Projects

A work of art is 2½ million times more noticeable than an open pit coal mine. I base this on the physical sizes of—and political responses to—Chris Drury’s “Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around” on the University of Wyoming campus and the Black Thunder coal mine in Campbell County. The coal mine is a monumental sculpture (broadly construed) visible from 700 miles above the Earth; Drury’s art installation fits into a single 270 square-yard pixel on Google Earth. But if you really want to see human handiwork from outer space, check out the swaths of beetle-killed forests stretching across 4,800 square miles of the West. Of course, that would be a rather environmentally sly use of imagery—which is precisely what Chris Drury was up to in using beetle-killed trees to form a vortex at the center of which is a pile of coal.

Chris Drury’s “Carbon Sink” as installed on the University of Wyoming’s campus. The 36-foot diameter piece of art, composed of scorched wood felled by pine beetles, has created a controversy: how much sway should politicians and industry representatives have over academic freedom? (Photos courtesy of Chris Drury)

The point of “Carbon Sink”—or at least the message that the politicians and energy industry drew from the installation—was that burning fossil fuels pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is warming the climate (which is an intolerable scientific discovery), which has led to higher winter temperatures, which are insufficient to kill off the outbreak (which was fostered by drought and forest management practices), which results in mountainsides covered in dead trees. And to take this one step further, a recent study in Canada revealed that the decomposition of the trees is further adding to atmospheric carbon, making the winters warmer which means—well, you get the picture. Or at least the power brokers get the picture.

In a melodramatic response to the artwork, Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, asserted that the University of Wyoming, “put up a monument attacking me, demonizing the industry.” Loomis claimed to understand academic freedom, but intimated that liberty has a price. State representative Tom Lubnau from Gillette employed the same sort of roundabout threat: “While I would never tinker with the University of Wyoming budget—I’m a great supporter of the University of Wyoming—every now and then you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from,” (Translation: I’d sure as hell tinker if these uppity artists and impertinent eggheads continue to misbehave.)

All of this leads one to wonder how a small work of art in a corner of a university campus could warrant such outrage. Could the hegemony of Wyoming’s energy industry really be threatened by an elegantly arranged spiral of burnt logs? This whole hullaballoo could be the old ploy of powerful industrial interests playing the victim, but that explanation is too easy. I suspect that the panic was overblown but real. And it arose from Drury’s subversive work being featured in an educational setting. The university is corrupting the state’s youth — and we all know what happened to Socrates (hint: hemlock).

(Extracted from a longer essay in Wyofile by Geoffrey Lockwood)

There is much more comment on the web - google the project.

In May 2012 the piece was removed! Follow-up essay here.