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Nooksack

2005

American, born 1963

Tubes of light and swirls of electrical wire evoke the flowing waters of the Nooksack River. Claude Zervas created this three-dimensional map of the three forks of the Nooksack as they descend from the high snowfields and glaciers of Mt. Baker and adjacent mountain ranges and move on to Bellingham Bay and the Salish Sea. This area is home to the Nooksack people, who fish, hunt, and gather there and who rely on the river’s solitude for spiritual practice, alongside salmon, steelhead, trout, bald eagles, black bears, mountain goats, spotted owls, elk, and many other species.

2020 was an auspicious year for the Middle Fork of the Nooksack as a 25-foot-tall dam was blown up, restoring sixteen miles of salmon habitat for the first time in 60 years. Unfortunately, 2021’s summer heat wave resulted in the death of thousands of salmon in this same region.

CCF (cold cathode fluorescent) lamps, wire, electronics, steel

36 x 96 x 216 in. (91.4 x 243.8 x 548.6cm)

Gift of John and Shari Behnke, Rena Bransten, Carlos Garcia and James Harris, David Lewis, Kim Richter, Josef Vascovitz, Robin Wright, Dawn Zervas, and the Contemporary Arts Council, Seattle Art Museum in honor of Lisa Corrin

2005.140

Photo: Courtesy James Harris Gallery

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Contemporary Art: Made in Seattle -- A Northwest Summer, May 4 - July 23, 2006.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water, Mar. 18 - May 30, 2022.

Published ReferencesHackett, Regina, "Zervas does exploratory surgery on technology", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Review, Aug 8, 2003, pp WH17 link

Kangas, Mathew, "Two artists, two visions from the ordinary", The Seattle Times, Review, Aug 1, 2003, pp 47H

Hall, Emily, "Aleph to Zervas", The Stranger, Review, vol 12 no. 31 Apr 23, 2003 link

Corrin, Lisa and Brown, Elizabeth, "The Mountain Is Out", Modern Painters, Autumn 2002, pp 47-48

Hackett, Regina, "Bumbershoot pullout ", Arts and Entertainment, The Seattle P-I, Review, Aug 8, 2002, pp 15

Hackett, Regina, Arts and Entertainment, The Seattle P-I, Review, 9/2/2002

Pay Attention Please, The Stranger, Review, vol 11 No. 37, May 30, 2002, pp 30

LAVA 2002 Catalog, pp 162

Hypermedia, 3rd Bed, vol. 5 2002

Hall, Emily, "Bio:Art", The Stranger, Bio, vol 10 No. 23, Feb 28, 2001

Fahey, Anna, "I See You", Seattle Weekly, Feb 15, 2001

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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