Overlook Field School 2013: Out of the Woods

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OUT OF THE WOODS Out of the Woods investigated sustainable forestry at the spatial scale of small woodlands and family forests and the temporal scale of old growth forests. We studied public perception and participation in developing forest management policies and practices; land planning for forest ecosystems that straddles human needs, such as recreation, hunting, timber, and spiritual renewal, with the needs of other species and the intrinsic values of the forest; visualization across spatially and temporally distant landscapes and events; and expansion of environmental literacy and stewardship through community outreach and education. Students produced forest trajectories – past, present, and future transects of a second-growth forest linking climate, geomorphology, ecological processes, human-instigated and natural disturbance regimes, and material production.

That classroom and forest-based research was the foundation for a summer field school at Overlook, a 400-acre property originally designed by the Olmsted firm, in rural Pennsylvania. There, seven graduate and three undergraduate landscape architecture students created an exhibition of art inspired by, revealing, and critiquing the regional forests. As in the spring seminar, we collaborated with local experts from regional universities, tree farms, nature preserves and conservancies to translate the lessons from spring to a new context and medium.

Following a field research period, students spent two weeks designing and installing art projects, which coalesced around four themes:w Locational specificity: artworks about specific species of trees and insects, about the voracious deer population, or the regional geomorphology reveal the need for forest design to be deeply rooted in the specific biotic and edaphic conditions of a place.

Temporal specificity: Several projects dealt with the synchronic site: the forest as it is, experienced subjectively, only for a moment. The phenomenal qualities of a site continually shift, creating a forest that can never be experienced again.

Engagement and interruption: Forests, like all landscapes, are a collection of processes in motion.

Several artworks highlighted those processes, either engaging and enhancing them or interrupting them. Some works did both – light studies at night simultaneously attracted insects, enhancing the perception of nocturnal moths and cicadas, and interrupted the anonymity of darkness.

The invisible present: Many of the processes of the forest are slow, taking place over decades. Their movement is invisible, yet very powerful. Emerald ash borer kill, deer browse, and a future condition is already in creation. Several works highlighted the agents already acting on the regional forests.

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THE COTTAGE Nick Drummond Constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1919, the original Cottage was the the main residence at Overlook, though a newer, more practical house has since replaced it. This piece was made not only to remember this fallen artifact, but also in an effort to gain a more tactile understanding of the interconnectedness of architecture, landscape, and time.

Buildings are, in fact, an assemblage of manipulated landscape materials; choreographed to both shape and adhere to human and natural processes. The pale yellow leaves of the surrounding Katsura trees illuminate the structure in the early fall, with a new effect brought forth by the snowfall in winter.

And eventually, like its predecessor, The Cottage will fall victim to time, collapsing, rotting, and fading from view.

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SING CANARY Emma Froh Estates such as Overlook seem like properties suspended in time. The grand sweep of beautifully maintained pastures, meadows, and gardens gives the impression of a bucolic utopia unmarred and untouched by change. In reality, Overlook is in a state of constant flux. Much of the change and evolution is occurring at a rate and scale outside of the realm of human perception. Accordingly, the change also occurs outside of the dominion of human control.

Sing Canary desires to uncover these ordinarily imperceptible shifts through focused attention. The artwork manifests the complex feelings provoked by a confrontation with uncontrollable change.

A sited architectural form and a video piece speak to underlying emotions including the longing for protection, the seduction of denial, and the fear of unrecoverable loss.

To access the ideal vantage point for the projection screen, the visitor must weave through a narrow switchback passage encased in a structure modeled after a deer blind. The allusion to a familiar Pennsylvanian structure is meant to invite observation and contemplation. Bottles containing potions and tinctures line the interior walls, supernaturally warding off undesirable evils.

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PREVIEW Patty Hines In just a few years, the emerald ash borer will destroy all of the ash trees in the northeastern United States. The invasive beetle will then head west, and, become another in a long line of insects that have plagued the great hardwood forests. An entire species of tree will again be eradicated. White ash trees comrise approximately 70 percent of the forest on the 400-acre Overlook Estate. All of those trees will soon be gone.

Preview is a haunting reminder of “the invisible present” (Magnuson 1990) and the future loss of the forest primeval. Long bands of matte-black material wrap the trunks of the ash trees, highlighting the future void in the forest. Black fabric represents death, like wearing a black armband worn in remembrance of a loved one who has died. The devastation, emptiness, and loss can be felt at a visceral level.

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ENLIGHTENMENT Patty Hines Along the entry drive of Overlook stands an old grove of trees planted by the Olmsted firm in the early 1900’s. The natural process of death and decay is revealed in the trees through, disease and old age.

Alongside the old trees, new seedlings signal the beginning of a new order. Enlightenment shines a light on “the long now” (Eno 2003) by highlighting these processes in gold leaf. Three trees were chosen to represent these life-cycle changes from a young seedling to an old, mature tree, and finally, a dead snag.

Highlighting these life changes from young to old, scarred but healing, survival through old age and finally to death brings forth a consciousness imbedded in us all, allowing us to feel a connection in the moment to the ”invisible present” we all share.

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PRESENCE Petar Iliev In northeastern Pennsylvania in the height of summer, one of the most powerful forces in the landscape is nearly invisible. The deer tick has the potential to inflict incurable illness, and yet is nearly invisible to the naked eye. There is incredible power in the invisible, and a dangerous beauty to the most tiny elements of the landscape.

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LIGHT STUDIES Petar Iliev The landscape changes at night. First fireflies appear, then stars and the moon. The watery, reflected light obscures the land we think we know, and reveals other qualities. Senses are heightened, tuned to the rustle of meadows, the smell of sun-baked seed heads. Darkness and illumination walk hand in hand.

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THE BARN DANCE Veronica Malinay Growing up in Virginia, I thought fireflies were the same everywhere: glowing balls of yellow light emerging at dusk. Discovering that fireflies do not exist in the Pacific Northwest, I was excited to share that experience with my west coast colleagues. Upon our arrival in what was to become our home for the month of July, the light of the fireflies that danced in the meadow greeted us. Unexpectedly, the show of these fireflies was a spectacle I had never seen. Instead of a yellow glow, these fireflies exhibited a camera flashbulb-like light. Hundreds of these bright white flashes sparkled like fireworks.

As an east coaster, I was in as much awe as my west coast companions.

The exploration and story of this kind of firefly revealed itself as the age-old tale where girl attracts boy with flashing light, boy falls in love and envisions a life with the girl, and girl in turn sees boy as dinner and eats boy. The female fireflies of the genus Photurius flash their light to attract and prey on the males of the genus Photinus. I sought to bring the meadow indoors and to set up a drive-in theater at the fireflies’ scale.

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CANOPY Virginia Piercy During my time at Overlook, I was thinking about how this Pennsylvania forest landscape differs from my native forest landscape, the northwest. The light is different: diffused and bright. Under the broadleaf deciduous trees, even the shadows are bright, while holes in the canopy let through bright dancing spots and splotches. This piece examines the idea of the canopy, and helps the viewer consider space through time. With a projection of the canopy light at night on to the structure one is reminded of what is above them even in the dark. The seedlings exposed on the forest floor will eventually become the future canopy, the roots of the new canopy emerging from the old rock, and the shadow of the canopy strips creating a forest of shadows only seen at night all help to reinforce the idea of time.

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THE CAMPSITE Nikki Reser The Campsite is an abstracted room built from materials found around the Overlook property. Most were found in the basement of an old garage. It is nestled in the middle of an open field, filled with grasses and herbaceous plants up to five feet tall. From the hill above, the piece is visible in the middle of the field, but the path to it is obscured by the surrounding plants. As you approach, a curved path appears, leading you through the tall brush up to a doorway.

This outdoor room, fundamentally unusable yet imaginatively captivating, claims the longest views of the site, near the lookout on the highest hilltop, west to the Endless Mountains. The Campsite speaks to the endurance and resilience of landscapes, and the ephemerality of occupation. Nature is a cultural construct, less a lens for observing landscapes than a reflection of our own preoccupations.

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IN NATURAL ORDER: LIBERATING THE CANOPY Miranda Schmidt Secondary deciduous canopy cover sends dappled or no light to the forest floor, shading out the understory. I was drawn to the light that came through the canopy, knowing that the potential for growth of the understory only came when a tree fell and created a void in the canopy. Rock outcrops litter the forest floor; invasive grape vines stretch their arms toward the canopy seeking what light they is available. This connection from the forest floor to the canopy and the sky is the focus of this piece, which constructs the space so that this connection is visible and understood. Clearing the area of vegetation and leaf debris revealed the contrasting elements of the dark topsoil and the bright green canopy. Vertical elements, straight limbs, foraged from the forest floor, orient the viewer’s gaze through the canopy and into the sky. The clusters of vertical limbs occur twice, punctuating the spiral motion of walking into the void. The tree roots that emerge from the soil create a natural pathway that leads the viewer into the void. I was captivated by the motion of the grape vines as they traveled up the trees gasping for life. I wanted to emulate this by manipulating the vines and leading the viewer to the vertical limbs as if they were choking out the other elements.

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SUSPENDED NOTICE Fraser Stuart Suspended Notice developed gradually during my residence at Overlook. Initially, as I directed my inquiry into the woods, I was drawn to the ground plane. Unique rock formations had been exposed through natural processes, sometimes shattered and strewn across the forest floor. From these initial broken pieces, I began to investigate removing the rock slabs as entire unified sheets. Orange became a significant color as I spent time in and around the woods at Overlook, with the posted signs communicating to others that property was private, and various restrictions. The final element of the work revealed itself as I continued to release the slabs from the source formations. A former line of cement fence posts, which were adjacent to the site, complete with barbed wire, embedded in the ground provided structure to the piece.

These elements - material, color, line - were the fragments that I used to reinterpret the display of notice in the woods. The slabs were aligned along the former path of the barbed wire fence, eventually breaking from that axis to arrive at the source rock from which they had been individually broken.

Visitors experience Suspended Notice while wandering through the woods - rocks suspended, highlighted in a color of significance in the forest.

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SEED, LEGACY, AND SUCCESSION James Voelckers Seed, Legacy, and Succssion explore the twin themes of time and place through natural materials found on site. The projects use these materials to tell stories that echo throughout the surrounding property, and anchor the art in the local color palette. I did a drawing of each installation, to act as a complimentary viewpoint.

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Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes Department of Landscape Architecture University of Oregon http://landarch.uoregon.edu/ 2013