Basia Irland


“Clandestine Calaveras” is a boxed set of nine postcard images of the Calaveras River overlaid with molecular structures and gas chromatography/mass spectrometer chromatograms of the chemical pesticides found in the river. A compact disk is part of this set for which she commissioned a musical score by Andrew Ardizzoia, played by cellist Scott Halligan, and sung by mezzo-soprano Laurelle Mathison. During her stay in Stockton, she would canoe each morning at dawn along the Calaveras with Kari Burr, an aquatic biologist monitoring water quality for Delta Keepers. The words featured on the CD are the names of the pesticides identified – chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDT), diazinon, malathion, methyl parathion, pendimethalin, prometon, and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE).

This work was originally produced for “Aquatopia: A Confluence of Art, Science and the California Watershed,” while Irland was artist-in-residence at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, 2004.


Basia Irland is an author, poet, sculptor, installation artist, and activist who creates international water projects featured in her book, Water Library, University of New Mexico Press, 2007. The book focuses on projects the artist has created over the last thirty years in Africa, Canada, Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Through her work, Irland offers a creative understanding of water while examining how communities of people, plants, and animals rely on this vital element. She is Professor Emerita, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico, where she established the Arts and Ecology Program. Irland often works with scholars from diverse disciplines building rainwater harvesting systems; connecting communities and fostering dialogue along the entire length of rivers; filming and producing water documentaries; and creating waterborne disease projects around the world, most recently in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and Nepal.