visual arts
BY SHEENA LAHREN
Beauty and Threat
Skunk Cabbage by Justin Williams
Water, and its lack, at Maude Kerns
W
hen people look at 18th century French Rococo
paintings which depict a life of enjoyment and
leisure using delicate colors and decorative
elements, they often get a sense of lightheartedness and
serenity. At the same time, there’s a sense of foreboding for
the French, knowing that these times dissipated with the
Seven Years’ War in which France lost the majority of its
colonial possessions.
I got a similar feeling of foreboding, not for France but
for humanity, as I walked through the Headwaters exhibit
at the Maude Kerns Art Gallery.
The show, up through Aug. 28, features black and white
photos by Charles Search and Justin C. Williams and color
photographs by Gary Tepher and Walt O’Brien. While
looking at these photographs of streams and rivers, and
the ecological life that results from water resources, I felt
inspired by their beauty. But when I came upon one of Gary
Tepher’s photographs of Fall Creek, a place where I have
spent many summer days, I felt sadness knowing that the
beauty of the creek may not last.
Headwaters, the sources of rivers or streams, range from
small streams to glacial ice melts. Inspired by the ongoing
saga of Amazon Creek headwaters protection efforts,
Headwaters is a photography collaboration intended to
bring an awareness of the importance of headwaters. On
August 12, viewers were invited to attend the Headwaters
Exhibit Artists Panel Discussion with O’Brien, Search,
Williams and water rights lawyer David Moon.
“Headwaters are the source of our most precious
resource,” Moon said, emphasizing that water is a fi nite
resource threatened by pollution and overuse.
While all the photographers contributed equally to the
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exhibit, the idea for the exhibit came from Williams, who
was disturbed by human development on headwaters of the
Amazon Creek and what he saw as a lack of urgency from
the City of Eugene to protect the area.
“There are a lot of communities that allowed the de-
struction of headwaters to happen in this country and have
come to sorely regret it,” Williams said. “I thought it would be
important to bring this issue to attention in a visual form.”
Through a photos with a broad range of locations, from
Spencer’s Butte to Mongolia, and a range of perspectives
— from landscapes to detail shots of plant life — the goal
of the four photographers is to raise awareness.
“What I’m trying to do is to bring back something of
what it felt like there,” O’Brien said. “In doing that I’m
looking at what it is to pull the viewer into the photograph.”
O’Brien often experiments with light to create this result.
The photographers said they believe that while the
photographs may not offer a lot of information on the
destruction of headwaters, they do appeal to people’s
spiritual interest. Search describes that spiritual interest
as the enjoyment and sense of fulfi llment people get from
riding a bike along a stream or taking a scenic drive along
the McKenzie River.
“Our society is an instant gratifi cation kind of society,
so unless it’s having a direct impact today, it’s easy for us
simply to push it down the line,” Search said. “The goal of
the exhibit is to demonstrate that what you see is a pristine
area that gratifi es us every day from a spiritual point of
view, and that is an immediate impact on society that is at
an immediate risk.”
The main concern the photographers have is that help
will come too late. “Sometimes we say that the legal
battle will take place tomorrow and sometimes next year,”
Search said. Williams pointed out that “without water none
of these photos would happen; there would be pictures of
rocks and sand.” He said that already many of the areas
he photographed are no longer there because logging has
destroyed them.
Many people from many different communities have
watched the destruction of headwaters impact their lives, an
audience member said. So if you walk through the gallery
appreciating the photos of this element that is so much a part
of our lives, you might also fi nd that you have an image in
your mind of the waters receding and the wildlife dying —
because you’ve seen this happen before. Headwaters might
make you want to do something about it.
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EUGENE WEEKLY AUGUST 20, 2009 21