It’s 4:30 in the morning. In a few hours I’ve got to get up and go to work. I’ve been tossing and turning for hours thinking about the Copper River Watershed, and what will happen if the oil pipelines burst. Ever since I started this project — collecting art and stories of the world’s rivers — I’ve become more blown away by the fragility of the earth’s water systems.

Each artist who sends me a painting tells a compelling story of their favorite river. Each river, like each one of us, has its wild beauty and its challenges to stay alive and healthy. What keeps me up at night is how much support, love and intelligence each of these rivers needs at this time. As I write this, I am sending a message in a bottle. Who will fight for the life of our planet’s precious treasure: clear, pure water?

My plan is to use this River Journal as a way to share these amazing river stories, hoping to find the open-hearted people who share my concern.

Thanks,

Bernice

Dear River Friends,

The Global Rivers Art Project team, sponsored by Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee, came home from Alaska with a heavy heart. We discovered news of a clear and present danger to the immense 700,000-acre Copper River Watershed, in southeastern Alaska. This is the area that had been devastated by the huge oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, in March of 1989.

The Alaskan Oil Pipeline lies both next to, and within, this water system for 20% of its course to Prince William Sound. The problem: The metal pipes constructed to transport the heated crude oil, under pressure, are (in 2009) 33 years old, while the planned lifetime for these pipes is only 30 years long. Leaks have already happened, and if a big spill were to take place, it could destroy the water system and ecology of that entire region.

The Global Rivers Art Project is working with Kristen Smith, Director of The Copper River Watershed Project: www.copperriver.org Kristen educated our group about the gravity of this situation. As a result of our having been informed of this potentially dire situation, we at Global Rivers Art are taking this on as a major cause.

A group of 25 paintings from The Global River Art Project collection are now at the Valdez Museum, in Valdez, Alaska. The show is due to open on Sept 15th, and will close on November 7th of this year. After that, the collection will go to Tennessee for a show at Martin Methodist College. It will be on display there until January 15th, when it will travel back to Cordova, in the spring of 2010. That summer, it is slated to travel to Mexico City, in support of the Rio Magdalena – the last living (un-dammed) river of Mexico City.

 The Art Club has returned recently from our Alaska trip, where we took 25 paintings from the The Global Rivers Art Exchange Project collection to Cordova and Valdez.  The Copper River Watershed is a rich glacial river that covers 700,000 acres.  Here is a brief report on our trip. 

After getting settled in Cordova, our first daytrip was to visit Child’s Glacier.  An extraordinary regional painter, Jen Anne Kirchmeier, adopted us and served as our guide.  We were awe-struck, as we first looked out on that light-filled, turquoise mountain of ice.  Grabbing our journals as we left the van, we heard a crack loud as a high-powered rifle, followed by intense thunder.  The glacier was breaking off huge chunks — calving before our eyes!  A piece the size of a small room fell into the milky Copper River; and soon after, a large wave rose up out of the water and thundered toward the beach.  We were happy to be watching it all from a safe overlook far above.  Child’s Glacier calved heavily four or five times that day.  The students capped off their five-hour sketching trip with a dinner of fresh-caught sockeye salmon, which they roasted outdoors. 

We were fortunate to have a world-renowned artist along on this trip.  Based in Mexico City, Gerda Hansberg has been associated with The Global Rivers Art Exchange Project for two years.  She met us in Alaska, accompanied by 13 original works of art from the Mexico Biennial Artists.  These works are beautiful, and the artists’ statements are very moving.  They are a testimonial to the fact that this project has been embraced by very talented international artists. Jessie Lerner, an environmental artist from Madison, Wisconsin was also with us on the trip. She brought her gift of leadership, joy and creativity to the experience.  The Global Rivers Art Exchange Project has a presence on YouTube, which seems to be going a bit “viral,” even as I write.  People around the world have copied our slide show and posted it to their own websites.  It appears in sites from such diverse places as: Telugu, Indonesia, Russia, and the African continent; as well as on websites, such as the Wiser Earth Foundation. 

In closing, I invite you to view our YouTube site, the call words for which are: global rivers art. 

Bernice Davidson