Linda Gass
Artist Statement
This artwork is part of my latest series of work about confluences of bodies of water that no longer exist due to human intervention. Depicted here is the confluence of the San Joaquin and Merced rivers paired with a species endangered by the disappearing confluence, Chinook salmon. The largest river in Central California, the San Joaquin, has been heavily dammed and diverted for agriculture. Before the 1940s, the river supported spring and fall runs of Chinook salmon that numbered over 300,000 fish. That all changed with the completion of the Friant Dam in 1942. Diversions of water into the Friant-Kern Canal left little more than a trickle below the dam in most years, drying up the San Joaquin before it reached its confluence with the Merced. By the 1950s, the count of Chinook salmon was zero.
There is now an effort underway to restore the river and the Chinook salmon runs. In 1988, 13 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit and successfully proved that the Friant dam’s diversion of water from the San Joaquin violated the Endangered Species Act and California’s public trust policies. Farmers fought the suit for 18 years and eventually a settlement was reached in 2006, requiring the flow of the river to be restored and salmon to be reintroduced by the end of 2012.
Linda Gass makes art informed by the wilderness, maps, aerial photography and her activist passions. Her most recent work explores land use and water issues by portraying aerial views of the human marks on our landscape that affect our water in some way. She extensively researches the history and practice of water management to inform her art. Her work is made by painting on silk and then stitching it, using beauty to encourage people to look at the hard issues we face. Textiles have been an important part of Linda's life since her grandmother taught her to sew and embroider as a child. In her early adult years, she took a detour through technology after graduating from Stanford University with a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Computer Science and worked in the software industry for 10 years. She travels extensively in the wilderness areas of the West where she finds much of the inspiration for her work. Linda is an artist in residence in the Palo Alto Cubberley Artist Studio program and is a master member of the Baulines Craft Guild. She currently serves on the advisory board of the Black Rock Arts Foundation and has served on the boards of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and the Textile Arts Council of the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
