Research for Fish Story

Detail of "River View #1," for Fish Story for Memphis Social, 13'x19" encaustic on paper

This is a detail of a series of google maps I've been working with to see how the water might behave along the backs of the Wolf River as it comes into the Mississippi, IF it were unimpeded by hardscaping and habitat fragmentation. Encaustic, a heated wax medium, behaves like water under the effect of the heat gun.

I used a combination of Phthalo blue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalocyanine_Blue_BNand metallic gold pigment to reflect how I think we have already chemically polluted our waters and what is driving that pollution, greed. In the upper left, where the Wolf should connect with the Mississippi, the effects blur, because the Army Corps of Engineer diverted the river to create a Peninsula http://tn-roots.com/tnshelby/history/mud_island.htm