Erin Mallea
Erin Mallea is a multidisciplinary artist motivated by an attempt to better understand the spaces she inhabits. She explores the past and present of particular microcosms as metaphors for larger human and environmental conditions. Analytical, meandering, playful, and often public in nature, Mallea’s work manifests in a range of media including video, sculpture, photography, performance, audio, writing, and participatory projects. She is currently based in Pittsburgh, PA
When I first arrived in Green River, Utah, I wanted to learn about a historic grove of Fremont cottonwood trees. The grove is the anchor for the in-progress Pearl Baker Park, which in turn is the anchor of Canal Commons, Epicenter’s non-profit affordable housing initiative. I visited the local museum, spent a day with the Curator & Collections Manager, and flipped through hand drawn and Sanborn Maps, binders of historic images, and recorded oral histories. I spent mornings and afternoons as one of the few pedestrians in town, joined a Pearl Baker Park community work day, spoke with the park’s landscape architect and project managers, had lunch with the local town historian (“if anyone will know, it’s her”), and struck up conversations with locals, Epicenter and community center staff, and young people at the teen center.
During my time in Green River, I completed the third issue of Tree News, a newsletter I help design, write, and edit. The issue begins with the Pearl Baker Park cottonwood grove and meanders from there. Read the full issue below.
In addition to focusing on Tree News, I organized a botanical film collage and direct animation workshop with youth in the PACT Summer Camp and Teen Center. K-5 campers drew directly on super 8mm film while teens spent two afternoon sessions visiting sites around Green River gathering plants and other materials to collage onto film.
We visited the in-progress Pearl Baker Park and continued to the canal, Haylie’s horses, Anna’s garden, Hannah’s farm, and the former missile base near the “Black Pyramid'' of uranium tailings. Collage materials included tamarisk, kochia, Little Ceasar’s red pepper flakes, Russian thistle, dog hair, goat hair, alfalfa, Dash and Lady’s hair, Anna’s petunias and pansies, missile base fiberglass, sagebrush, cottonwood leaves and seed pods, milkweed, various wrappers, lawn marker flags, grass from a friends lawn, sand from Swasey’s beach, dirt, field bindweed and more. At the conclusion of my fellowship, I hosted a public screening of the final animation.
