Central Valley Reach Studio
PORTRAYALS AND PROJECTIONS OF THE CENTRAL WABASH RIVER LANDSCAPE
The Wabash River territory was once a virtually uninterrupted wilderness in ecological equilibrium, spanning the length of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In less than two hundred years, it was utterly transformed through the toil of settlers into a built environment optimized to harvest natural resources. The relationships forged in the duality between people and their environment became a key factor in the perceived prosperity of the region, and in a larger sense, once helped define a still-evolving American ethos.
In this studio, we investigated and revealed relationships between nature and culture in the Indiana counties along the Central Valley section of the Wabash River. The drawings and related essays produced in this studio correlate historical research and contemporary landscape phenomena in a number of print and digital formats, in order to frame the river's past, present, and future in a coherent, geo-centric manner.
The semester's body of work was split into five phases: Survey, Index, Timeline, Narratives, and Futures. All focused specifically on Vermillion County, Indiana.
PHASE 1 | SURVEY
The objective in this phase was to correlate historical research with observable data from aerial imagery, and then superimpose layers and notes in a manner that offers an interpretation of the territory’s development.
Phase 2 | Index
The Index took two forms: a single photo collage montage and an essay, both illustrating the patterns and practices of the territory.
MALLEABLE WILDERNESS
Glaciers creep steadily across the land, unhindered by mountains and streams. The icy behemoths carve destructive paths into the earth, leaving behind them deposits of rich till. Frigid winds roar off their faces day and night, announcing their imminent arrival to the mammoths, wolves, and cats that walk before them. New rivers and valleys are hewn out of the rock and clay, fresh wounds in an ancient wilderness.
This land passed through many hands-Native American, French, English and American— and each owner each takes their share of its natural wealth, leaving behind their mark on the land, more often worse than better.
Beneath the slow crawl of these frozen giants lies shale, sandstone, and coal. Years from now, indigenous human inhabitants will shape earth, sod, and sand into mounds with which to pray and worship, or bury their dead. Around these mounds, this civilization domesticates native plants and develops family social structures.
After the mound-builders come the others- the Kickapoo, the Miami, and Potawatomi. Their ownership of the land fluctuates over time, though each leaves their mark on the land. In the forests, bark is stripped from trees for use in building domed huts, leaving eerie striped scars on their faces. In the prairie, swaths of dry grass are burned to prevent the tribes from being consumed by the autumnal wild fires. These flames often reach below the grass to the underlying coal, singing the raw shale to crimson, and earning the Vermillion River its name.
When settlers first arrive, they are merely passing through along the Wabash, carrying beaver pelts. A man drives his axe into a white oak tree in 1720— his mark embedded in the rings of the tree is found years later when the same oak finally falls. The settlers change in language and permanence. Trees are felled and their bodies lain side by side to form roads. The river that once teemed only with fish is now a highway for flatboats transporting goods southward, only to return north in the tow of steamboats. Gravel is scraped from the earth as bigger and better roads are needed. Iron and steel are threaded through the county, bringing in more people and taking out more land. Coal mines pepper the land and bring prosperity for a time- only to be abandoned once their financial potential is exhausted. The gouges in the earth both above and below ground fill with water and are forgotten. The vast expanses of land are tilled and seed is lain- corn and cotton stretch past the horizon.
PHASE 3 | TIMELINE
The timeline was an opportunity to frame several event sequences that express time and the trends associated with an evolving landscape. It illustrates the transformation of the Wabash River corridor from total wilderness to built environment, with consideration of the conventions of visual formatting of a time-sensitive sequence, the organization of information, and consistency of scale.
PHASE 4 | NARRATIVES
The collective memories of inhabitants stitch together the natural and cultural processes that alter the environment, and we understand space as a context for most events, simply because its scale exists beyond human scale. Three narratives were composed, each portraying one seamless and continuous spatial field, each showing three distinct conditions in the territory, fashioning a narrative thread by compressing the time axis into one plane. A written stanza accompanies each scene.
FROM THE RIVER
From the swollen bed of the limestone Wahbahshikka comes the vermillion Pe-Auke-Shaw, its banks made of seams of shale and coal. Early men wade through its waters, sometimes diving below the surface to collect freshwater clams, leaving piles of discarded empty shells in their wake. The fertile banks of the river are home for a time to small farms of beans and squash, until the men retreat further into the woods and eventually disappear altogether.
From the trees emerge another race of man, bringing with them the fire. The flames burn through the shale and coal, leaving red-scarred banks behind. These men hollow out trees and bring them into the river, guide horses across the calmer waters, and hunt the other animals that use the river.
From the north come the men in their long boats of hide, searching for beavers and their pelts. Those who are successful continue south to reap the rewards, while others stay behind and live amongst the natives as equals. The men keep coming, some from the east and others from the south, but with each man there is less space on the river. The river sees peace and it sees bloodshed, but still they stay. The water breaks its banks and it runs dry, and still they stay. The river is clean and it is polluted with poison, and they stay. Yet they forget the river, the river that was here before man, the river that will be here when they are done staying.
IN THE FOREST
In the quiet shadows of the spruce and pine creep the wolves and deer and horses. Here the cycles of life and death and growth and destruction play on unhindered for an age. It is here the first culture of builders construct their mounds. They dedicate these structures to their dead, filling them with gifts. In the spaces between the trees they grow small plots of squash and tobacco, gently tilling the earth with stone and wood. But then they too disappear.
In the spaces between the mounds come the Miami and the others, erecting small huts of bison hide and saplings. They hunt the deer and domesticate the horses, and they wage war over the land where the forests stand. But they respect the trees and the animals, and they give them the space they merit.
In the fingers of the forest that reach into the river and prairie, the new man comes, bringing with him axes and hammers. He fights the trees in a slow-moving battle, using the timber to shape his place in the forest. Some of the trees fight fiercely, but all are eventually defeated. In the space that held the trees, man grows corn and roads. Where there was the soft shadow of ancient forest, there is now nothing but space. Space and the fleeting whisper of fallen trees.
ACROSS THE PRAIRIE
Across the endless plains comes the parched whisper of dry wind rustling through hollow grass. Crickets sing their shrill song up to the scorching sun and the buffalo graze peacefully. A shift in the air, a twitch of a nose, and suddenly the ground begins to tremble with the heavy footfalls of the buffalo, their heaving furry bodies propelled as if by an invisible force. The tongues of fire chase after them and the other animals: human, buffalo, horse, or wolf. All flee with the same fear in their eyes.
Across the earth, the grass shakes and wanes, and metal ribbons are threaded through the land like sutures. Machines made of metal and smoke and noise come barreling through, carrying wood and coal and men. Most of the men leave, continuing onwards in search of better futures, and even those who stay don’t stay for long.
Across the ground, the rock shudders, torn apart by the monstrous metal machines man has constructed. They dig deep into the earth, searching, thirsty for the black rock that brings man wealth and fortune. Men descend into the ground, spending years within the dark depths, some never to reemerge. Towers rise into the air, but their roots reach much further down, tearing through the rock like teeth and bleeding it dry. The ground is tilled and turned and man cultivates crops in the dust. A dry wind whispers through the parched stalks, reaching far beyond the endless plains.
PHASE 5 | FUTURES
This phase was an opportunity to project a future circumstance onto my territory, developing a potential future outcome that synthesized the research and project phenomena forward. Developed a storyboard sequence of drawings that together describe one “cinematic” scene, with an accompanying narrative in the 1st person recounting the future of the county as it occurred in their present.