EWS BWR Silkscreen Print Available

The EWS BWR print features 42 decoded logographic designs. Building off the traditional graphic language of the “hobo” travel symbols, this communication system serves as a survival code for the ongoing environmental collapse. Some pictographs communicate opportunities for potable water, free charging stations, camp slipper repair, and welcoming “safe” communities. Conversely, others warn of environmental threats and misfortunes including wildfires, flooded trails, RR chemical crashes, and monoculture landscapes.

Limited edition of 50, 8” X 24″ two-color silkscreen print on French Pure White 125lb paper. Signed and numbered. Silkscreen printing by James Weinberg of Weinberg Design in Somerville, MA.

Available for online purchase here.

Student Fundraiser; Arboreal Goth Bandana

Support Environmental Education! This fundraising bandana supports the “Arboreal Goth Collection,” an ecology-communication project exploring the PNW landscapes through the lens of a fictitious botanical pine cone collection. All proceeds from sales will be used to pay landscape architecture students to contribute to this multidisciplinary collaboration with the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscape, and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.

Two-color silkscreen-print on high-quality 20" square bandana. Limited-edition of 50 per colorway. Graphic design collaboration between Vinnie Arnone, David Buckley Borden, and Blake Schouten.

Available for pre-order now. Bandanas scheduled to ship week of September 15th, 2023.

Order bandana here.

New DIY Project Zine for Forest Fashion

Forty-pages, 5.5 X 8.5 inch format, color copier printing, DIY design zine featuring creative writing and speculative design objects by David Buckley Borden and collaborators. The interdisciplinary Forest Fashion project debuted at Lawrence Hall at the College of Design, University of Oregon in the Spring of 2023. Publication includes speculative design writing, project backstory, EWS primer, and twenty featured works of design-fiction exploring backcountry fashion in the Anthropocene. Within the etched-canvas waterproof cover, one will find a variety of blows-ins including color centerfold, project postcards, and other creative treats by the collaborative team of designers, artists, and scientists.

Limited-edition of 44 hard copies. Twelve copies available for sale. Purchase a copy here.

New Artist Exhibition Guide

Twenty-page, black and white, 5.5 X 8.5 inch format, DIY artist “exhibition guide” of PNW Tree ID Sign project exhibition at the University of Oregon’s College of Design in winter 2023. Content includes project backstory, creative process, eight featured works, and PSA regarding black-clad Arboreal Goth gangs. Hand silkscreened water-proof cover by Vinnie Arnone and Helen Popinchalk. Unique hand-sewn covers by Nancy Silvers. Limited-edition of 12. Six copies available online at: https://www.davidbuckleyborden.com/mercantile/pnw-tree-id-signs-artist-exhibition-guide

Artists Exhibition Catalog

Twenty- page DIY artist exhibition catalog of Ghost Forests show at Simons University in fall 2022. Silkscreened cover, three “blow ins” including, but not limited to exhibition postcards, lightning stool directions, EWS guide, etc. Collaboration with Helen Popinchalk, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Escher Vierck. Limited edition of 44, with 10 available for online purchase here.

Fuel Ladder presents: Ignition

“Fuel Ladder” is a speculative research group composed of Oregon artists and a curator/scholar who will engage practice-based research engaging the climate crisis through the metaphor of wildfire. The hope is to provide a means of thinking through the complexity of the cycles of destruction and renewal that wildfire exemplifies as well as addressing the wider realities of our warming planet

Fuel Ladder presents: Ignition

Friday, November 18, 2022 6:00-8:00 p.m. 

510 Oak Street, Main Space Gallery
Eugene, OR 97403

“Ignition” is the inaugural public event of “Fuel Ladder”, a recently established, interdisciplinary collective of artists, designers, and thinkers in Eugene, Oregon, who are exploring the climate crisis through the lens of wildfire. The evening will be less an exhibition than a participatory, conversation-sparking gathering around a set of objects-in-the-making. Please join us in lively exchange! We are curious about the ways that collaboratively-rooted creative works, dialogues, and actions might lead to new understandings of and relationships with wildfire—something increasingly part of everyday life in the Pacific Northwest. We are interested in moving beyond gut reactions and apocalyptic imagery to engage with wildfire in its troubling complexity, open-endedness, visceral and uneven impacts, sensorial dimensions, and (often-heated) political weight.

“Fuel Ladder” is supported by the Ford Family Foundation and the University of Oregon’s Center for Art Research.

More info about the project and participating artists can be found here.

Art Sale for Matched Grant Fund Raising

Invest in Eco Art. I'll be posting lots of new work on the online web store in the next month to close a funding gap for two matched grants...only $15K to go. As always I appreciate your support, and patience with the upcoming enviro-art pawning and hocking. The Wack Bat Tree Sign (above) and some recent work from Ghost Forests exhibition is available for online purchase here.

ASLA Student Communication Award

Congratulations to my MLA students at the University of Oregon for their ASLA Student Honors Award in the Communication category for their landscape installations at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum in the summer of 2021. Their Overlook Field School projects explored themes of wildfire recovery through art, design, and ecology as part of a maker-based field studio taught by Michael Geffel and I. Go duckies.

Ghosts Forests Exhibition at Simmons University

I am looking forward to returning to Boston this September for an exhibition of new work at Simmons University’s Trustman Art Gallery. Reception (party!) Save-the-Date: September 8th.

Ghost Forests, a collaborative multidisciplinary exhibition will feature silkscreen prints, sculptures, fabric work, and mixed-media installation by David Buckley Borden and collaborators (from both New England and the Pacific Northwest). The narrative of the work focuses on North America’s dying forest ecosystems and our human response to the global earth crisis. The exhibition will run from September 6th to October 21st with an opening reception on Thursday, September 8th from 5 to 8PM.

Ghost Forests is collaborative in intent, process, production, and output. Beyond the artwork, the final installation can be viewed as an allied exhibition of science, art, and design talent. Collaborators currently include William Bonner, Christian Delano Borden, David Buckley Borden, Jack K. Byers, Cyrille Conan, Mike Demaggio, Laura Harmon, Tim Lillis, CC McGregor, Kenji Nakayama, Isaac Martinotti, Helen Popinchalk, Madison Sanders, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Exhibition support provided by Simmons Art Department, the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes at Oregon University, and the Oregon State University Foundation’s Andrews Fund.

For project updates, visit http://davidbuckleyborden.com/ghost-forests/

Sustainability Fellowship

Community Fellowship. I am honored to participate in the Sustainability Fellowship for Community-Engaged Learning with the PNW Just Futures Institute at the University of Oregon this summer. The year-long fellowship kicked off with a week of workshops covering a variety of topics including partnership pedagogy, environmental trauma, climate psychology, affective science, systems theory, and emotional learning, other community engagement issues and best-practices relative to our higher education and our unfolding earth crisis.

Many thanks to Sarah Stoeckl at the Office of Sustainability for the opportunity and Liska Chan at UO’s Landscape Architecture Department for the endorsement and ongoing support.

Editorial Illustration in Arnoldia

Debut. I published my first editorial illustration (cartoon?) this month in Arnolda, the quarterly magazine of the Arnold Arboretum. In their own words, “Arnoldia explores knowledge, experience, and imagination wherever they entangle with the nature of trees.” The illustration was a collaboration with Editor Matthew Battles and developed in response to the piece, A New Way for the Norway Maple, by OSU’s Ryan Contreras, about his work to develop low-fecundity Norway and Amur maples to limit their invasiveness. He writes about how difficult it is to sell the idea, because many states have regulations against planting such trees (blame the Callery pear, which was allegedly sterile). The challenge seems to be an issue of branding, identity, and communication. Enter the editorialized tree guard.

In Arnoldia’s own words, “For more than 110 years, Arnoldia has been exploring the nature of trees. First established in 1911 as the Bulletin of Popular Information, the Arnold Arboretum's quarterly magazine has long been the definitive forum for conversations about temperate woody plants and their landscapes. Contributors tell stories of plant exploration, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of botanical research, and dig into archives to explore the history of gardens, landscapes, and science. Expanding in scope to encompass poetry, visual art, and literary essays, Arnoldia follows knowledge, experience, and imagination wherever they entangle with trees.” Learn more about here: https://arboretum.harvard.edu/arnoldia/

Also, I have to thank UO BLA student Evan Kwiecien for assisting me with the illustration research and development.

Bandana Fun Fundraiser

Red Alert. A new fundraising bandana for “Lookout Landscape,” a community-driven multi-site installation project exploring the PNW landscape through the lens of vintage fire-watch towers, is now available. All proceeds from sales will pay landscape architecture students to contribute to this multidisciplinary collaboration with the Center for Art Research, the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscape, and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.

One-color (white) silkscreen-print on high-quality 20" red square bandana. Limited-edition of 50. Available for purchase here.

Incoming Next Thursday! A public “Camp Chair Reception” for the current "Speculative Landscape" exhibition will be held on Thursday, May 26th from 12 noon to 2pm in the lobby of College of Design's Lawrence Hall. Say "hola" to the FIPL team, talk creative (eco x design x art) shop with us, and enjoy some homemade douglas fir-inspired refreshments...plus there will be a therapeutic knolling station and an opportunity to design your own lightning stool. #lookoulandscape

Arboreal Goth Collection Exhibit

The Arboreal Goth Cone Collection Drops Monday May 16th in Lawrence Hall Lobby at UO's College of Design. The speculative horticultural designs explore gothic hybrids of ecology, industrial material culture, and late-capitalism resource management in North America.

The narrative-driven series of collaborative mixed-media objects are created from various vintage logging tools, pine cones, milled wood, macro plastics, wood stains, petroleum-based paints, and assorted steel hardware.

Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Kennedy Rauh, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Save-the-Date: Camp Chair Reception on May 26th.

Arboreal Inquires Symposium

Arboreal Inquires

Thursday, March 31st,  2022

9:00 am - 1:30pm (CST), ONLINE 

FREE with registration

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/266825802157

​From questions of communication and spatial quality to those of carbon sequestration and human-non-human relations, our invited speakers have been exploring a great range of questions about forests and our relationships with them. We hope you will join us for this online symposium where they will be sharing a few of these recent "Arboreal Inquiries.” Over two consecutive, two-hour sessions, speakers will briefly present some of their work and come together for moderated discussions. 

The fantastic line-up of speakers includes:

• Nicholas Pevsner _ University of Pennsylvania

• Jamie Vanucchi _ Cornell University

• Emily Knox and David Hill _ Auburn University

• Karen Lutsky _ University of Minnesota

• Paula Meijerink _ The Ohio State University

• Kamni Gill _ University of Manitoba

• Aidan Ackerman _ State University of New York - Syracuse

• Nate Heavers _ Virginia Tech

• Suzanne Mathew _ Rhode Island School of Design

• David Buckley Borden _ University of Oregon + HJ Andrews Forest

• Chad Manley and Daniel Irvine _ CMPLBA

This symposium is funded by the University of Minnesota's Department of Landscape Architecture and Cornell University's Department of Landscape Architecture.

"Landscape Makers" Exhibition Documentation

Once again, I thank all the folks in my art and design community for their help in making the recent Landscape Makers exhibition at the LaVerne Krause Gallery such a meaningful creative collaboration. You can read about the exhibition, individual pieces, the team, and the larger Lookout Landscape project by clicking here. The exhibition photography is courtesy of Ignacio Lopez Buson of MAPS (Methods for the Architecture of Patterns and Systems).

New Fundraising Bandana Available for Pre-Order

Support Students. A new fundraising Bandana for “Lookout Landscape,” a community-driven multi-site installation project exploring the PNW landscape through the lens of vintage fire-watch towers, is now available or pre-order. All (100%) proceeds from sales will be used to pay landscape architecture students to contribute to this multidisciplinary collaboration with the Center for Art Research, the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscape, and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.

One-color (white) silkscreen-print on high-quality 20" royal-blue square bandana. Limited-edition of 50. Design includes over twenty subliminal messages that advocate for wetland stewardship. Your father will likely never know...oh, the Swamp Gas!

Bandanas ship in March. Available for pre-order now here.

Fundraiser Bandana with Jack K Byers

Fundraiser. Study to Protect; Protect to Study. Fundraising bandana by one of my favorite Harvard Forest collaborators Jack K. Byers is now available online for pre-order here. Orders will ship by end of February. These funds from these bandanas will support "Landscape Lookout," a new interdisciplinary collaboration with the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Harvard Forest's Long Term Ecological Research sister-site on the West Coast.

The mantra–lettered in Jack's signature, deconstructed style–and its ouroboros-like form signify the never-ending cycle of research and conservation, as well as the importance of maintaining a diverse creative approach to both.

Landscape Makers Exhibition

Save the Date! Landscape Makers exhibition reception will take place on February 3rd (5-7 pm) at the LaVerne Krause Gallery in Lawrence Hall at University of Oregon (pandemic dependent, of course). This maker-driven art + design exhibition will feature UOLA MLA/BLA collaborations with David Buckley Borden. The landscape-inspired work explores cultural narratives of PNW forests through interior installation and interdisciplinary environmental-communication. The collective work is a snapshot of a longer ongoing creative project currently in development with the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes, the Center for Art Research, and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.