Overlook Field School 2021: Recovery

R ECOV E RY O V E R L O O K

F I E L D

S C H O O L

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RECOVERY A brief history of 2020: pandemic, police violence, protest, political division, economic recession, catastrophic wildfire. Through these events, landscape simultaneously fostered and required recovery but the process is far from complete. Analogous to resilience, restoration, atnd regeneration, recovery is a return to some previous state - perhaps a new normal and ever more complicated when applied to a medium as dynamic as landscape.

The work draws extensively from field visits to Willamette National Forest fires that have occurred within the last 30 years. We were also strongly influenced by recent events: the record heat wave which coincided with the first day of the field school, and the explosion of wildfires as we entered our final design phase. Despite the prevailing narrative of catastrophe and destruction, the recovery we observed has been incredibly inspirational. We aspire to communicate these experiences through landscape installations so that we may remember the beneficial impacts of fire throughout increasingly longer fire seasons.

Resident Artist Instructor: David Buckley Borden Field School Assistants: Isabela Ospina Nancy Silverton Fuller Center Graduate Employees: Taylor Bowdin Hannah Ketterer Overlook Field School Program Manager: Michael Geffel

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R E S E A RC H

SEEING TIME THROUGH THE SUCCESSION OF HISTORIC WILDFIRES The Overlook Field Shool was broken up into three parts. During the first phase, students travelled to sites in the McKenzie River Watershed that have experienced large wildfires at different times; thus all experiencing different stages of post-burn succession. After some time observing, exploring, and sketching in these sites, students created collaborative temporary installations using a limited palette of found materials, flagging tape, and spray paint. The exploration in the forests surrounding the McKenzie River informed the next phase in this research practice, where students were asked to make recovery “charms”. These were large scale pieces crafted in the UO Woodshop, and were used as a way to reflect and communicate the different ecological processes and human infrastructure present in the recovery of burned sites.

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TEMPORARY INSTALLATIONS 1. Left: Fuel Architecture, Will Bonner, Hanna Chapin, Celia Hensey.

2. Upper right: Snags, Audrey Rycewizc, Masayo Simon, Ian Vierk: Snags 3. Lower right: Framed Senses, Abby Pierce, Kennedy Rauh, Rosie Yerke:

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RECOVERY CHARM BRACELET The recovery charm project was an exercise in collective creativity, fabrication skill building, rapid prototyping, material constraint, and design-driven communication. Each charm, a mixed-media sculpture, symbolizes environmental experiences, attitudes, and aspirations in response to recovering landscapes that were explored during the initial field visit phase of the program.

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I N STA L L AT I O N

FUEL LOAD

wood, fabric

Hanna Chapin and Ian Vierck | MLA Already this year, Oregon has experienced mega-drought, record-breaking heat waves, and a historic wildfire season. As the climate warms, these effects will only exacerbate, and land burned by wildfires will increase, especially in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI: an area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation). Homes and communities are not ready for wildfire, especially as homes continue to be built and rebuilt in fuel zones. This installation responds to the problem and hopefully prompts the question: how can we embrace wildfire and learn to live with it?

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REVOLUTIONS OF RECOVERY

wood, vinyl, paint

Celia Hensey | MLA In this sundial, the viewer is invited to engage directly with the piece. By standing on the stump and facing north, the viewer’s shadow will act as the time-telling hand on the sundial. Around the edge of the sundial, each hour marker also represents a large wildfire in Oregon’s history. In this way, the sundial not only charts the daily cycles of time – it is a monument to the dynamic cycles of fire and recovery through time.

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FLARE X FLARE

wood, paint

Kennedy Rauh | MLA In a post-fire landscape, snags are essential to recovery; The story of the forest is shared through the trees: torn, twisted, burned, clear-cut, re-planted, decayed. Inspired by the upright remains of a Western Red Cedar, this project explores the typologies of snag-hood using nominal lumber to amplify the difference between the fire-formed snags and logged stumps found in our forests.

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REFUGIUM

fabric, wood

Abby Pierce | MLA Refugia are areas where special circumstances enable species or communities to survive environmental instability. It is a compelling concept, both for it’s ecological impacts but also when considering the human emotional response to disturbance. In this installation, I am imagining the “pulse” of refugia: first the embrace of multiple species in an area that can support life while the world around re-arranges itself through disturbance regimes; then the unfurling into the disturbed areas to aid the recovery and re-creation of communities. The spiral shapes represent this movement into the space of refuge and out to the space of recovery. The overhead shade triangle defines the space and references the concepts of shelter and safety that are part of our understanding of refuge. Finally, the tree bands are an exploration of the need to identify refugia and how that may be symbolically represented.

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HYPER-INSTRUMENT

wood, found materials

William Bonner | MLA Inspired by the “wired forest” of HJ Andrews, Hyper Instrument explores the hybrid world of nature and technology. The living organisms around us have a lot say, and through sensors, we have the opportunity to tune our ears to their frequencies and listen. The instrument acts as an interface between the complex processes of the environment and our own senses, giving us a broader understanding of the process of recovery over time.

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RIPPLE EFFECT

plywood, metal, found materials

Hannah Chapin and Ian Vierck | MLA A snag is an integral part of a forest ecosystem and has a rippling effect that exceeds far beyond itself. During its decay or after a fire, it lends energy and provides a habitat for mushrooms, insects, mammals, birds, and many other organisms. This installation is a reflection of recovery after death and the connections that extend past mortality.

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BUTTERFLY

basla wood, paint

Rosie Yerke | MLA Inspired by the beauty and movement of a butterfly, this installation highlights the importance of these pollinators in the recovery of burned landscapes. Specifically, the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly, which is endemic to the Willamette Valley, plays a vital role in upland prairie and oak savannah ecosystems that rely on the process of prescribed burns to prevent the transition to forest.

Both the agent of recovery and the recipient, Fender’s blue butterfly is endangered because native prairie habitat has been converted to agriculture, subjected to fire suppression, invaded by non-native plants, or otherwise developed. As an umbrella surrogate species for several upland prairie species, conservation initiatives geared toward Fender’s blue butterfly could help conserve other species that also occur in prairie habitat.

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SUCCESSION OF LIGHT

wood, fabric

Audrey Rycewicz and Masayo Simon | MLA Forests maintain their balance through cycles of change; maturation, disturbance, regrowth.

Their natural state is flux, and as changes occur, light patterns shift. We gleaned inspiration from the ever-changing ecosystems of western Oregon. Archetypes of Light is the sun personified – it provides a space to practice acceptance of the impermanence and fluidity permeating life on Earth. If you have ever reached out your hand to hold a sunbeam, you know that certain things are impossible to grasp on to. We suggest that you contemplate the light archetypes as they shift and flow freely through the space. Light is not to be held.to look at these spaces in a novel way.

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BARN QUILT

wood, found materials

David Buckey Borden and Nancy Silvers | Artist in Residency These Barn Quilts, (Barn X Quilt X Hex X Haz-Mat X Folk Communication Design) are inspired by regional narratives in response to the 2020 wildfires. The large-scale mixed-media quilts are created from upscaled hazardous material signage to express community memorial, testament, critique, and celebration of wildfires as an ecological phenomenon. While telling the story of the 2020 fire season, the work addresses larger issues of climate change, industry, community experience, and the past, present, and future of wildfires in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

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Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes Department of Landscape Architecture University of Oregon landarch.uoregon.edu fuller.uoregon.edu 2021