On Saturday, September 10, 2011, join in the third annual NeoRio Festival, celebrating art, nature, culture and community. All are invited to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area, to experience and celebrate the place through arts and community events on this year’s theme “Water Mark.” NeoRio 2011 will feature artwork by sculptor and environmental artist, Daniel Richmond and an evening of innovative short films projected outdoors with solar power and created on-site at Wild Rivers by John Wenger, UNM professor Emeritus, and the Wild Earth Studio team. Among these films will be a film called, “What’s in the Water”, made with puppet-like props, created and operated by Questa Junior High art students. The film is the result of a week-long, arts-based “study” of local aquatic species with Jennifer Vialpando’s Junior High Art Class in Questa, funded by a small grant from the Public Lands Interpretive Association. The project culminated in a fieldtrip to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area, where the students  brought their puppets to life in an experimental set on the rim of gorge. On September 10^th, this film will be premiered alongside other Wild Earth Studio film creations.

This year all are invited to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area Visitor Center, for brief presentations from event hosts and sponsors and an artist talk by NeoRio Featured Artist, Daniel Richmond, followed by the opportunity to participate in creating his unique, earth pigment, ground stencils drawn from conversations with locals about water.

The event continues with an evening celebration of food, a campfire, live music provided by Michael Rael and Tim Long and outdoor short film screenings on the rim of the gorge. Participants are requested to bring chairs for the evening as well as a drink and a dessert to share.

NeoRio events are free and open to all. Camping is available at Wild Rivers for $7 per night.  Celebrate art and nature and explore the Wild Rivers Recreation Area on September 10^th.

To learn more email Claire at emailforleap@gmail.com or call 575-586-1150.

Click HERE for a Google Map to event locations at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area. Click HERE for complete event description.

Mark your calendar for Saturday, September 10, 2011, to join in the third annual NeoRio – it’s a celebration of art, nature, culture and community! Artists, locals and visitors are invited to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area, to experience and celebrate the place through arts and community events. This year the NeoRio theme is “Water Mark”. The theme will guide both artists and public in exploring the Wild Rivers Recreation Area from a unique and focused perspective.

NeoRio will take place on Saturday, September 10th from 2 – 9:30 pm at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area. A parallel exhibition, “Watermap” will open on Friday, September 9th at the Red Pilot Gallery in Questa. Find out more about NeoRio 2011: Water Mark here.

More information about events schedule, our featured artists and other ways to become involved will be posted this spring.

To learn more or become a NeoRio sponsor or volunteer email Claire at emailforleap@gmail.com or call 575-586-2362.

Left image: L’échelle Les Arques, France, 2003*
Right image: materials to be used in habitat enhancing sculptures at NeoRio 2010

Environmental artist and sculptor for wildlife, Lynne Hull, will present a rare public workshop for artists, teachers and other interested persons to create shelters and other sculptures for various species of wildlife for NeoRio 2010. Participants will create sculptures utilizing recycled dead trees in the area. Lynne Hull will also share her knowledge of creating small, hand-built stone sculptures to slow erosion in runoff areas, inspired by the restoration engineering concepts of Bill Zeedyke. The now annual event, NeoRio, is a celebration of art, nature, culture and community at Wild Rivers Recreation Area near Questa, New Mexico.

Set for September 24^th – 26^th, NeoRio 2010 will feature Lynne Hull’s sculpture which assists wildlife and habitat restoration, as well as her lecture, “From Lascaux to Last Week”, an overview of environmental artists working with nature, ecology, water and land restoration. Lynne will facilitate the creation of three site-specific installations by students, artists and members of the public. Hosted by the Bureau of Land Management’s Taos Field Office, NeoRio is organized by the environmental arts initiative, LEAP (Land, Experience and Art of Place), in collaboration with John Wenger of Wild Earth Studio, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, the Village of Questa and other cosponsors.

NeoRio was created both as a platform for innovative ecological artists and to propagate cross-pollination between artists, conservationists, and others interested in protecting and celebrating our local communities and wild lands. The ancient relationship between humans, our fellow creatures and our environment is a complex story of interdependence, which we each author every day with our own choices and actions. NeoRio attempts to both tell and explore this story through innovative and creative installations, interventions and interactions with our environment. It asks the questions: what is the role of art in experiencing and protecting wild lands and what is the role of wild lands in art?

On Friday, September 24^th, Lynne will offer a special all-day workshop for artists (reservations required see below). On Saturday, September 25^th, at 2pm the public is invited to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area Visitor Center, where the event will begin with Lynne Hull’s presentation “From Lascaux to Last Week”, followed by the opportunity to participate in creating one of her sculptures and an evening celebration with food, a campfire, live music and outdoor short film screenings. Please bring your own chairs for the campfire and drinks and dessert to share. Camping is available at Wild Rivers for $7 per night. On Sunday September 26^th, the public is invited to visit the new art installations and participate in other planned activities to explore the Wild Rivers Recreation Area. NeoRio events are free and open to all. Come celebrate art and nature and explore the Wild Rivers Recreation Area on September 24^th, 25^th and 26^th! For a google map to NeoRio locations click here.

To find out more about attending NeoRio 2010, to register for the artist workshop on September 24^th or to become involved as a volunteer, contact emailforleap@gmail.com or call 575-586-2362.

*Installation in the Presbytere tower of nesting boxes and roosts in the tower, a secret dialog between artists and owl. The ladder on the outside of the tower as metaphor for the meeting between the species. The meeting is difficult.

I’ve just updated the NeoRio 2009 page! Check out photos and documentation from NeoRio 2009 by clicking here.

May the skies be clear, the mountains high

and the possibilities stretch as far as the eye can see.

NeoRio 2009 was is an example of a unique collaboration between artists, conservationist organizations, and the Bureau of Land Management Taos Field Office. The event created a wonderful foundation  for innovative outdoor collaborative art events that we can now build on.

Thank you to the many open minds and willing and dedicated staff of the Bureau of Land Management Taos Field Office and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance staff members and volunteers that created NeoRio 2009!  Thank you Basia Irland, our featured artist, for sharing her project, “Reseeding/Receding” with us, an informative and poetic combination of innovative material and social sculpture. Thank you to John Wenger for guidance and vision and Dutch oven Enchiladas and to Aron Rael, John Bailey and Craig Chapman for being open to collaboration. Thank you also to our cosponsoring organizations: the Village of Questa, Amigos Bravos, Rio Grande Restoration, Rivers and Birds, Localogy and HEREKEKE.

Thank you to everyone who came to experience and participate in the different aspects of the day! Your presence and and participation provided the alchemy that made the day a success. Let’s do it again next year! Come celebrate art and wilderness and join the conversation at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area September 24^th, 25^th and 26^th for NeoRio 2010.

by Basia Irland

photo by Mad Zoga Studios

On a bright, crisp, fall day under a cloudless, azure sky, thirty-five intrepid souls hike down the rocky El Chiflo trail at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area into the Rio Grande gorge surrounded by steep stone walls. We are carrying neither food nor drink in our backpacks and coolers, but ephemeral sculptures made of ice embedded with native riparian seeds. Once we are gathered on the sandbanks of El Rio, champagne is passed around to toast this struggling river who has given far more than she has to give.

“May you always flow. May you always flow clean. And most of all, may you always flow WILD!!”

These sculptures, entitled receding/reseeding, are frozen river water carved into the forms of open or closed books with an “ecological text” of local seeds, which are launched into the current. The seeds are released as the ice melts. When the plants regenerate and grow along the bank, they help sequester carbon, hold the banks in place, and provide shelter for riverside creatures.

This project emphasizes the necessity of communal effort and scientific knowledge to deal with the complex issues of climate disruption and watershed restoration. I am working with stream ecologists, biologists, and botanists to ascertain which are the best seeds for each specific riparian zone. The title of this work was conceived for “Weather Report,” a groundbreaking exhibition about climate change curated by art critic/author Lucy Lippard for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado. For that exhibition, I carved a 250-pound book from clear ice and embedded it with seed “paragraphs” of mountain maple (Acer spicatum), columbine flowers (Aquilegia coerulea), and Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens). Four people carried the heavy book out into the current of Boulder Creek. As it rested between two large rocks, viewers could see the water flowing under the ice. A photograph of this piece shows three students standing knee deep in the river as they “read” the seed text on the book. Arapahoe Glacier, which provides 60 percent of Boulder’s drinking water, is receding rapidly due to climate disruption. One of the ways to help sequester more carbon and hopefully reduce some of the effects of climate change is through plants: hence, receding/reseeding.

In the ongoing video documentary about this project, we see the carved books in different stages of dissolving and reseeding various sites in Europe and the United States. In June 2009, after viewing the receding/reseeding video at the Albuquerque Museum, sixty participants boarded a bus and arrived at the Rio Grande nearby to witness and help launch eleven ice books. If conditions are right (and ripe), a book will be left to melt into the banks of a river. This was the case in June, when Tome II, a 300-pound ice book with paragraphs of local cottonwood seeds (Populus fremontii), was placed next to the Rio and allowed to melt. It was the season during which the cottonwood seeds would normally begin to take root and germinate. Since the river has been straightened and not allowed its annual overflow into the floodplain, however, cottonwood seeds fall onto dry land under the canopy along much of the Rio Grande and are unable to sprout. The melting ice book recreated, in microcosm, conditions for cottonwood seeds to grow.

The amount of devastation caused to rivers is extraordinary and the need to educate and activate local communities is vast. But as americanrivers.net writes: “Across the country, we are proving that rivers are remarkably resilient, and when given a chance they can thrive once again.”

At the river’s edge on this October day we launch ice books into the cold current one by one. There are seven frozen “pages” with Roman numerals created from desert willow seedpods. (See addendum for a list of the seeds used in the books.) Some people wade out into the flow to place a “manuscript” in the water, while others toss the ice pages from shore. We watch each sculpture disappear downstream. Then three larger books are launched. One has a “text” of lemonade berries (Rhus trilobata) picked a month earlier from nearby bushes, and two have the number 350 written in seeds. As most of us are now aware, 350 parts per million is perhaps the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we have already surpassed this number. I have also created a series of unfired New Mexico clay books laden with riparian seeds, which we leave along the wet banks to disintegrate back into the earth.

After the hike up out of the gorge, our group meets at the Montosa Campsite on the rim for a scrumptious dinner around the campfire. Craig Chapman and wilderness chef extraordinaire John Wenger cook up an enormous Dutch oven feast of green chile chicken enchiladas and vegetarian tortilla stew. John’s daughter Tuscany has brought two colorful cakes iced that replicate his paintings of the Rio Grande. Huddled around the fire for warmth, we listen to musicians Justin Dean on guitar and Mark Dudrow on cello sing tales about desert life lived in oceans of sage. This fantastic day has been one of new friendships, continuing connections to the Rio Grande, enriching dialogues, and WILD ART!

Addendum: I am humbled to be the first artist honored by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and the Bureau of Land Management for my work with the environment. Deep, heartfelt thanks go to artist Claire Long for her organizational skills in working toward visions of local community connectivity; painter John Wenger for inspiring others with his life-long love of wilderness; New Mexico Wilderness Alliance Wild Guide editor Craig Chapman, who (along with the rest of the Alliance staff) is devoting time to raising the amount of New Mexico lands designated as Wilderness from a mere 2 percent; and to BLM Assistant Manager of the Upper Rio Grande Gorge Aron Rael for his enthusiastic support of the arts.

Each participant received a gift packet of seeds with the following information:

This envelope contains seeds for northern Rio Grande riparian zones, which are used in the ice books.

Trees and shrubs:

Lemonade berry, Rhus trilobata

Mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus montanus

Apache plume, Fallugia paradoxa

Rio Grande cottonwood, Populus fremontii

Desert willow, Chilopsis linearis

Grasses:

Alkali sacaton, Sporobolus airoides

Indian ricegrass, Oryzopsis hymenoides

Sheep fescue, Festuca ovina

Blue grama, Bouteloua gracilis

Sideoats grama, Bouteloua curtipendula

Little bluestem, Andropogon scovarius

Streambank wheatgrass, Agropyron riparium

Galleta, Hilaria jamesii

A few of the many informative water Websites are:

waterfootprint.org Carbon footprints are not the only ones that are important! Check out your water footprint.

riogranderestoration.com Working for the betterment of the Rio Grande.

amigosbravos.org Friends of the Wild Rivers is a New Mexico river conservation organization.

nmwaterdialogue.org “Promotes the wise stewardship of water resources in New Mexico.”

xeriscapenm.com The Xeriscape Council of New Mexico promotes water conservation.

riversandbirds.org Experiential watershed education.

waterforpeople.org Assists developing countries with safe drinking water and sanitation.

pacinst.org “The Pacific Institute conducts research and policy analysis in the areas of environmental protection, economic development, and social equity”

Dr. Peter Gleick’s blog is Water by the Numbers

Basia Irland, Professor Emerita, University of New Mexico, creates international water projects featured in her book, Water Library, University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Irland often works with scholars from diverse disciplines building rainwater harvesting systems; connecting communities along lengths of rivers; filming and producing video documentaries; and creating waterborne disease projects around the world, most recently in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and Nepal. Irland is the recipient of over forty grants including a Senior Fulbright Research Award for Southeast Asia, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship Grant, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Grant. She lectures and exhibits extensively. She has filmed and produced eight documentary videos about water. Essays about her work have been included in books published in Germany, England, Switzerland, and the U.S. To learn more about Basia Irland, her work and her recently published book, Water Library, visit www.basiairland.com.



Top image: view within the Rio Grande Gorge at Chiflo; Bottom image: Cleo reading cottonwood seed text on 300 pound ice book; Photography and design by Claire Long

Neo Rio 2009

art, nature, culture and community in confluence

Wild Rivers Recreation Area, Questa New Mexico
October 17th 2009 1:30 – 9:00 pm
Free and open to all

Join LEAP, a new Environmental Arts Initiative, for NeoRio 2009, celebrating art, nature, creativity, wilderness, and community at Wild Rivers Recreation Area, part of the 235,980 acre proposed Rio Grande del Norte National Conservation Area.

Featuring Artist, Basia Irland: Receding/Reseeding Basia’s carved ice books embedded with local riparian seeds have been launched into rivers across Europe and the US to aid with river restoration. The project now comes to Wild Rivers.

Event Schedule (at Wild Rivers Visitor Center unless otherwise noted)
1:30 Welcome from Bureau of Land Management, presentations from New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Village of Questa, and Ester Garcia
2:00 Presentation and short film by featured artist, Basia Irland
3:00 Receding/Reseeding participatory art event, at the Rio, El Chiflo
5:30 Potluck and campfire, at Montoso Campsite
7:00 Live music by Justin Dean and Mark Dudrow, at Montoso Campsite

We will provide dutch oven-baked green chile chicken, red chile beef and vegetarian enchiladas. Vegans can be accommodated with adequate notice. Please bring your own favorite potluck dish, camp chair, plate, cup and utensils. Day-use fee waived; camping is available.

Hosted and sponsored by Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and LEAP (Land, Experience and Art of Place). Cosponsored by the Village of Questa, Amigos Bravos, Rio Grande Restoration, Rivers and Birds, Localogy and HEREKEKE.

For more information email leapsite@gmail.com or call 575-586-1150