Vanished: A Chronicle of Loss and Discovery Across Half a Million Years
2012–2018
Description
In 2012, my CSU, Chico colleague, Byron Wolfe, initiated a collaborative investigation of four vanished icons and their persistence as ideas in the history of Northern California. The project brought together six faculty from varied departments to work as a collective of explorers with diverse disciplinary perspectives. We spent the next six years making work about the “presence” of loss while considering how to assemble a world of fact, fiction, and myth. Our results were a collection of interconnected words, images, and objects. I focused on the discovery and ultimate disappearance of a mammoth's molar that was found just a few miles from downtown Chico in 1999. The four icons: A Return to Deer Creek for Ishi, “the last of the Yahi” (1911 - 1914) The Missing Mount Tehama: A Vanished Stratovolcano (600,000 B.C.) A Columbian Mammoth in Bidwell Park: Lost, Found, Then Lost Again (10,000 B.C. - 2001) Sudden Void: The Fall of the Hooker Oak (1000 - 1977) The Vanished Collective: Byron Wolfe, Photographer Heather Altfeld, Writer Troy Jollimore, Philosopher Rachel Teasdale, Volcanologist Oliver Hutton, Graphic Designer Sheri Simons, Sculptor |
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Teeth
