At elevations from 200 to 1200 feet, the Spenceville Wildlife Area in Yuba and Nevada County, California features rolling hills of blue oak and gray pine characteristic of the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Once part of Camp Beale, a massive World War II-era training base, the area features numerous creeks, waterfalls, and from the western extension,…
Tag: David Arnold
The Proposals Series
Proposals. The term visual poetry refers to experiments undertaken with the semantic character of words, and as an experimental genre, visual poetry blends multiple mediums. Visual poetry seeks to be seen as a painting or photograph, and read for the lyric associations of poetry. Often reducing language to typographical forms, visual poetry experiments with situating…
Borrowed Sources
Thoughts on Walter Benjamin, Appropriation, Technology and Landscape Walter Benjamin Published in 1936, Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the first commentary on the ways in which technology changes the conditions of art. Benjamin’s tightly written essay continues to generate debate and has spawned thousands of critical interpretations. In…
Churches of Stone
Churches of Stone highlights the architectural features of six stone churches in Baja California Sur, Mexico. The fortress-like profiles, the small windows, the clustered columns, and curved doorways carved into stone highlight the remarkable fact of the stone churches’ long existence. Designed to dazzle the newly converted, the stone churches of Baja California Sur transmit a spiritual zeal which…
At Chimney Beach: Using a Freezer Bag as a Waterproof Housing
Chimney Beach, a narrow band of sand on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, is accessed by a trail from Nevada Highway 28. The beach is managed by the Nevada State Parks Department and is named for the lone chimney nestled at the top of a small cove, the only structure of any kind found…
On Bokeh—the Red Tree
Early references to the Chinese Pistache tree (Pistacia Chinensis) appear in Ernest Henry Wilson’s A Naturalist in Western China. Wilson notes that the hardwood of Chinese Pistache forms “a natural “fork” at one end and is in general use for the balanced rudder on all the larger boats.” [1]The tree is drought and insect resistant…
A Point of Historical Interest—Toys Left for Julius.
About 7 miles east of Nevada City, California, and just off Highway 20 is a Point of Historical Interest, the burial site of Julius Albert Apperson, a two-year-old boy who died on May 6, 1858. In 1971, the Native Sons of the Golden West erected a monument at the site for “A pioneer who crossed…