2023 Annual Members Project Rivanna Reconnaissance

14 Comments on “2023 Annual Members Project Rivanna Reconnaissance”

1. I kind of want to work a little further on my concept of “Charon’s Soup Bowl” where an account of a large sink hole opens up in the Rivanna River. It uncovers a new phenomenon that occurs in the geological strata of the river bed that fools gauging instruments into reading much shallower depths than is actually true. Or, perhaps the depth is real but historically deeper depths have been sealed off. I’m thinking of having accounts of long extinct deep water trilobites surfacing as an early indicator that something was not quite right . . .

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2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_impact_crater#/media/File:Chesapeake_Crater_boundaries_map.png

   I learned that the somewhat peculiar dog leg shape of the James River as it outlets into the Chesapeake is because that is where it changes direction when it drops into the crater.

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3. Here’s some lovely inspo!

   This:
   https://www.frrandp.com/2022/12/ancient-courses-of-mississippi-river-map.html
   and this:
   https://dancoecarto.com/4k-rivers
   and also this piece on Pat Hickman:
   https://nyacknewsandviews.com/blog/2019/04/nyack-sketch-log-pat-hickmans-river-teeth/

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4. On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 12:10 AM Bonnie Bernstein wrote:
   You might enjoy reading this description of river teeth in a journal of that title:

   https://www.riverteethjournal.com/about-us/river-teeth-an-introduction

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5. I used to walk along Meadow Creek during a summer about a decade ago when they were replacing a sewer and there was a lot of excavation and overwash downstream, and I found sharts of old bottles and pottery. I’ve recently become interested in transferware – British china, much of which was made to sell to people in the newly formed American colony. This is what inspired my recent “Aesop’s Fable” plate. I’m thinking of a project that renders images of shards of transferware pottery from an until-now unknown of company, that was shrewdly embedding political messages in its seemingly innocuous fables.

   I’m going to have lots of ideas before I settle on anything, probably.
   Which leads me to an important question: Might the center pay for a stash of brown paper and umber intaglio and relief ink – given they are required to use for the project – for us to iterate and experiment with? Such experiments alone might trigger an idea for a project, even if the experiment isn’t for the project, it’s just playing with the visual effects of the materials? In other words, can some brown paper and umber ink be made available to block night attendees gratis for the rest of this year?

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   • Jenny,
     Answering your question “Might the center pay for a stash of brown paper and umber intaglio and relief ink”
     Yes! The project coordinating committee will soon specify the paper and primary ink color (PMS #). The Center will order and supply sufficient materials to members (at no charge) to complete this project.

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6. That’s great Garrett.

   This isn’t printmaking ink, and it’s a little spendy, but I was looking at some themed-color pigments today and landed on this and thought it was cool:

   https://gamblincolors.com/reclaimed-earth-colors/

   The process begins with collecting contaminated water in large tanks. To neutralize the water’s acidity, a base is added, then oxygen. This causes the dissolved iron to crystalize and settle. The result: clean water on top and non-toxic iron oxide pigment on the bottom. The clean water is returned to the river where it is safe for aquatic life* and the iron oxides are dried into lightfast and safe artist pigment. The pigment is heated to various temperatures to achieve each color.

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7. Thanks for that tip, Jenny! I’m going to see if I can score some of these reclaimed-earth-colors.

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8. So I am for sure going for the Pottery Shard Idea. Can I officially proclaim that here? I am going to make up a revolutionary or Queen Anne-era Staffordshire UK pottery, and make plates that have peculiar iconography – (transgressive, radical) kind of hidden in it. Then, I’m going to tear up the “plates” that I make into shards, and print those as shards (Using some nice dark umber intaglio ink so it looks like the broken edges and crazing from being buried in river bank mud). More to be revealed. Today I learned that:

   Today I learned that Staffordshire transferware/china companies often used the copper engraved plates from the book/printmaking industry. Upcycling engravings in this way was of course even cheaper than engraving a fresh design. So, you get mish moshes of illustrated borders and an image in the middle:
   https://elsiegreen.com/products/vintage-deep-green-transferware-plate-eclectic-set-of-4?variant=45002304684278

   I also thought this was funny:

   In 1769 when George Washington sent an order to his English agent for a new set of dishes to use at his table and in his kitchen, he requested “ye most fashionable kind of Queen’s Ware.” He was ordering English creamware, the most elegant, refined, and stylish earthenware available. This purchase was made despite the troubled relationship between England and her American colony. The leaders of the Colony of Virginia had met in May 1769 and declared that they would purchase nothing of British manufacture after September of that year. Washington met the letter of the agreement by ordering his pottery in late July just weeks before the deadline.

   https://www.amrevmuseum.org/read-the-revolution/success-to-america

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9. I don’t know if I’ll be here this summer to participate, but Nelson County (and some others) were affected by debris flows into the Rockfish River during Hurricane Camille. That forever changed the world’s understanding about how mountains wear down, in 3,000 year events not just through slow erosion, which pre-date written history here. I studied this at UVA. But we and the Rivanna River are in the Piedmont now, and this area would have been far closer to the foothills of the younger mountains 3,000 years ago and before. One thing we understood after Camille is what evidence of those debris flows look like – and I could image evidence of such debris flows in the upper courses of the Rivanna from past eons.

   The other I like better is that there are “terranes” and oceanic lithosphere fragments in the Piedmont which are pockets of unique geology that are foreign to this area, which were scraped off onto this continent during continental collisions. One of those could be discovered in the banks or bed of the Rivanna – contact with a past continent (real or imagined) with interesting geology or fossils – worlds lost in time.

   There is more information about terranes here: http://geology.blogs.wm.edu/piedmont/

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10. Sharing this link to jog ideas, and also as samples of the kind of language that could be used in body text and for the Artifact Catalog tags: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Archaeological-artefacts-recovered-from-Kaj-and-Kanjetar-41-Harappan-ceramics-bowls_fig4_257155103

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11. GQ on behalf of Bonnie Bernstein

    Design/Art
    I’d like to create a page that is paper engineered to be a pop-up (involving a fold-in or fold-down extension). An image of Starvation Stones, including the incised boulder will rise up out of the river when the page unfolds.

    Inspiration
    Centuries-old low-river stones, also called Hunger Stones, have emerged in Europe’s receding rivers during prolonged periods of drought. The stones forged some 400 years ago, are ancient markers of drought, inscribed with doomsday warnings

    https://www.vabookcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/05/Starvation-Stones-2023-MemProj-Bonnie-B.pdf

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12. here is a summary of The Beaver Chichen Itza project (so far, Nancy Kober and Molly Turner) with some of our initial ideas and links for inspiration:

    In deep layers of river sediment exposed by drought, our field journalist (as yet to be determined, two of our working ideas are below) discovers remains that suggest the existence of an ancient complex beaver society, with its own language (consisting mainly of teeth marks) and intricate structures of both wood and stone. The field notes are attempts to understand the significance of the remains, what they meant in the past, and perhaps how they might be utilized in the future to combat climate change.

    Working Ideas for the Author of our Field Notes
    1. During the drought that affected the entire continent in the 1890s, an amateur ethnographer discovers hieroglyphs on pieces of wood and bark along the Rivanna. At first she hopes these artifacts are Indian, but after watching a beaver at work she realizes that the marks have been made by teeth. Her field notes are her attempts to understand the language and the messages left by beavers in the past, and in the process of her investigations she finds evidence of an elaborate and sophisticated beaver society…. [accompanying art: some of the hieroglyphs and her notes which contain her own (amateur) illustrations of beavers and her imagining of the ancient beaver city)

    2. During the drought that affected the entire continent in the early 1930s, a lonely poet spends her afternoons by the river observing and cataloguing trees, until she encounters a beaver who is taking down a sapling and through their friendship she eventually understands that the trees and beaver are collaborating in a complex communication, and in the process of her investigations she finds evidence of an elaborate and sophisticated beaver society. …[accompanying art: her (amateur) drawings of her beaver friend, of architectural remains and perhaps she also carries a Kodak brownie and takes murky sepia snapshots of water and shapes and trees)

    Inspirations/Resources
    Lewis Henry Morgan’s The American Beaver and His Works (1868)
    https://www.rachelpoliquin.com/#/book-beaver/
    How to Scrutinize a Beaver (Believer Magazine, 2012)
    https://www.leilaphilip.com/beaverland
    PBS film on Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Beavers: https://www.pbs.org/video/waters-way-thinking-like-a-watershed-7oepzm/
    World’s largest beaver dam can be seen from space: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-largest-beaver-dam
    Beaver architecture and intelligence: https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/23/cheng.php

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13. In reply to Kirsten’s idea, I recently read a fascinating book about Hurricane Camille, “The Roar of the Heavens”, by Stefan Bechtel. The incredible amount of detritus that is found in the trees that are carried downstream. Having also just read “Overstory” by Richard Powers, which is about trees, their communication with each other ,,, and much more. I was trying to come up with a concrete concept for this project. I am having trouble but it would entail, trees that fall into or washed downstream in rivers and the “stuff” that is found in them…. sometimes macabre, such as remains of humans and animals… as well as plates, pottery, etc. How could they tell a fantastical story of a past culture. So I wonder if I could dovetail into Jenny and Kirsten’s ideas? or not? any comments are welcome. I will see you all on Sunday.

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