Blue Rocks

Blue Rocks (2002) was an example of what curators Amy Lipton and Sue Spaid termed an ecovention, a place where art intervenes in environmental degradation. Forty large boulders painted blue, drawing attention to an obstructed causeway on Pleasant River, Vinalhaven Island, Maine. The ecovention included the painting of the boulders by the river and a “wash-in,” which came as a response to being subpoenaed from the town to clean the rocks, to educate the local community about estuarine health. The project included GIS mapping. The site choice applied Trigger Point Theory. My task was to investigate how the restoration of this small site could have regional impact. It was at a significant confluence of ecotones (transitions between systems).

In 2002, Blue Rocks was initiated at Pleasant River on Vinalhaven Island, Maine. Aviva Rahmani painted forty large boulders around an obstructed causeway, with a casein slurry of nontoxic ultramarine pigment, buttermilk, and native mosses to encourage the growth of more moss. When the town of Vinalhaven subpoenaed the artist to wash the rocks clean, she announced a “wash-in,” and used the occasion to educate passers-by about estuarine health. The attention to the site contributed momentum to a commitment from the USDA of over $500,000 to restore a total of twenty-six critical wetland acres.

There were two goals:

1.    To test her Trigger Point Theory by seeing if the restoration of a small site could have a regional impact. In aerial photography, the two sides of the island look like the chambers of a beating heart. The Army Corps of Engineers had narrowed the causeway, which impeded tidal flow between fresh and saltwater, causing stagnation.

2.    To explore how to catalyse a chain reaction of events (by drawing attention to the site with the painted rocks and a subsequent wash-in) that would catalyse a thriving community relationship to a healthy ecosystem.

The site was selected by analysing relevant Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping. That GIS work was completed by Gordon Longsworth of the College of the Atlantic for the Vinalhaven Land Trust. Rahmani’s GIS analysis was based on her work as chair of the Natural Resources Subcommittee for the 2005 Vinalhaven Comprehensive Plan.