ABOUT THE RESIDENCY

For the past six years, as a member of Occupy St. Johns and the Willamette River Advocacy Group Feldman has been involved in the Portland Harbor superfund cleanup doing outreach and education. Projects included community storytelling events, river poetry trips and the recording of an oral history of the Willamette with a grant from Metro. She feels that to sustain a just and thorough cleanup of the River we, all Portland residents, not only those living near the contaminated lower 11 miles of the Willamette, need to heal by deepening our relationship with the River.

During the residency, Laura will also have the opportunity to collaborate with Brian Holmes, who with the help of Columbia Riverkeeper is creating an interdisciplinary, multi-thematic map of the Columbia River. His work will also be featured in the upcoming exhibit, The Earth Will Not Abide hosted by the PNCA Center for Contemporary Art & Culture.

ABOUT LAURA FELDMAN

Laura Feldman is a poet, educator and activist, much of whose recent work relates to the Willamette and Columbia Rivers embracing the North Portland peninsula where she grew up. She is a graduate of Portland State University’s Leadership for Sustainability Education Master’s program, 2013. Her comprehensive project: Sustainable Activism: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation explored ways of developing a curriculum that students and community members could use to learn, educate and engage others in oversight of the Hanford cleanup. Poems from her chapbook, hearing Hanford (nine muses press, 2011) were included in Particles on the Wall, a travelling art and science exhibit curated by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. She has also published a Hanford curriculum through Evergreen State College, Curriculum for the Bioregion (https://serc.carleton.edu/account/index.php), and led a series of Columbia Riverwalks exploring the possibility of an educational pilgrimage from Portland to Hanford. Last summer, she and other River activists buried an Earth Treasure Vase (Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project) at Hanford.

CONTACT
info@willametteriverkeeper.org
info@columbiariverkeeper.org

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, August 24, 6:30-8pm
All are invited to the Opening of the River Gathering. Refreshments will be offered as Laura launches the project.
At the opening the Columbia River Triptych photographs of Glenna Cole Allee will be on display featuring her project, Hanford Reach. The project is an installation combining photography, video projection, and sound collected over four years to “map” the Hanford area: the Manhattan Project site in Washington state where plutonium was created for the atomic bomb dropped upon the city of Nagasaki. Plutonium production continued at Hanford for decades, thereafter. The vast site encompasses nine nuclear reactors, one still operating; a 20,000 year contaminated no-go zone; sites sacred to Native tribes for twelve thousand years; a pioneer ferry crossing point; and evacuated townships and orchards. Part of the Hanford area has recently been re-imagined as a National Monument and wildlife reserve; the Hanford Reach installation is named after this “reserve.” The full installation was made in collaboration with Michael Paulus (video).

READING EVENT
Saturday, September 8, 3-4pm
Dancer/ethnographer, Catherine Evleshin will recite stories about the hazards facing the natural world, and Community/labor organizer and English teacher, Laurie King will read from Winterkill, a novel by Craig Lesley.

TRASH + WATER= PAPER
Saturday, September 15, 2-4pm
Join us for a walk down to Cathedral Park where we will collect paper trash, plant clippings and river water to bring back to the Working Library for a papermaking experience. As we transform what we collect into handmade paper we will reflect on our relationship to public waterways like the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Leading the event are Jenn Woodward and Gary A. Hanson of Pulp & Deckle Studio, in collaboration with Working Library artist in residence, Laura Feldman. Bring long plastic gloves that can get wet if you have them.

READING + MAPPING
Tuesday September 18, 6-8:30PMAbby Phillips Metzger will read from her work, Meander Scars: Reflections on Healing the Willamette River and c3: Studio Resident Brian Holmes will discuss his mapping project Learning from Cascadia.
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IKEBANA DEMO + READING
Wednesday September 19, 6-8:30PM
Megan Rothstein will present an Ikebana demo focusing on water and Rob Lee will read from his work on on the Multnomahs, a tribe of Chinookan people who live in the Portland area and whose villages were located throughout the Portland basin before white settlement.

LAURA FELDMAN | RIVER GATHERING CLOSING EVENT
Friday September 21, 6:30-8PM
Conversation, community and refreshments will be offered as Laura concludes her residency and presents River Ecologues.