Story by: Gail Oberst

Date Published to Web: 6/17/2009

MONMOUTH -- At the edge of Diana Wurzer and Bayard McLeod's art project, a bit of brown scum gathers, hesitates, and then is slowly sucked into the "pod" and disappears.
   A day after anchoring two of these unusual art pieces into a shallow stream that feeds the middle fork of Ash Creek north of Monmouth, the two Western Oregon University students returned with their instructor, Mary Harden, to see if their "pods" were performing their functions.
   They were. The pods, artistic structures created from willows and filled with local grasses and materials, were filtering mud from the shallow stream that ran through the farm that it watered.
   "It's great to know that art can be something more than something pretty that hangs on a wall," said Michael Cairns, Luckiamute Watershed Council project manager who recently helped Harden and her 3-D Design students place the completed pods.
   Harden's students typically build several pieces during the course of a term. But this term, Emily Plec, a fellow Western professor who is a member of the Luckiamute Watershed Council, suggested something new. The design unit that required students to create a piece of art that curved outward, called "convexity," this term included ideas from California artist Daniel McCormick. The students went to work creating designs of their own that would fit the Ash Creek landscape.
   The first class has produced seven small "pods," and to make these, the students cut the willow saplings into 4- to 7-foot lengths, formed hoops from some of them and long strips of the others, then fastened them together with raffia and hemp. Inside the pods went more willow cuttings, grasses, leaves and other organic materials that might filter water.
   "It had to be useful, but it had to be beautiful, too," said Harden.
   The students staked the organic pod forms into the creek bed with fresh willow cuttings that will take root in the water and may possibly create brushy shade along the creek.
   "Shade's the only thing that will get rid of the reed canary grass," said Cairns, pointing to the choking tall weed growing in clumps along the creek.
   If all goes as planned, the pods will not only filter the creek's water, but they will also slow it and gently divert it, creating meandering pools that attract native fish, Cairns said.
   McLeod, a fisherman and firefighter who is graduating this spring, appreciates that his work is practical as well as beautiful.
   "I'd like to see more projects like this where we're improving water quality," he said.
   "I think it's great that you can use a piece of art to help out," added Wurzer. "It's green art."
   Harden plans to create more pods in her future classes. Her students will be able to modify their designs as they see how the current pods react to the currents and quirks of the creek.
   For more information about the watershed council and its work with educators and other partners, visit the Web page http://luckiamute.watershedcouncils.net/.