Harvard Appointment. Endless gratitude to the Harvard community for extending my appointment as a Harvard Forest Associate (arty-designer-at-large) and a special thanks to Dr. David Orwig for sponsoring the opportunity in support of new projects and an ongoing publication project with Dr. Aaron M. Ellison on our past environmental-communication collaborations. Extra special thanks to Laurie Chiasson for taking care of me from afar. Interested in Harvard Forest collaborations? Please reach out to borden@fas.harvard.edu.
Hybrid Practice Vigor
I am honored to receive a courtesy faculty appointment from the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. The position will serve collaborative initiatives between the LA Department at University of Oregon, the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, and the Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes. Endless thanks to all the folks that have enabled this wild opportunity at the intersection of ecology, art, and design.
Designer-In-Residence at HJ Andrews
I’m honored to be the first Designer-In-Residence at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, a 16,000-acre Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Oregon’s western Cascades Mountains. The Designer-In-Residence position supports my ongoing design-ecology research and initiative between the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest. At present, this initiative includes design-research studios and course work in environmental communication theory at UO, a wildfire-themed field school program with the Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes (FCPL), public lecture events at UO and OSU, and an upcoming series of FCPL funded landscape installations and exhibitions in a variety of publicly accessible sites across Oregon in Spring/Summer 2022.
Overlook Field School Feature
Overlook Field School Installation with BLA alumna Nancy Silvers "Enviro Barn Quilts." Photography by Ignacio López Busón.
You can read a bit about my summer residency at the Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes and see examples of some remarkable MLA student installations here. Many thanks to Sue and Mort Fuller, Roxi Thoren, and Michael Geffel for the opportunity to create work with such a talented group of young designers.
New Flag Work For Sale On Website
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
New Flag available for online purchase. The “Don’t Give Up” flag is one in an ongoing series of Environmental Revolution flags in which historic North American flags are recast to highlight cultural conflicts over environmental issues. The silkscreened flag measures 18 x 24 inches and is limited to an edition of 13. Collaboration with Vinnie Arnone, Helen Popinchalk, and Nancy Silvers.
Purchase here.
Webinar hosted by HJ Andrews and Spring Creek Project
You are invited to join a webinar featuring presentations by two Andrews Forest artists, David Buckley Borden and David Paul Bayles, hosted by Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Lead Principal Investigator, Michael Paul Nelson.
Register for the Webinar. Wednesday, May 5, 4 p.m. PST.
While the Andrews Forest is known internationally as a site for leading forest science research, it also hosts a vibrant arts and humanities program. In partnership with the Spring Creek Project, artists, writers, philosophers, and musicians from all over the country are regularly in residence at the forest. This event features short presentations by two Andrews artists, followed by a conversation with Lead PI Nelson and the audience..
This event is sponsored by the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Program and the Spring Creek Project.
New Pub; Constructive Friction
New Publication: Constructive Friction Creates A Third Space for Art/Science Collaborations. Delighted to have a paper on interdisciplinary collaboration written with Dr. Aaron Ellison at the Harvard Forest just accepted for publication by MIT Press‘s Leonardo Journal. Hardcopy to come, but final text version can be found here as a preprint.
Upcoming Public Talk at OSU
Upcoming public talk via zoom at OSU.
COVID-ERA PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION
The Tigard Universal Beacon was installed last week after 8 months of planning and design. Many thanks to the City of Tigard, Alisha Sullivan, and Peter Emerson and Graham Sandelski at Rios for the opportunity to co-create this work as part of the long-term Universal Plaza project in Tigard, OR. Learn more about the project here.
Public Talk Hosted by UW LA Department
My upcoming public lecture hosted by the University of Washington’s Landscape Architecture Department will be online and open to all via this zoom link on Friday, Feb 19th, at 12noon PST.
I will be presenting my “Professional Plots” talk and the abstract is as follows:
This professional development talk is for students and recent graduates and uses Borden’s career track as an example of developing an intentional self-directed creative practice. The talk is not a prescriptive “how-to” career presentation, but an empowering, yet cautionary, conversation about creative growth and self-determination. The conversation includes Borden’s initial work in the performing arts, his brief experiment as a corporate landscape designer, his tenure as a “feral landscape architect,” and his current practice as an independent creative working at the intersection of art, design, and ecology. Borden walks the audience along his career path to highlight the strategic successes that have shaped his practice philosophy, process, and project outcomes. Borden also presents setbacks and learning opportunities including practical pitfalls of public installations and exhibitions, residencies, fellowships, grants, and self-made opportunities.
New Year, New Community, New Installation
New beginnings. First 2021 public art collaboration starting to take shape with the City of Tigard, @Alishasullivan, Chris Herring, Pike Awning, and @peteremerson.la and Graham Sandelski with team @rios.imagines.
New Design Education Lecture
I’m honored to develop a new design-education talk for Cathy De Almeida's LA class on material and craft at the University of Washington. The “Devlish Detail” talk illustrates the narrative power of construction detail, material selection, and good ol' analog craft. I'd be happy to deliver this zoom talk at other schools... please reach out if interested. And, I will gladly provide the lecture in exchange for one of your university letter jackets. More public and academic lectures can be found here.
Harvard Forest Sci-Arts Feature
There is a nice new feature on terrain.org about @harvard.forest arts-science program. It was a treat to contribute to the conversation on making art/design projects in the woods with ecologists. The article by Shelley Stonebrook of the Spring Creek Project is one in a series that explores a variety of creative programs at six different Long Term Ecological Research sites. The HJ Andrews Experimental forest will be featured next. Check out the series here:.
BTW the HJA is now within the Holiday Farm wildfire zone. Send positive thoughts and rain!
New Work for Ghost Forests Project
Environmental Wayfinding Baby Quilt, 54 X 54 inches, silkscreened 600 denier canvas, 2020. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Mike Demaggio, and Helen Popinchalk.
This new quilt was recently finished by Michael Demaggio for the Ghost Forests project, which explores issues of human response to ecosystems suffering from drastic reductions in carrying capacity for all organisms. The quilt design builds off a folk wayfinding system that was created to aid communities in safely navigating their way through their local environmental collapse.
Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies
I am pleased to announce the release of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies. Dr. Aaron Ellison and I co-authored a chapter that interrogates our Hemlock Hospice project at the Harvard Forest as a case study on “art as partner and critic” within the environmental sciences. Endless thanks to our editor Hannah Star Rogers for the invitation to contribute to the conversation. The 630 page publication is scheduled for release on January 29, 2021. ISBN 9781138347304
In the words of the publisher:
Art and science work is experiencing a dramatic rise coincident with burgeoning Science and Technology Studies interest in this area. Science has played the role of muse for the arts, inspiring imaginative reconfigurations of scientific themes and exploring their cultural resonance. Conversely, the arts are often deployed in the service of science communication, illustration, and popularization. STS scholars have sought to resist the instrumentalization of the arts by the sciences, emphasizing studies of theories and practices across disciplines and the distinctive and complementary contributions of each. The manifestation of this commonality of creative and epistemic practices is the emergence of ASTS as the interdisciplinary exploration of art-science.
This handbook defines the modes, practices, crucial literature, and research interests of this emerging field of Art and Science Studies. It explores the questions, methodologies, and theoretical implications of scholarship and practice that arise at the intersection of art and science studies with the goal of demonstrating how the arts are intervening in STS. Drawing on methods and concepts derived from STS and allied fields including visual studies, performance studies, design studies, science communication, as well as aesthetics and the knowledge of practicing artists and curators, ASTS is predicated on the capacity to see both art and science as constructions of human knowledge-making. Accordingly, it posits a new analytical vernacular in enabling new ways of seeing, understanding, and thinking critically about the world.
This handbook provides scholars and practitioners already familiar with the themes and tensions of art-science with a means of connecting across disciplines. It also proposes organizing principles for thinking about art-science across the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts. Encounters with art and science become meaningful in relation to perceptual habits, background knowledge, and cultural norms. As the chapters in this handbook demonstrate, a variety of STS tools can be brought to bear on art-science so that systematic research can be conducted on this unique set of knowledge-making practices.
Learn more about the publication here.
TCLF Fundraiser Auction
My last silkscreened “Wetland Command Flag” is on its way to Washington DC for the 2020 the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) Auction. Many thanks to Susannah Ross for the invitation to contribute to the cause. More information about the auction can be found here.
About the auction in Foundation’s own words:
The Cultural Landscape Foundation's (TCLF) Annual Silent auction this year will be held online and feature dozens of works of art created by landscape architects, architects, artists, photographers, and others. The 2019 silent auction, for example, featured works by the likes of Roberto Burle Marx, Cindy Sherman, Pat Pickett, Dan Tague, Lawrence Halprin, and many others. The auction will run September 21, through October 5, 2020.
Proceeds benefit the Pioneers of American Landscape Design® Oral History Project, an ever-growing, award-winning series of videotaped first-person interviews with significant practitioners. TCLF is grateful for the generous support of our auction donors and our Annual Sponsor, the ASLA. Their continued commitment to this project ensures that the funds raised go directly to support TCLF's programming. In 2003, TCLF launched the Pioneers of American Landscape Design® initiative in partnership with the ASLA, with the goal of documenting, collecting, and preserving the unique, first-hand perspectives of renowned landscape practitioners.
Visiting Professor at UO Department of Landscape Architecture
UO Visiting Professor. Visiting from where? A shed in the Forest!
I’m excited to join the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Environment for a two-year visiting professor project. I call it a project because in addition to teaching studio and enviro-comm course work through the lens of my practice, I’ll spearhead a new design-ecology initiative between the department and HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.. I’m very grateful to Fred Swanson at the HJA and LA Department Head Roxi Thoren for this unique opportunity.
Studio Moving Sale
Online Sale. Small to medium sculptures for sale online in preparation for studio move out of Harvard Forest. Plus, lots of artwork that has yet to be put online…. just let me know what interests you and I’ll send you images and info. Silkscreen prints and fabric flags available too. 20% off with code MOVING2020 through end of July. Gift cards also available. Here: http://davidbuckleyborden.com/mercantile
55 Gallon Drummer Project
Co2 450 PPM, Jack K Byers’s 55 Gallon Drummers collaboration with David Buckley Borden, acrylic paint, wood glue, and wood, 2020.
The 55 Gallon Drummers Project is an art and design collaboration that is currently in development. Phase one of this creative environmental-communication project began with the fabrication of a series of small (4” in diameter and 7” tall) wooden models of standard 55-gallon oil drums. From these scaled-down “oil drums,” collaborators were invited to imagine simple sculptural forms and graphic treatments.
Phase two of the 55 Gallon Drummers Project is to develop the series of small sculptural works into a full-scale collective installation using actual 55-gallon drums as the material starting point. The project is organized around the practice of creating “accessible” environmental art. The intention is to communicate productive ideas related to ecology, be it environmental awareness, data, warning, witness, mourning, call-to-action, or the like.
Participants currently include: @cyrilleconan @jackkbyers @vinnie_arnone @tjkelleyiii @_laura_harmon @bord1976 @velocamille @steezmagazine @pat_falco @kngee and @hpopinchalk. Plus more to come.
Silkscreened "Appeal to All Flag" Available Online
An Appeal to All Flag is now available online, This two-color single sided flag (silkscreened print on white cotton canvas, with brass grommets) measures 18 x 24 inches. Edition of 13. Collaboration with Helen Popinchalk of Trifecta Editions. Purchase work here.