I continue to take my inspiration from Balch Creek in Forest Park, Portland, OR.
As I find my imagery in the almost infinite views of this creek, I strive to capture the tension of the beauty and strength of nature with the intrusion of humans. We come to land, we measure and scheme on how to exploit.
Are we bad?
Let's say we are individuals, family-groups who are only trying to survive, but somehow balance gets lost time and time again.
Anyway, I am pushing on to have this creek renamed to kulla kulla creek, "bird" in the chinuk-wawa language, the first language of the Oregon people, used by all the tribes in the region and beyond.
Dan Balch was a colonist who received his land for FREE in 1850 via a Donation Land Claim. He and his family settled, but before long, in 1858, Dan murdered his son-in-law in a drunken rage, not approving of his daughter's elopement.
Dan was the first white man to be tried, convicted and hanged for murder in the state of Oregon.
Continuing to refer to a creek with murder's moniker, is an insult to the original people whose land was stolen and to all people striving to live in a civilized society, past and future. It's not funny, nor quirky...it is unjust and was an act of violence that ended an innocent persons' life.
Here is a video of a portion of my kulla-kulla creek series.
There is an abrupt spot where the creek is unceremoniously culverted into the storm sewer to be fed into the Willamette River, via a pipe, a mile down the way.
The painting is of the culvert, flanked by the diagrams of the newly engineered trash rack.
The flowing silk ribbons represent the wild beauty of the creek, and contrast with the black burlap representing landscape cloth and the lights-out dark of entering the culvert.
Movement vs static.
The bird sculptures remind us the creek is to be renamed kulla kulla, but also point out how humans appreciate nature but simplify it, losing so much of the intricate beauty.
The complexity of nature is actually beyond us, but we honor these motifs as reminders of what is out there.
Here you go:
I am a 30+ years member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, former historian of Willamette Heights, former director of the Oregon Historical Society, former Parks Board member and president, retired professor at PSU and UO, etc., etc...., and believe that Balch Creek should remain as named. I have always wondered whether or not Balch was guilty of actually "murdering" Mortimer Stump. From my study of the case, I honestly don't know. A lot of fog and myth have surrounded the story over the past 170 years. As someone appointed by former Mayor Sam Adams to create standards for naming and renaming sites within Portland, my opinion is to leave it alone and focus on giving names to unnamed sites within Forest Park. Chet Orloff
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