Above All Else A Healthy Ocean
By John Daniel Teply
The line of pelicans seems to glide only a few feet from where I’m standing. I notice a small reflective dot on the moist eye of one of the birds. Expertly, instinctively, the birds maneuver updrafts off the cliffs near where I’m standing. Past them, hundreds of feet offshore, a line of another twenty-five pelicans glide or flap gently, just inches above the water’s surface. I stand awed, marveling. As a painter I ask, how do I speak of this experience to another?
I’m in Davenport, California. On a different day my view of the horizon might include whales. Today though, I see a distinctive stand of cypress trees molded by constant wind, trees often described as looking tortured. In the dried grass at the base of one tree I notice a small yellow beetle with four black dots on its back and, near it, a metallic green jumping spider. Behind me stands the cement plant, in front of me, cormorants rest on the remains of a pier that goes into the ocean to nowhere. But the overwhelming presence here is that of the ocean: the smell, the sound, the immense quantity of it, the vastness of its horizon. Invisible but omnipresent, life thrives under its surface: immeasurable numbers of creatures ranging from minute algae and bacteria to immense fish and sea mammals.
Difficult or Impossible Decisions
Perhaps each of us has a favorite spot along the coast. Looking out over it, we may find ourselves asking, Will it survive? Today, overfishing, pollution, and mining threaten the ocean. What will happen as the effects of global warming and ozone depletion become apparent? What unknown phenomenon, next year, next decade, next century will make its dark mark, what new descriptive environmental phrase will become part of our vocabulary and demand a difficult or impossible decision?
If history is an accurate measure, we can count on new, urgent ocean issues to surface. If history is a measure, we can count on human actions to be shortsighted, fraught with politics and greed. And, as in the past, we can count on the decisions we make to address mainly the immediate needs of the next five to ten years, as we fill in ocean estuaries for housing, destroy forests and watersheds for building materials, and permit toxic chemicals from farmlands and cities to wash by default into our oceans. Ironically, the “pragmatic, reasonable” solutions we tend to choose frequently prove not to be reasonable at all and one generation is left with the herculean task of cleaning up or compensating for a previous generation’s pragmatism.
The logic of our choices is baffling when viewed over time, and is especially painful to those of us who believe that life is a miracle and that the living integrity of every creature must be respected for its own sake, on its own terms, and who believe that we do have the responsibility not to wreak havoc on the planet but to preserve it for our progeny many, many generations hence. What is my role in this as a citizen of the United States, and of the world? As an artist, how can I actively create solutions that will benefit the ocean? I have a unique contribution to make and I do not want to waste it.
To protect the ocean we need not only a strong environmental conscience but a voice to express it, because without both, threats to the ocean are left unchallenged and its health subject to the manipulations of politics and industry. To provide such a voice, a group of artists are undertaking a monumental project. The project involves 1,320 visual artists.
Someone to Watch Over Every Mile
I began this story with my experience in Davenport. Imagine other artists, each going to his or her own special ocean location. It is a particular failing of modern life that most of us seldom experience the intimacy of earth and place, that such an intimacy is not integrated with our lives or even necessary to function. But imagine that 1,320 artists have each decided to observe intimately, over time, a special location in order to persuade us of its beauty, so that we know, clearly, what it is that we want to conserve. Imagine an artist for every mile of coastline who will speak in its defense—who will observe any untoward action, if any occurs, on that particular stretch and make this threat known to the rest of us. Imagine every mile of the California, Oregon, and Washington coastline having someone to watch over it.
Now imagine that the product of these visits is an individual painting of a specific location, one that measures four feet wide and which, when joined with the others of the project, creates a continuous seascape of the coast of the United States measuring a mile in length. This is just a start. The ocean will always be under siege by humans. Problems today will be compounded by the unknown problems of the future. There will always be problems that must be addressed—and short term commitment will not suffice. If what we do about those problems is to have significance, we must make plans that will unfold within a significant time frame. This project, from the date of its first completed full-mile exhibition, is to be a one hundred-year project, re-created new each year. During that time, panels will be painted, exhibited, and sold, raising grant money for individuals and groups to generate the circumstances that will bring about a healthy ocean.
John Teply, Founder of For the Seventh Generation
Santa Cruz, California 1999
I’m in Davenport, California. On a different day my view of the horizon might include whales. Today though, I see a distinctive stand of cypress trees molded by constant wind, trees often described as looking tortured. In the dried grass at the base of one tree I notice a small yellow beetle with four black dots on its back and, near it, a metallic green jumping spider. Behind me stands the cement plant, in front of me, cormorants rest on the remains of a pier that goes into the ocean to nowhere. But the overwhelming presence here is that of the ocean: the smell, the sound, the immense quantity of it, the vastness of its horizon. Invisible but omnipresent, life thrives under its surface: immeasurable numbers of creatures ranging from minute algae and bacteria to immense fish and sea mammals.
Difficult or Impossible Decisions
Perhaps each of us has a favorite spot along the coast. Looking out over it, we may find ourselves asking, Will it survive? Today, overfishing, pollution, and mining threaten the ocean. What will happen as the effects of global warming and ozone depletion become apparent? What unknown phenomenon, next year, next decade, next century will make its dark mark, what new descriptive environmental phrase will become part of our vocabulary and demand a difficult or impossible decision?
If history is an accurate measure, we can count on new, urgent ocean issues to surface. If history is a measure, we can count on human actions to be shortsighted, fraught with politics and greed. And, as in the past, we can count on the decisions we make to address mainly the immediate needs of the next five to ten years, as we fill in ocean estuaries for housing, destroy forests and watersheds for building materials, and permit toxic chemicals from farmlands and cities to wash by default into our oceans. Ironically, the “pragmatic, reasonable” solutions we tend to choose frequently prove not to be reasonable at all and one generation is left with the herculean task of cleaning up or compensating for a previous generation’s pragmatism.
The logic of our choices is baffling when viewed over time, and is especially painful to those of us who believe that life is a miracle and that the living integrity of every creature must be respected for its own sake, on its own terms, and who believe that we do have the responsibility not to wreak havoc on the planet but to preserve it for our progeny many, many generations hence. What is my role in this as a citizen of the United States, and of the world? As an artist, how can I actively create solutions that will benefit the ocean? I have a unique contribution to make and I do not want to waste it.
To protect the ocean we need not only a strong environmental conscience but a voice to express it, because without both, threats to the ocean are left unchallenged and its health subject to the manipulations of politics and industry. To provide such a voice, a group of artists are undertaking a monumental project. The project involves 1,320 visual artists.
Someone to Watch Over Every Mile
I began this story with my experience in Davenport. Imagine other artists, each going to his or her own special ocean location. It is a particular failing of modern life that most of us seldom experience the intimacy of earth and place, that such an intimacy is not integrated with our lives or even necessary to function. But imagine that 1,320 artists have each decided to observe intimately, over time, a special location in order to persuade us of its beauty, so that we know, clearly, what it is that we want to conserve. Imagine an artist for every mile of coastline who will speak in its defense—who will observe any untoward action, if any occurs, on that particular stretch and make this threat known to the rest of us. Imagine every mile of the California, Oregon, and Washington coastline having someone to watch over it.
Now imagine that the product of these visits is an individual painting of a specific location, one that measures four feet wide and which, when joined with the others of the project, creates a continuous seascape of the coast of the United States measuring a mile in length. This is just a start. The ocean will always be under siege by humans. Problems today will be compounded by the unknown problems of the future. There will always be problems that must be addressed—and short term commitment will not suffice. If what we do about those problems is to have significance, we must make plans that will unfold within a significant time frame. This project, from the date of its first completed full-mile exhibition, is to be a one hundred-year project, re-created new each year. During that time, panels will be painted, exhibited, and sold, raising grant money for individuals and groups to generate the circumstances that will bring about a healthy ocean.
John Teply, Founder of For the Seventh Generation
Santa Cruz, California 1999