Artists Present Their Take on 2009 Dunkard Creek Disaster
An art exhibit by 90 regional artists exhibits 90 species that
died in the fish kill.
The State Journal
28 September 2011
By Pam Kasey
Wading into Dunkard Creek two years ago this month, Morgantown
artist Ann Payne saw dead fish everywhere — floating around the
bends, bumping into logs.
“I walked up to this little seep and fish were trying to get up
into this tiny, tiny rivulet of water that wasn’t contaminated. It
was like a living sardine can,” Payne recalled.
“What really got to me, there was the body of this little
mudpuppy,” she said. “You never see them. But they were trying to
climb out of the water.”
Unlike many who read about the September 2009 Dunkard Creek fish
kill, Payne drove out to see for herself what happened when salts
released into the creek caused a bloom of golden algae which
killed creatures on more than 30 miles of the fishery.
Payne wanted to do something.
“Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek,” an art exhibit that opened
Sept. 9 in Morgantown, came of Payne’s experience: 90 regional
artists depicting 90 of the species that died.
Payne started painting the species one by one. But as estimates of
affected species topped 100, she soon became overwhelmed. She
called on artists to help and got such a powerful response that
she realized she had to define the project.
“I didn’t want people who had an environmental theory,” she said.
“I wanted people who had a personal, physical connection to this
watershed. So I defined it as the Monongahela River watershed,
which Dunkard flows into, and working artists who have a physical
connection to it.”
She had two parallel tasks: to come up with a list of species and
to organize the artists toward an exhibit.
“This took a took a lot of time and delayed the project,” Payne
said.
She drew fish, crayfish and mussel species from a West Virginia
Division of Natural Resources list. DNR did not sample insects
killed, she said, but did have inventories from before and after;
she included species whose populations dropped significantly.
“That left amphibians and reptiles,” she said. “As far as I could
figure out, nobody has done a thorough, ongoing inventory of that
kind of critter on those waters.”
After numerous calls and consultation with various lists, Payne
settled on a set of Dunkard species that are either gill-breathing
or had water-living young at the time of the kill.
“I stopped at 90,” she said. “I think the list is pretty close to
the way things were.”
Based on influences from exhibits she’d seen, an art class she’d
taken recently and her own sensibilities, Payne was inspired with
a unique design for the exhibit.
She wanted a uniform appearance among the many artists, so she
created art boards of the same size — about 10 inches by 7 inches.
That also fit her goal of making the exhibit portable.
“The whole thing fits in five boxes in my back seat,” she said.
Assigning species to artists posed another challenge.
“The rules were that it was random,” Payne said, because she knew
if she tried to meet individual requests, it would get out of
hand. “I put all the names in a mayonnaise jar and what they got,
they got.”
When the artist assigned the flathead catfish, Christina Neumann
of Pittsburgh, wanted to switch, Payne said no.
“A couple weeks later she was addicted to this fish,” Payne
laughed. “She’d gone out to fishermen and had them cut catfish
open. They found a Batman figurine, a beer bottle top, babies of
their own kind.”
Payne’s friend Brent Bailey, who directs the Appalachian Program
at The Mountain Institute, got his organization involved on the
natural history and education side.
“A group of artists could have gotten together and maybe done this
themselves, but as a nonprofit organization serving a mission for
the public good and broader awareness for conservation, it was a
hand-in-glove fit for us,” Bailey said.
TMI funded a glossy catalog of the exhibit with brief species
biographies that speak to diversity and interdependence.
“Call is a snore sound,” reads the description of the northern
leopard frog. “Jumps in zig-zag leaps of five to six feet.” The
red-spotted newt “eats insects, young amphibians, frog eggs and
worms.” Bailey also spent several days interviewing residents
along Dunkard Creek for a seven-minute video that accompanies the
exhibit.
“Everybody has a story to tell about Dunkard Creek — the biggest
fish they caught, favorite places to swim, what they do with their
families there,” he said.
One of the video’s three sections is about lessons learned.
“Everybody said, ‘Pay attention — report something that doesn’t
seem right. Take responsibility,’” Bailey said.
“Many of the people that we spoke with are retired from the coal
industry, and they’re ardent fishermen, and they see the need for
balance between protecting our resources and producing energy.
They also see the need for strong enforcement of the rules.”
But, he added, “This is not a finger-pointing art exhibit. It
gives people the opportunity to ask the question, What do we do to
resolve conflicts?”