About the Artist:

Claude Zervas grew up in Deming, on their family 40-acre property; his comfortability with nature influences a lot of his works. He is a French and American citizen, who moved to France in the 1980’s. His art contains many aspects of the Northwest in them, and he incorporates the use of light in many of his pieces.

About the Nooksack River:

A little bit of background on the Nooksack River is that it used to drain into the Lummi Bay, but because of settlers in the 19th and 20th century it forced the channels to change. Due to the settlers reshaping the area by logging, draining of the wetlands, etc. it now drains into Bellingham Bay. New research has been made that shows that Nooksack River has been used by humans far longer than what was initially thought.

“Because of the change I see in it every time I come back to visit, there’s a little bit of sadness involved in it”.

Statement from the artists:

The quote above is what inspired us to alter the meaning/interpretation of Claude Zervas’ sculpture. One of the first things we noticed when we had our initial reaction to the artwork was that there was a black empty rectangle in the middle of all the connecting pictures. We were discussing why the black rectangle might be there and we came up with the idea that it’s there to kind of make up your own ideas of what that space should look like. A way for someone to use their imagination and add their own creativity to the artwork. After this thought, our group was inspired to add our own creativity and digitally edit a picture of a forest fire in the middle to represent the impact global warming has on our beautiful forests. We wanted to make an environmental statement displaying what happens when you neglect the notion of global warming. It harms our earth in many ways, but we wanted to identify that it has increased the number of forests fires that occur. This artwork shows the beauty of the earth and we wanted to show what can happen when you just neglect the beauty.

 

By: Eden Mayfield, Leslie Delehanty, Joyce Mascarinas

 

Sources:

  • Bikman, Margaret. “New public art by Claude Zervas at WWU.” Bellingham Herald, www.bellinghamherald.com/entertainment/article51370735.html
  • “React. Research. Execute!” React Research Execute, wp.wwu.edu/wwuart109/2016/11/16/claude-zervas-nooksack-middle-fork/. (sculpture image)
  • http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/2017/06/firefighters_battle_intense_wildfires_in_utah_california (photoshopped image)