Exhibit Pays Tribute to Life Lost in Creek

Morgantown Dominion Post
8 September 2011
By Lindsey Fleming

The opening reception for “Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek” is set for 6-9 p.m. Friday in the Jackson Kelly Gallery of Arts Monongahela at 201 High St. For more information on the exhibit, go to http://web.me.com/paynestake/Homage_to _Dunkard_Creek/

On a warm, damp summer day two years ago, Anne Payne stood, waders on, knee-deep in the middle of her friend Wendy’s problem, one the Mount Morris, Pa., resident had been imploring her to check out for a while.

“She kept saying, ‘You’ve got to come out. There’s something wrong with my creek,’ ” Payne said. “I’m like, ‘What am I going to do about her creek?’ ”

But the Morgantown artist knew, after witnessing the Dunkard Creek fish kill firsthand, she was going to have to do something.

White carcasses floated somberly downstream. Log jams of the living, seeking fresh water, were so desperate to reach the tiny rivulets trickling with it, they suffocated while throwing themselves on top of one another.

Mudpuppies, “with their little black paws,” crawled up the banks to escape.

“That was it for me. I could have heard about it ’til the cows came home, but to stand there and see, it just made you want to weep.”

Instead of weeping though, Payne decided she must educate herself. She began attending meetings about the massive kill and its implications. She researched the more than a 100 species of fish and mussels officially wiped out due to a toxin in the 2009 golden algae bloom, as the result of increased levels of total dissolved solids from mine discharge. And she found out about others — such as insects, salamanders and frogs — that no one she contacted in an official capacity confirmed for certain perished. It was the non-experts, the residents along the creek, who provided her with lists of those creatures, as well as historical records she uncovered.

Friday, artwork depicting 90 of those species, created by an equal number of artists, will adorn the walls of Arts Monongahela during the opening reception of an exhibit which pays tribute to their lives. There will also be photos of the creek, information about the species and the fish kill, an interactive display and a video of residents along the creek speaking about how the kill affected them.



The seeds of “Reflections: An Homage to Dunkard Creek” have been in the works since not long after Payne’s visit to her friend’s property. It was then when she made the ambitious decision to paint 116 of the species that were affected. By 2010, she only had 10 pieces completed.

“I’m thinking, I’m 69 years old, let’s do the math here. No, this is not working,” she said, laughing.

So, when a friend suggested she get someone else to help, she ran with the idea and decided to randomly assign a species to a number of fellow artists. Ninety, she said, seemed like a nice round number.

“I could probably have gotten famous artists from afar who are activists to participate but I thought, ‘You know, I wanted to be kind of in a family of artists who have the same physical connection to the [Monongahela] watershed.’ ”

And that’s when the onslaught of calls began.

She started with Ron Donoughe — a plein air painter she had no connection with, other than she had seen his work and thought it would be appropriate. He happily agreed. As did all of the participants she contacted, which include practicing artists who live, attended school or have vacationed in the area surrounding the watershed.

“It’s a big network of people [who are] made of the same water,” she said of the dozens of artists who hail from Boston, Mass., to Charleston and many points in between. “We drink it. It falls on us when it rains. Everybody felt the same connection to this in varying degrees.”

“In some ways Ann looked at the watershed and saw it as an artshed too,” said Brent Bailey, director of the Appalachia Program at The Mountain Institute, a nonprofit organization which sponsors the exhibit. “This is a whole community of people, [some of whom] have never even met each other, but are all tied to the same piece of land. There’s a real heart response here for many of them.”

It’s something Payne realized quickly, during her recruiting efforts.

“A lot of people, I felt like they almost said, ‘Gee, we’ve been waiting for your call,’ ” she said.

She said many became acquainted with their assigned species — which range from algae and large mouth bass to muskies and Fatmucket Mussels — for the first time. Even those who had initially expressed concerns about their picks, finding them boring, ugly or both, came to appreciate them. Some searched the Web. Others spoke with fishermen and professors to learn more. And a fair amount traveled to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to study specimens up close and personal.

The result of such efforts is an abunwork as varied as the species they represent. Lithographs, prints, watercolors, oils and more, portray the kaleidescope of colorful life just underneath the water’s surface and range in tone from whimsical to contemplative.

In an effort to make the traveling exhibit portable, cost-effective and adaptable to different spaces, Payne required each artist to create on the same sized surface — a 10-1/4-inch-by-7-inch masonite art board covered with French watercolor paper.



“It’s something that anybody can do without enormous resources,” she said. “I made it to go in the back of a car.”

For the next two years, “Reflections” will be on display in several galleries around the region. And if all goes well, even farther. The idea is to provide an exhibit that is accessible, so that anyone inspired by it can welcome it to their community or easily duplicate it.

This accessibly and the creative spin “Reflections” puts on the larger environmental issues of water quality and energy use, are at the crux of why The Mountain Institute partnered with Payne in its first artistic endeavor, according to Bailey.

The institute, active in West Virginia since 1972, focuses much of its efforts on environmental education in schools. With “Reflections” the organization saw a way to reach a broader audience.

“It’s a really great way to raise awareness,” Bailey said. “This seemed to be a part of that conversation about energy and water and how they collide. ... Water is probably the greatest resource that comes from mountains. And everything springs from the mountains and we feel like this is just an important resource that needs to be highlighted.

“And how do you get the public to really take an interest in something that is so valuable but probably so underappreciated? Creating this kind of an opportunity for public engagement, to come and learn and talk about it, seems like a really great way to further that awareness and that understanding.”

Though the exhibit is intended to spark debate and raise questions, that’s only a part of what “Reflections” is meant to inspire in viewers.

“Let’s start with appreciation of what we have. And how we deal with it will be based on an understanding, an appreciation of what’s here rather than just looking at numbers and figures,” Payne said, referring to the fish kill and its future implications.

She added, “part of that honoring [of the species] isn’t just to wring our hands and worry. It’s to say, ‘They’re amazing. They’re marvelous. They’re beautiful. They’re funny. They’re interesting. They’re useful.’ And at the same time, the humans who created them are the same way. It’s that interaction. And that’s not about death. That’s about life.