A L A R E A

Alton Baker Park is Eugene’s largest developed park. It is divided into two main areas, the more developed West Alton Baker and the Whilamut Natural Area, which encompasses the eastern 237 acres of the park (Eugene-gov.org). This project’s study area lies in the center of the Whilamut Natural Area. Formerly a source of gravel extraction and landfill the future Whilamut Natural Area sat abandoned for many years until it was capped and transformed into a public park. Yet nothing in the park references its industrial history. Using the broad brush of sentimental pastoralism the site’s distasteful past has been painted over and obsured. HISTORY OF THE WHILAMUT NATURAL AREA The original inhabitants of the Willamette Valley were the Kalapuya Indians who inhabited the area for an undetermined amount of time before the arrival of white settlers. The Kalapuya were hunter-gatherers entirely dependent on the landscape for food, clothing, and shelter. Hunting, fishing, and gathering took place through out the lower Willamette Valley. What is now Alton Baker Park was well within the range area of the Kalapuya, its proximity to the Willamette River would have made it ideal for fishing and gathering (EABP plan 1995). Seasonally, the Kalapuya burned the valley floor to control vegetation, facilitate grazing, and create hunting grounds. Upon arrival of Euro-American settlers in the 1840’s these practices were reduced and stopped as Kalpuya lands were divided, sectioned and settled. (EABP plan 1995) The wonderfully fertile Willamette Valley, the “Garden of Oregon”, lured settlers to migrate to the Oregon territory. Upon arrival they found rainfall was ample, timber readily available, 32

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FIG. 11 / MAP ALTON BAKER PARK

EASTGATE WOODL ANDS

and staple crops thrived in the rich valley soil. The Willamette River proved the main source of access until the railroads reached the area in 1871. Early settlers divided the land and shaped their claims so as to maximize advantages in relation to terrain, water, soil types and vegetation. The United States Donation Land Claim Act of 1830 provided 320 free acres of land to single men and 640 acres to married couples, providing further incentive to settle the Willamette Valley with its fertile river-bottom land ideal for agriculture. After the arrival of Euro-Americans, Alton Baker Park was used mostly for agrarian purposes. Robert Campbell, John Day, Joseph Haden, and Mahlon Harlow were the principle donation land claim holders of the riverfront property that would later become Alton Baker Park. The average size of each claim was 320 acres extending from the river in rectangular bands. By 1941 all the original land claims were subdivided into smaller parcels. Prior to the flood control programs and construction of dams in the 1930’s, the Willamette River regularly flooded. Because of its close proximity to the river, the land that would become Alton Baker Park was subject to seasonal flooding. By the late 19th century, settlers had cleared the interior of the land for agricultural use but maintained the trees and vegetation along the river’s edge. The eastern portion of the area was used primarily for pastureland and grazing. While the North bank of the river was gradually transformed into a pastoral landscape, the south bank became the center of the burgeoning city’s industry. Urban growth and highway development in the Eugene area created an increased demand for sand and gravel. Gravel mining began in the 1930’s and in the mid-1940’s mining operations spread into the pastoral landscape along the north bank of the river.

In order to facilitate the construction of I-5 as part of Eisenhowerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interstate system, 70 acres of the current Whilamut Natural Area was acquired by the State Highway Department as a source for gravel extraction. The area had largely been de-vegetated when it was purchased by Lane County in 1962 (Finney, 1992). Fig. 12 shows the extent of the gravel mining. In 1963, Lane County purchased the site, and in August, 1963, the mining pits were first filled with the solid waste material and thus became Lane Countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day Island Landfill (fig. 13). From 1964 to 1970 waste was dumped in the southwestern portion of the site. In 1970, landfill activities spread eastward and trash was dumped in the southeastern portion of the site for the next two years. By 1971 a total of 1.4 million cubic yards of waste was being carried to the site each year (Finney, 1992). When the landfill was closed in 1974, garbage covered 18 acres

FIG. 12 / DAY ISLAND LANDFILL, VEGETATION COVER, 1961

FIG. 13 / DAY ISLAND LANDFILL, FILL HISTORY, 1976

of the site in a layer from two to 30 feet deep. 55% of the trash delivered was from residential sources, 20% was generated by industry, 17% from commercial, and 8% by recreation lands, demolition, and city service projects. Fig. 13 shows the extent of the areas filled and the dates they were filled (Finney, 1992). The boat basin was created during the excavation of material for the final capping of the landfill. The site was capped with approximately two feet of soil, although some areas received as little as six inches. The thin soil cap combined with release of methane gas from the decomposing garbage largely prevents the growth of trees over the former landfill (Eugene City Council, 1996). Drawings of the landfill prepared for a Lane County pollution study in 1973 show an area in the southwest, designated as the chemical disposal pit, that contains several types of toxic wastes from unidentified sources (Lane Council of Governments, 1975). The project also documented the movement of leachates, or water-borne pollutants, from the landfill into the Willamette River. The Day Island landfill was constructed before the current solid waste regulations were developed, and it lacks a collection system or barrier to capture leachates (Finney, 1992). A DEQ study performed in 1992 found that the threat level to the environment and public was not great enough to warrant allocation of funds to commence additional investigation or cleanup (Wilamalane Parks & Rec., 1993) After the site was capped, walking and running trails were developed and considerable debate arose in the community about the best use of the land, with some advocating for a golf course and others preferring to maintain its recreational use (Finney, 1992). In 1992 a citizen initiative entitled the East Alton Baker Park Charter Amendment was passed prohibiting the development of a golf course in favor of recreational use. Lane County established a 15 36

member citizen planning committee to oversee the design of a plan for passive use of the park.

FIG. 14 / TALKING STONE, WHILAMUT NATURE AREA

In 2002, the area was renamed the Whilamut Natural Area. In conjunction with this new identity, 11 basalt boulders called “Talking Stones” were installed through out Alton Baker Park, four of them in the study area of this project, each engraved with a Kalapuya word and its English translation. “Whilamut,” for example, translates to “where the river ripples and runs fast.” There is no mention of the garbage juice that is leaking into the river just below it. (RE)CREATING NATURE: PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION In a society where the notions of nature and culture are situated at opposite ends of a spectrum the Whilamut Natural Area stands out as a peculiar place (Melnick 1996). Its past as a dumping ground for trash, and its future as a designated “nature area” as well as its physical attributes and location situate it squarely between the two ends of the nature - culture spectrum. “Long familiarity with the Cartesian type of dualism tends to make us comfortable at the extremes of ideas. We are less comfortable, however, in the middle of the 37

spectrum” (Melnick 1996 p. 43). This dualism has been reinforced by hundreds of years of landscape images. As discussed in the previous chapter these artistic styles have made their way into built landscapes. Calling this place a natural area is ambiguous at best. At worst it places the area in a mythic past rather than the vivid present and blurs the boundaries between what is perceived as “nature” and what is designed. In effect this creates a virtual reality in which humans’ role in shaping the site’s aesthetic is erased, reinforcing the human-nature divide, and the longstanding sentimentality of nature as a place untouched by humans. The naming of the nature area is itself an attempt to restore a supposedly lost relationship. Whilamut is the old kalapooia spelling of Willamette and like the Hudson River School’s images supports an Arcadian narrative of “returning to nature”. The fairy tale is further reinforced by the current artistic representation of the site. The Whilamut Natural Area’s current restoration makes use of idealized landscape ideas presented by the Hudson River School without dealing with the environmental issues the artists raised. Several paintings of the Hudson River School dealt with the role technology and industry had on the American wilderness, but there is no overt evidence of human intervention in the Whilamut Nature Area’s new design and it seems content to position itself in the place the Hudson River School most comfortably occupied, the cusp between the wild and the pastoral, the sublime and the picturesque. The park employs Native Americans as an aesthetic device in the same fashion as the Hudson River paintings. To the Hudson River School artists Native Americans, like the boulders and 38

trees, were parts of “nature” immune from the ravages of civilization (Novak, 2007). Whether represented by talking stones, or painted into the foreground, Native Americans put us in the right, fantastic, romantic fame of mind, projecting us into the past putting distance between nature and contemporary culture, and creating an ideal separate natural realm that is protected from outside cultural influence (Potteiger and Purinton, 1998). The Hudson River School’s romantic images color and impoverish our perception of nonArcadian landscapes, specifically post-industrial sites. We need a more complex, and nuanced way of understanding, designing, and explaining these post-industrial places than the pastoral ideal or the static, romanticized landscape image can provide. The artworks presented in the following chapter are an attempt to see around and behind, the singular romanticized landscape image and uncover our “landscape of communal imagination,” which is to say, the ideals and beliefs at the root of our understanding of landscapes.

C ATA L O G U E

Untitled no.1 digital print

Untitled no. 2 digital print

Untitled no. 3 digital print

Untitled no. 4 digital print

Untitled no. 5 digital print

Untitled no. 6 digital print

Untitled no. 7 digital print

Untitled photomontage

Untitled collage

Remix: Constructing an Ideal collage

Remix: Prime Real Estate collage

Remix:View from Mount Holyoke, Eugene, Oregon after a Thunderstorm (Server Farms) collage

Trashed Landscape no. 1 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 2 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 3 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 4 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 5 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 6 photomontage

Trashed Landscape no. 7 photomontage

Second Nature no. 1 digital print

Second Nature no. 2 digital print

Second Nature no. 3 digital print

Second Nature no. 4 digital print

Second Nature no. 5 digital print

C R E AT I V E P R AC T I C E

The artwork presented here, in addition to exploring the landscape of the Whilamut Natural Area, investigates the ideals and beliefs at the root of our understanding of landscapes. My artwork examines the foundations of this understanding through five photographic and collage series that each explore a particular idea or inquiry. The first series, Pastoral Pastiche, attempts to ironically use the idealized aesthetic techniques of the Hudson River School in representing the Whilamut Natural Area. The Collage and Trashed Landscape series use collage and photomontage to reveal what is hidden. Remix uses juxtaposition and contrast to create new meanings and Second Nature explores the authenticity of landscape images themselves and questions their limits in our understanding of the landscape. Only selected images from each series will be presented in this section, each series can be viewed in its entirety in the catalogue. PASTORAL PASTICHE The choice of photography was partly a pragmatic one; photography is quicker than drawing or painting. This is not to say that it requires less skill than the former, as I discovered firsthand while trudging through the park with nary a usable photograph to show for it. But more importantly photography provides a sense of authenticity and is popularly considered a “reliable” representation of what the world is. Even in our contemporary, heady days of Photoshop and digital manipulation, the photograph still holds a place of authority. Susan Sontag explains the difference between painting and photography, “A photograph is not only an image, (like a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real, it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint of a death mask.” (Sontag, 1972) This supposed 92

FIG. 15 / UNTITLED NO. 1, DIGITAL PRINT

veracity makes photography a convincing medium for recording the “truth” of the Whilamut Natural Area. Because of this, “photographers, unlike painters and sculptors, need to engage with the world out there, have a relationship with their subject matter that entails greater negotiation with and responsibility to that which they represent,” (Solnit, 2001, p.59). In this spirit, I approached East Alton Baker Park with a camera in hand, and like the Hudson River painters did in the Hudson Valley, I spent time walking and wandering through the grounds of the park, recording its vistas and hidden scene. The result of my initial amblings is a series of photographs that capture the contemporary reality of the Whilamut Natural Area through the idealized lens of the Hudson River School (cat. 1-7). My aim in using the aesthetic techniques of the Hudson River artists was to reveal the irony and absurdity of overlaying an idealized nature on top of a landfill, as well as expose the ambiguity of the place as a middle ground between nature and culture. In order to expose the irony and absurdity of using these techniques on a former landfill, I introduced construction ephemera and other human elements to the Claudian motif in Untitled no. 1 (), which otherwise follows the romantic dictates of Claudian convention: mountains hovering in the distance over a foreground coulisse, trees framing the edge of the image, and an overall slightly-raised, and subsequently detached perspective. In using the idealizing techniques of Claude and the Hudson River artists, however, the human intervention becomes idealized and nostalgic as well. In Untitled no. 3 (fig. 16), the yellow backhoe and construction signs are diminutive and toy-like, and rather than being absurd or ironic, the construction equipment became secondary to the landscape as a whole.

FIG. 16 / UNTITLED NO. 3, DIGITAL PRINT

In an attempt to counter this, I began to play with scale of the human elements presented. Taking a cue from Inness’ Lackawanna Valley (Fig. 10), in which the train forces itself out of the background, I chose to forgo subtlety and place the human element into the foreground. In Untitled no. 5 (fig. 17), a utility box and natural gas line are set against a pastoral field and dramatic sky. When I showed the photograph to a peer they exclaimed, “That’s beautiful!” and proceeded to tell how interesting it was that the utility box is almost unnoticeable, as it was subsumed into the beauty of the scene. This approach obviously was not working. In contemporary society the idealized landscapes of the Hudson River school and idealized landscape imagery are so pervasive, from Ansel Adams, to nature calendars, to beer advertisements, that these images are not at all unusual. In addition to the photographic image being primarily visual, is quiet and meditative. With our view constrained by the photograph’s frame it is easy to idealize something that in our actual experience being in the place would be considered an eyesore. When photographing the utility box, directly behind me was the Interstate, the deafening roar and the smell of the traffic on I-5 is not represented in the photograph at all. My aim to deconstruct the idealized view was itself overpowered by the idealizing techniques of Claudian convention and the Hudson River School. On the whole the images were too subtle even when I attempted to be more obvious and direct (fog. 17). How could I photograph this former landfill without idealizing the place? How could I expose its precarious position between nature and culture?

FIG. 17 / UNTITLED NO. 5, DIGITAL PRINT

COLLAGE I again set out for the edge of the site, its ecotone, in order to highlight this precariousness. Perhaps here I could document its “living pulse”. At the periphery of the study area, in the shadow of the Interstate, I snapped two photos each facing in opposite directions one into the park and the other out towards the park’s boundary. In the first image a charming creek flanked on either side by thick vegetation gently curves through rolling green fields (fig. 18). In the second a channelized creek languidly moves beneath the rumbling traffic on the Interstate overpass. The concrete bank is strewn with bright orange construction equipment (fig. 19). These radically different scenes can be viewed while standing in the same spot and looking in opposite directions. Both of these landscapes are a human creation: a canoe race that flows through the park and under the interstate. By overlaying these scenes both views can be seen at once (fig. 21), interrupting the singular view instilled by landscape paintings, like those of the Hudson River School and pictorial design techniques pioneered by the 18th century landscape designers, such as those of Humpry Repton. The designs of Repton began with a painted picture. In his Redbooks Repton illustrated his proposals for improving parks and country estates in a series of watercolors. These are fitted with a flap, which bore a picture of the existing site. When the flap is lifted the proposed alterations are revealed (fig. 20). Repton’s designs masked any unpleasant realities and formed an aesthetic pictorialized view of the landscape. This pictorial approach that employs painterly conventions is still used by landscape architects today.

This image (fig. 21) is a response to designersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; use of a pictorial presentation that employs the familiar conventions of landscape painting. My intent was to metaphorically render Reptonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flap transparent revealing both the idealized landscape modifications and the existing landscape that would be rendered invisible by the new design, showing both the past and future in a single frame. The result was an unexpected and intriguing image; the concrete dissolves into water, the swirling clouds materialize into a freeway overpass, and the placid surface of the creek is rent by small ghostly cascades and roiling bubbles.

FIG. 18 / CANOE RACE, ALTON BAKER PARK, LOOKING WEST

FIG. 19 / CANOE RACE, ALTON BAKER PARK, LOOKING EAST

Unlike the previous series of photos, this image cannot be apprehended at first glance. It requires the viewer to spend more time with it, the eye moves back and forth between the opposing views trying to decipher the image. Professor Holly Getch-Clarke writes, the 99

“repetitive, even irrational complexity of space demands a kind of immersion that references aspects of Baroque spatiality, the complexity of ruins, the texture of grottoes, the quality of terrifying beauty in what is uncontrollable or illogical. (Getch-Clarke, 2005, p.64)” The image is unsettling, yet beautiful precisely because it is illogical, the pictorial space has been torn asunder allowing the viewer to “forget the scenic surface of the image and think behind it, beneath it, around it,”(Corner, 1992 p.262) allowing repressed landscapes to emerge.

FIG. 20 / WENTWORTH YORKSHIRE, FROM HUMPRY REPTON’S REDBOOKS

The next image of the Whilamut Natural Area was literally torn asunder by cutting away portions of the photograph itself (fig. 23). What happens when something is literally taken away from the image? How does this change the meaning and power of the idealization of landscape? Cutting away from the photograph reveals the human hand in the creation 100

FIG. 21 / UNTITLED, PHOTOMONTAGE

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FIG. 22 / SOIL SOLARIZATION IN PROGRESS, EAST ALTON BAKER PARK

of the image, and by proxy the landscape. The white marks are borrowed from another image in which the ground is being solarized (fig. 22), a process that involves heating the soil by covering it with plastic in order to kill pests, weeds, and invasive plants (Stapleton, 2008). At the Whilamut Natural Area the plastic was staked down, the pattern these stakes created provided the inspiration for the cuts made into the photograph. The result is a series of incisions that mimic stakes, yet there is no plastic beneath them. The white marks are mysterious, their meaning is not evident. The viewers must make their own meaning. The ordered rows of cutouts are reminiscent of gravestones and the landscape in which they are situated, a flat grassy field, is suggestive of a graveyard. Mimicking the pattern of the stakes also implies a sense of time. The white cutouts can be read as the ghost-like remnants of the solarization, an echo of the past process that helped create the current landscape.

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FIG. 23 / UNTITLED, COLLAGE

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REMIX The next series borrows from contemporary music culture in that they “sample” and “remix” the paintings of the Hudson River School, that is their paintings are edited or completely recreated produce new meanings from the original painting (cat. 10-12). In Pastoral Remix: Constructing an Ideal (fig. 24) the construction elements from my first series of photographs are recycled (sampled) into a painting by Asher Durand (fig. 13) in a further attempt to disrupt and challenge the Hudson River School’s idealization of the landscape. The Hudson River’s paintings used to be considered accurate facsimiles of the American landscape however this has since been disproven (Hieman, 1989). Juxtaposing the construction ephemera with Asher Durand’s painting, Pastoral Landscape, reveals the artificiality of the image. The original painting itself was a human creation, not a real landscape but a depiction that reveals the concerns of the author. The painting, which is obviously not “real” but a depiction or representation, is seamlessly interweaven with a photograph, which is “real”, that is the photograph is considered to have more fidelity as a documentary medium than painting or drawing (Sontag, 1977). The addition of the construction equipment and the juxtaposition of photograph with painted image makes this artificiality even more explicit. The image has obviously been tampered with, both physically and metaphorically, and the construction equipment in the image implies that the bucolic landscape was itself tampered with or is about to be. The originality of the image is called into question and in turn so is the landscape represented in it. In the original Oxbow (fig. 9) Cole juxtaposes untamed wilderness and pastoral settlement 104

FIG. 24 / PASTORAL REMIX: CONSTRUCTING AN IDEAL, COLLAGE

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to emphasize the possibilities of the national landscape, pointing to the future prospects of the American nation. Oxbow Remix: View from Mount Holyoke, Eugene, Oregon after a Thunderstorm (Server Farms & Digital Clouds) (fig. 25) is a continuation of this theme only in place of the sunbathed pastoral scene is now a screenshot from Google Earth. Helpful labels situate the viewer disclosing that the landscape below is the city of Eugene and Alton Baker Park. Cole nestled in the middle ground vegetation has been catapulted through time and space, the passing thunderstorm is pushed aside revealing a future of server farms and data clouds that Cole could never have imagined. The lumpy low-resolution world of Google Earth stands in stark contrast to Colesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sumptuously painted hillside. The juxtaposition is a clash of aesthetic languages: the sensuous with the less involved, artistic/painterly space with digital space. Just as the Hudson River School was part of a shift in landscape understanding this artwork raises questions about how digital space is changing our relation to physical space and the landscape. Digital space gives us access to anything, anywhere. We are in continual proximity to our emails, photos, facebook and any other data swirling in the digital clouds that surround us. It means we can be in constant contact with other places regardless of our physical coordinates. Hence Mount Holyoke can be in Eugene, and rather than witness the colonization of the frontier by settlers, we are witness to the colonization of earth by digital culture.

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FIG. 25 / OXBOW REMIX:VIEW FROM MOUNT HOLYOKE, EUGENE, OREGON AFTER A THUNDERSTORM (SERVER FARMS & DIGITAL CLOUDS), COLLAGE

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TRASHED LANDSCAPE The genesis of the next series was with the discovery of a plastic shopping bag during one of my many visits to the site. Inspired by Robert Smithson’s Nonsite series, in which he collected and re-presented physical materials from postindustrial sites in the gallery environment, I picked up the crumpled and damp plastic bag and brought it home. Rather than display the bag itself in a gallery I photographed it, twisting and contorting it into various shapes (fig. 27-28). The unique forms the plastic achieved were sculptural and strangely beautiful. The posed and plastic bags, allowed one to see what might otherwise be termed as trash or an eyesore as something new and unexpected. However nothing in these images referenced the Wilmaut Nature Area or the Hudson River School’s idealized landscape imagery. In order to connect them back to the site I overlaid them on photographs of the Nature Area and paintings of the Hudson River School. The images were striking (cat. 13-21). The monstrous plastic bags, at times reminiscent of a strange undersea creature (fig. 29), or a frozen explosion (fig. 26) intrude into bucolic Hudson River School scenes and impose themselves on serene photographs of the Whilamut Natural Area, ballooning out of the furrows of the earth or swathing themselves around whole trees. The images’ power is derived from the meaning inherent in the bag itself. The plastic shopping bag is immediately recognizable, and I argue, a potent cultural symbol of consumer waste, pollution, and humanity’s destructive effect on the environment. James Corner describes the effect of collage, “the making of graphic and collage fields ‘irritate’ the mental faculties to such a degree that fountains of possibilities emerge before the percipient; one becomes so engaged with the wealth of images that new worlds are disclosed, as if in a dream or hallucination,” 108

FIG. 26 / TRASHED LANDSCAPE NO. 1, PHOTOMONTAGE

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(Corner, 1992, pg. 160). The conflicting metaphors of the plastic bag and the Arcadian nature scenes are diametrically opposed. The terrifying prospect of lasting harm to the environment (symbolized by the plastic bag) is juxtaposed with harmonious natural scenes revealing the hidden landfill beneath and exposing or contradictory attitude to the landscape: at once venerating and exploiting it.

FIG. 27 / POSED PLASTIC BAGS

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FIG. 28 / TRASHED LANDSCAPE NO. 5, PHOTOMONTAGE

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SECOND NATURE The aim of the this series was to eschew literal imitation of nature (cat. 22-26). As has been explored in previous chapters, images of “nature” profoundly shape the ways we perceive their real-life referents. Landscape images glorify, “the spectator by organizing everything in the picture in relation to the location of the eye of the beholder. It takes absolute control of the landscape and submits it as an object for view” (Crandell, 1993). The photograph more than painting has the ability to represent and destabilize the very truth and authority it denotes (Sontag, 1972). Photographs of the Whilamut Natural Area are placed in same approximate spot they were taken and re-photographed. The result is a picture in a picture that measures traditional pictorial conventions against the actual experience of the landscape itself. The subject of these works, in fact, of all the artworks I have made, is not primarily the outside view or the landscape but us. Our perceptual experience, the seeing rather than the seen. The images underscore the fact that we are looking not at nature but a picture of nature, an object rather than an actual landscape. In highlighting their artificiality the photographs simultaneously push the viewer away while also inviting the viewer into the work through the use of illusionistic space. The images force upon the viewer a self-awareness (of the image as an image) that denies them the ability to transport themselves imaginatively into the depicted scene. In this way they challenge the conventions and presupposition of the scenic view and show that pictures have a powerful effect on our perception and understanding of the landscape.

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FIG. 29 / SECOND NATURE NO. 4, DIGITAL PRINT

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DISCUSSION

In the introduction to her latest book The Eye is a Door Anne Spirn writes, “research shows that perception and cognition are intimately linked and that many people can think more fluently and inventively with images than with words or numbers”(Spirn, 2014, p. 5). In my experience Spirn’s assertion holds true. The countless hours I spent traversing and photographing the park led to an intense familiarity with the Whilamut Nature Area. Having primarily engaged with the place through the camera’s viewfinder and with the critical eye of an artist I gained a greater awareness of the subliminal standards of aesthetic organization and landscape meaning we apply to places. Mental images may be formed by previous images. There is no doubt with the plethora of landscape images we can project this pictorial experience onto a place itself. I have shown using the Whilamut Natural Area as an example how the Hudson River School has a strong cultural impact on the American sense of wilderness or natural landscapes. The Hudson River School’s paintings invoked a sentimentalized, pastoral view of the American landscape that continues to manifest itself today (Crandell, 1993). Only by being fully knowledgeable of their pervasive influence, can we, as landscape architects or as spectators, experience the landscape free of the idealized and naturalistic landscape images that inundate our consciousness and allow for new modes of landscape understanding. Examining these works or even better, applying a similar method of critical creative engagement of a site can help to invigorate landscape design. Critically engaging with a site through creative practice is a direct way to challenge dominant landscape attitudes. The creative process reveals the fact that we rarely deal with fixed boundaries and that those boundaries we do establish are often artificial. Framing a 116

photograph in a relation to the viewfinders boundary is similar to the way we design and frame landscapes in relation to their physical and cultural context. The images I have made are value laden and so are the landscapes that we create as designers. The framing of the Whilamut Natural Area as “natural” conceals the environmental and social conflicts as it did in the Hudson River School’s time. A creative practice that forces one to critically engage directly with a site externalizes the subtleties and nuances of the typological preconceptions we hold about the landscape, revealing the preconceptions and allows them to be broken down or rearranged. It was difficult to forgo the traditional conventions of idealized landscape imagery (e.g. Claude Lorrain, Hudson River School) when appraising a landscape or creating a landscape image. How can we, as landscape designers, illustrate that we are radically modifying the environment that exists outside the sentimental pastoral illusion? In my own work the techniques of collage and montage pried open the narrow definition of traditional landscape images, and enabled “an operation of allowing-to-happen” (GetchClarke, 2005, p.64), that I believe has great potential for landscape design. The collage images were the most successful in moving beyond the traditional pictorial and compositional conventions of European painting and the Hudson River School and allowing the emergence of a new understanding of the site. Despite being “unresolved” the collage and montage pieces work, they do not need to be resolved, that is, it does not need to be aesthetically harmonious to have meaning or be beautiful. Perhaps this is true of landscape design as well. Borrowing from the practice of collage Post117

industrial site designs can recombine fragmented and dislocated places, in order to invest them with new meaning. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;cleaning upâ&#x20AC;? of many post-industrial sites often involves covering up or hauling away not just the contaminants, but also the history of the site. Utilizing a creative practice of collage and montage and applying them to the design process can be an especially potent technique to re-invent post-industrial sites and create landscape designs that challenge and educate.

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REFERENCES

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Landscape architects construct nature; we choose what is emphasized, what is buried, and what is revealed... â&#x20AC;? The sequence of development, use, and abandonment has become clear in the post-industrial era as large tracts of industrial land, mostly in urban areas, have fallen into disuse and neglect. Patterns like these unearth our cultural values and studying them can reveal how we view and value nature in an urban setting. The aim of this thesis is to study how nature is represented and xperceived through the lens of our cultural values, which influence the restoration, development, and design of post-industrial spaces. Through photography, collage, and photomontage, I will explore how the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School color the way we visualize and value nature and wilderness and how, in turn, these underlying cultural values have shaped and influenced the restoration and representation of the former Day Island Landfill. These artworks are an experiment to create new narratives, and new metaphors that reconfigure the human relationship to nature. Stories that seek to engage the wasteland hidden beneath thw Whilamut Natural Area.

Alex Zatarain decided to study landscape architecture when his time machine broke down in the 21st century. He is a graduate of the Evergeen State College where he distinguished himself in the fine arts. He currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. Keywords: landscape representation, landscape aesthetics, post-industrial sites, cultural landscapes

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