David Buckley Borden Portfolio/+/-/Workspace

Landscape Urbanism Bin

Digital media, Adobe PS3

April 2012

“Outdoor metal recycler and trash receptacle. Manufactured out of heavy duty aluminum. Will not rust. Can be finished in any of our Hammertone Powdercoat finishes. Hinged lid for easy access to liner”

-Intrex online catalog

Source image: http://www.intrexfurniture.com/products/product_detail.php?item=152

Ecological Engineer

Ongoing Mixed Media Series 
Ink, graphite, colored pencil and carbon transfer on paper
8.5 x 11”
Buffalo Head Source: Harper’s Magazine, artist unknown 

As the keystone species of the North America’s Great Plains, Bison bison bison shaped America’s prarie grassland ecological system for millenniums. Before man re-shaped this vast ecosystem with sprawling networks of housing, agriculture, industry and infrastructure, the American Bison were the crucial player in maintaining this delicately balanced land of grass, fire, and migrating herds. 

 Only 1% of America’s “pre-discovery” prairie grasslands remain today. Only 15,000 “wild” buffalo remain today, down from an estimated 80 million buffalo in the mid-1800’s. Now there are two good reasons to put a “bison head on an end of stick” if there ever was one.

Mass Arm: South Shore, Baby

Ink, pencil, water color, photoshop massage

8.5x11”

April 2012

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts:
the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay;
the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre;
the wrist at Truro; the sandy fist at Provincetown,
behind which the State stands on her guard,
with her back to the Green Mountains,
and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean,
like an athlete protecting her Bay,
boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and anon,
heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth,
ready to thrust forward her other fist,
which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann.

- Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, 1865

Fawn Foot Axette

Pencil and ink on paper

8.5x11”

“Mama Said Knock You Out!”

Ink, graphite, colored pencil, scan underlay, photoshop adjustment
7x7”

“In Cornwall, Connecticut, and wherever iron was made in the Birkshires, you may still see where burning mounds were: the hardwood is coming back in those hills, except for the chestnut, which reaches about ten feet before it browns and succumbs to the blight of 1904”  (Sloane, 1965). In the words of LL Cool J, “Don’t call it a comeback…”

Bibliography
Sloane, Eric. A Reverence for Wood, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1965.

Ladies Love Cool James, “Mama Said Knock You Out,” Mama Said Knock You Out, Def Jam/Columbia/CBS Records, 1990. 12” Single.

Pinus Strobus Nurse Log No. 2

Graphite, colored pencil and carbon print on textured paper, photoshop color
8.5 x 11”

Concept drawing for an artful “scientistic” research installation intended to record the health of the  helmlock (Tsuga canadensis) species throughout New England in the midst of global warming and the spread of the invasive wholly adelgid.

Biography

Aber, John D. & David R. Foster. Forests in Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 93-99.

Del Tredici, Peter & Alice Kitajimi. Finding a Replacement for the Eastern Hemlock: Research at the Arnold Arboretum. Arnoldia. 2004. Volume 63, Issue 2. 33-39.

Havill, Nathan P. & Michael E. Montgomery. The Role of Arboreta in Studying the Evolution of Host Resistance to the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. Arnoldia. 2008 Volume 65, issue 3. 2-9.

Orwig, David A. & David R. Foster. Ecosystem Response to an Imported Pathogen: The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. Arnoldia. Volume 52.  Issue 2. 1998. 41-45.

Wessels, Tom, Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England. Woodstock, Vermont: The Countryman Press, 1997. 65-69, 121-122.

Parametrics?

8.5x11”

Graphite, ink, white pencil, photoshop

Spring 2012

“Size 10 Spontaneous Urban Intervention”

Guerrilla Planting Proposal

Ink, graphite, colored pencil and paper
8.5 x 11”

Spontaneous vegetation nails a slam dunk in a pair of Nike Air Force 1’s, in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Seed mix: Achillea millefolium, Aster (Symphytrichum) pilosus, Cichorium intybus, Leucanthemum vulgare, Tanacetum vulgare, Rudbeckia hirta, Lotus corniculatus,Trifolium hybridum,Trifolium repens,Vicia cracca, Lolium perenne (based on Peter Del Tredici’s cosmopolitan urban meadow mix)

Bibliography
Del Tredici, Peter. Spontaneous Urban Vegetation : Reflections of Change in a Globalized World. Nature and Culture, 2010.

Kühn, Norbert. Intentions for the Unintentional Spontaneous Vegetation as the Basis for Innovative Planting Design in Urban Areas. Journal of Landscape Architecture, Berlin, Autumn 2006.

Jorgensen, Anna. The social and cultural context of ecological plantings. In: Dunnett, Nigel, and James Hitchmough (eds.), The Dynamic Landscape: Design, Ecology and Management of Naturalistic Urban Planting. London: Taylor & Francis, 2004.

“This view is nice, but the successional landscape is sooo 2010.”

Graphite, Ink

8.5x11”

For Nancy.