Triage
The set of three assemblages, the sculptures and their associated poems, located in Bath County on the direct proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, are entitled Triage. “Triage” is what emergency room personnel do when you arrive on a stretcher or hobble in bleeding—they decide who needs treatment first.
We have reached a point on our planet when many of us recognize that emergencies are unfolding. Maybe some of us already know what to do and get to work, but for most of us, we notice so many compelling causes that that we are left wondering, which emergency needs attention first? What is the best treatment? And what should I do? Should I join a protest march, or write letters, or give money? If only someone would perform triage, and tell me where to begin.
Members of Shannon Farm Community in Nelson County stated in their scoping period comments (March 18, 2015) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), “We have heard that FERC does not concern itself with what has been termed landowners’ ‘idiosyncratic attachment’ to their land. But this is at the very heart of our concerns.”
This work of land art reflects the many attachments those of us fighting this pipeline have to the Appalachian lands it threatens to disfigure. This home-spun art raises a protest against the corporate greed that results in eminent domain taking of property for private shareholder interest and ignores the need for public consensus about what is in the “public interest.”
Blast
This iron and copper mobile is loosely based on the map of the Little Valley Lane; certain items on the mobile represent the locations of houses, while the pipe denotes the position of the proposed pipeline running uphill to the top of Jack Mountain, and the copper bars indicate the resulting blast or incineration zone. On one side, despite homey touches like felted wool, a cradling basket or a cheery ladybug, animal bones figures prominently to remind us that an explosion might easily turn peoples’ homes to ash and bone. On the other side, counterbalancing, the pocket watch, the rake, the turkey-vulture wing serve as reminders of who we are in this movement –- ordinary people, we are not the 1%, with our small gardens and small houses, but like the vulture, we are far-seeing, intent on cleaning up the mess on our planet, and halting climate change, although time is running out.
The poem tucked inside a jar on “Blast” is called “Into the Tangle.” This poem speaks to my tangled feelings about our circumstances on the planet, the desire to raise an alarm without alarming people (?!) and to the patterns within the tangled bank, the brambly hillsides, the thick woods that suggest how acknowledging interconnectedness can help us see through the tangle.
Haberdashery
I looked at Little Valley from the aerial satellite maps, at Bolar and Jack Mountain and the Jackson River. On the photo, their ridges and folds looked like a fuzzy green version of a hag moth caterpillar, which is a strange, almost leaf-shaped creature that stings – like its cousins the flannel moth caterpillars. In my mind’s eye I saw a spine with ribs in felted green and brown, in flannel or wool clothing. In a way, when you are attached to a place and have become familiar with its landscapes, have gained a sense of its history, you are clothed in that place—it fits you like a comfy sweater.
“Haberdashery” reflects the shape of Jack Mountain and all the smaller ascending ridges that rise to its crest. Between these ribs springs bubble and seep, and we find flowers like Jewel Weed and Wood Nettle. Among the ancient hardwoods we find Striped Prince’s Pine, Yarrow, and Wild Stonecrop. What are we, once stripped of our land? Forcibly dis-placed, unraveled, undone. The charred blouse indicates that we are in the blast zone. The messages in the pockets tell more of the story, give us a sense of the possibilities.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said it well in A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967): "It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Canary
Water quality and methane leaks are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to fracking operations and fracked-gas pipelines. The cage in this piece may suggest the canary has flown, or that it hasn’t been put to the test yet here in Little Valley—there is still time to prevent the ruination of the water in this karst terrain. The decorative flourishes of “Canary” include a reference to the Eastern Shore and to one of our native yellow birds—the goldfinch. The poem that is incorporated into the piece explores the dynamic relationship between stone and water as a reflection on how we manage the turmoil of our inner geological shifts. It references what some have said is a Native American name for the Cowpasture, the Wallawhatoolah.
©2016 Amelia L. Williams
We have reached a point on our planet when many of us recognize that emergencies are unfolding. Maybe some of us already know what to do and get to work, but for most of us, we notice so many compelling causes that that we are left wondering, which emergency needs attention first? What is the best treatment? And what should I do? Should I join a protest march, or write letters, or give money? If only someone would perform triage, and tell me where to begin.
Members of Shannon Farm Community in Nelson County stated in their scoping period comments (March 18, 2015) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), “We have heard that FERC does not concern itself with what has been termed landowners’ ‘idiosyncratic attachment’ to their land. But this is at the very heart of our concerns.”
This work of land art reflects the many attachments those of us fighting this pipeline have to the Appalachian lands it threatens to disfigure. This home-spun art raises a protest against the corporate greed that results in eminent domain taking of property for private shareholder interest and ignores the need for public consensus about what is in the “public interest.”
Blast
This iron and copper mobile is loosely based on the map of the Little Valley Lane; certain items on the mobile represent the locations of houses, while the pipe denotes the position of the proposed pipeline running uphill to the top of Jack Mountain, and the copper bars indicate the resulting blast or incineration zone. On one side, despite homey touches like felted wool, a cradling basket or a cheery ladybug, animal bones figures prominently to remind us that an explosion might easily turn peoples’ homes to ash and bone. On the other side, counterbalancing, the pocket watch, the rake, the turkey-vulture wing serve as reminders of who we are in this movement –- ordinary people, we are not the 1%, with our small gardens and small houses, but like the vulture, we are far-seeing, intent on cleaning up the mess on our planet, and halting climate change, although time is running out.
The poem tucked inside a jar on “Blast” is called “Into the Tangle.” This poem speaks to my tangled feelings about our circumstances on the planet, the desire to raise an alarm without alarming people (?!) and to the patterns within the tangled bank, the brambly hillsides, the thick woods that suggest how acknowledging interconnectedness can help us see through the tangle.
Haberdashery
I looked at Little Valley from the aerial satellite maps, at Bolar and Jack Mountain and the Jackson River. On the photo, their ridges and folds looked like a fuzzy green version of a hag moth caterpillar, which is a strange, almost leaf-shaped creature that stings – like its cousins the flannel moth caterpillars. In my mind’s eye I saw a spine with ribs in felted green and brown, in flannel or wool clothing. In a way, when you are attached to a place and have become familiar with its landscapes, have gained a sense of its history, you are clothed in that place—it fits you like a comfy sweater.
“Haberdashery” reflects the shape of Jack Mountain and all the smaller ascending ridges that rise to its crest. Between these ribs springs bubble and seep, and we find flowers like Jewel Weed and Wood Nettle. Among the ancient hardwoods we find Striped Prince’s Pine, Yarrow, and Wild Stonecrop. What are we, once stripped of our land? Forcibly dis-placed, unraveled, undone. The charred blouse indicates that we are in the blast zone. The messages in the pockets tell more of the story, give us a sense of the possibilities.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said it well in A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967): "It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Canary
Water quality and methane leaks are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to fracking operations and fracked-gas pipelines. The cage in this piece may suggest the canary has flown, or that it hasn’t been put to the test yet here in Little Valley—there is still time to prevent the ruination of the water in this karst terrain. The decorative flourishes of “Canary” include a reference to the Eastern Shore and to one of our native yellow birds—the goldfinch. The poem that is incorporated into the piece explores the dynamic relationship between stone and water as a reflection on how we manage the turmoil of our inner geological shifts. It references what some have said is a Native American name for the Cowpasture, the Wallawhatoolah.
©2016 Amelia L. Williams