I've always been fascinated by the "artwork" our planet's geologic processes create -- from the complex and beautiful patterns of rivers to the stunning geometries and colors of minerals under a microscope. Humanity's art has been inspired by nature for as long as we've been creating art. There are numerous artists who create installations within nature and using natural materials. In this Q&A I'd like to highlight the work of geologist-artist Dave Janesko, which is not just inspired by geologic processes, but is created through active collaboration with geologic process. I hope you enjoy it.
Brian Romans: Your work with acid mine drainage involves placing a canvas in the stream and letting the dissolved minerals precipitate onto the canvas. As the artist, you are making some choices but also letting the processes in the stream create the final product. I suppose one might consider it a collaboration. Are you anticipating anything about the outcome -- the colors, the patterns, the overall feel -- when you make choices during the process?
Dave Janesko: I have been around acid mine drainage all my life. I grew up in the western Pennsylvania coal region, and after college worked as an environmental consultant surveying and sampling drainage sites across Pennsylvania and West Virginia. These were always such weird places, not only visually and olfactorily, but they are such unique examples of human alteration. We dug coal out of the ground and an accelerated chemistry occurred in the spaces left behind. The totally unintended result: streams and creeks dyed iron-oxide orange, or aluminum-oxide silver. An awesome and totally unintended pollution side effect.
I was experiencing these sites everyday at work, the smell (a sulfur brimstone smell) and the bright unreal colors, I started to experiment with them. This was part of my training in the sciences: if you want to understand something, do experiments. But I was looking to understand something beyond the sites themselves. I am trying to understand myself, or more specifically my place in the world, and my place in the system of energy needed to power our modern lives. For me, this experimentation with mine drainage is a means to connect with how humans change the planet. “Connecting” here is something like a combination of accept/intuit/love. This is an important goal I have with my art work.
Once, while I was working at the environmental consulting firm, I came across this amazing seep. It is on the slope of a small hill, about 100 feet above a river. The mine drainage cascades down the hillside, leaving a splaying deposit of bright orange-red iron oxide. I later found the site in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Orphan Mine Drainage Registry. The site had one of the highest iron concentration of any seep in the state, with something like 12 kilograms of dissolved iron coming out of the ground every hour.
This was intense. I needed to integrate this, to understand my part in it. I did not want to use the pigment to paint with, or to make sculptures with the mud, and I was not content photographing the seeps. These are all just ways of turning something into something else. I wanted to take part, to really work with the stream and chemistry. So I did what came naturally, I threw some heavy watercolor paper in the stream and waited a few weeks, I totally feel I'm “collaborating” with the stream. I got this idea after spending hours slogging through foot deep iron oxide mud, then spending hours more trying to scrub the crud off of my boots. Along with these “collaborative paintings”, I spent a lot of time altering the stream: making dams, altering the flow, disturbing the sediment so the stream would run red. This red plume would eventually make its way down to the river.
Romans: How does your background in Earth science inform the way you approach this artistic process? Also, do you think your technical background changes the way you feel about the process and/or the final product?
Janesko: I got an undergraduate degree in geology, and spent two years in graduate school studying sedimentology. I carry a lot of what I learned into my art work. First is the appreciation of Earth as an infinitely complex, dynamic, and very old “machine”. Another is an appreciation of the geology concept of "provenance" -- the history of the rock. For example, the provenance of the acid mine drainage pieces includes the history of their creation by me, the history of coal mining, the chemistry and biology in the mine that liberated the metals from the rock, and so on. This concept of provenance makes each work a part of the history of the Earth. I realize that is kind of an absurd statement. One goal of a work of art is to express those ideas through the work, or the work alone should be able to express the concept. Any sedimentologist who has held a nice conglomerate can relate to this idea: the whole story of that rock is right there in your hand. I have some friends who work with zircons in sedimentary rocks, that is one of the best story tellers, there is a whole galaxy inside those tiny grains.
Romans: There are numerous examples of polluted waterways around the world with which to work. Have you thought about exploring some other, more natural, settings?
Janesko: Definitely. For example, there's a natural seep in Antarctica called "Blood Falls" that shares much of the chemistry of Pennsylvania's mine drainage sites. Imagine a bright-red iron solution seeping out onto white ice. I have also created "acid mine drainage" in my studio, starting from pyrite collected from coal outcrops in Kentucky. This was another way for me to take part in the processes that actually occur underground. Actually right now, sitting on my desk is a jar of pyrite in water from the Marcellus Shale that has gypsum crystals growing all over it. I throw some pennies in they a few weeks ago, they are pretty much dissolved now.
Romans: Speaking of natural processes, you have an interest in exploring questions related to ‘natural’ vs. ‘unnatural’. This is a fascinating topic, especially when it comes to the complex cause and effect relationships between our society and our surroundings. How do you think your work addresses this issue?
Janesko: I have always felt a certain disconnectedness from nature. It is like feeling something is missing but not knowing what that something is. I am not special in this feeling -- I think it motivates “back-to-nature” movements or new age healing-power-of-nature fads.
When I say unnatural I am talking of things like highways, GMO’s, transuranic elements, factory farming, polyester and hydrocarbon use. The environmental literature I've read is filled with “its-unnatural” arguments against all of these things. But I think that GMO’s, einsteinium, cities, landfills and anthropogenic climate change are wonderful and natural and terrifying; in the same way earthquakes and flowers and submarine sediment flows are wonderful and natural and terrifying.
I believe that the more one thinks of cities and toxic waste as unnatural the more they become separated from nature, and I think that separation have some pretty devastating psychological effects. So, given all these things, my question is what I can do about it? How can I explore “disconnectedness”? As an artist and scientist, just thinking about it is not satisfying. I need to do or experience the problem I am interested in, make that duality something I can do. So, I have been going into Nature, and changing it to see if those changes are unnatural. I dig holes, break branches of trees, climb rocks, collect rocks, move rocks, count rocks, jump off of things, roll logs, make dams in streams, knock trees over, throw pine cones off of cliffs, pull up plants by their roots, etc ... If I act like a force of nature I think I can make myself see/believe/feel like a force of nature.
Romans: Finally, the acid mine drainage work discussed in this Q&A is only one of the approaches you employ in your work. What are some of the other approaches, material, and ideas you are working on and interested in?
Janesko: I just started construction on a large project dealing with human driven climate change. I wanted to bring the abstract notions of climate change into physical form. The physicality and temporality of climate change is too vast for the human mind to comprehend. I want to bring abstract climate change into solid form. I want to remind myself and other people that we are part of this planetary system, we are changing the climate. So, I decided to be very literal about that. I am filling reaction containers with my breath, water, and serpentine. Luckily I live in San Francisco and there is a large outcrop of Franciscan serpentinite across the street from my studio. The serpentine dissolves in the hot carbonic acid and soon I have some magnesite (MgCO3), solidification of breath, A Personal CO2 Sequestrator.
I also do a lot of work with electronic waste, or e-waste. I got interested after seeing pictures of e-waste dumps in China. Again, I wanted to experience that not just read about it or some sort of activism. I put the e-waste in a salt and vinegar bath and hook it up to a car battery, the metals dissolve into the liquid. the sludge is evaporated onto canvas or paper creating a very colorful “abstract” painting. I originally wanted to use aqua regia, but it was way to dangerous.
Check out Dave Janesko's acid-mine drainage and e-waste pieces on his Etsy site: http://www.etsy.com/shop/djanesko
*Images: (1) AMD 039 by Dave Janesko; (2) Photo of Dave Janesko unrolling the canvas; (3) Acid Mine Drainage 017 by Dave Janesko; (4) AMD With Fly Ash by Dave Janesko; (5) Electrodissolution of Ewaste: Motherboard 006 by Dave Janesko.
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