Veazie Riverside Community: Salmon ladder burn

September 30, 2016

The “Veazie Riverside Community” program consisted of two community-based art events in the town’s new park; and the collaborative planning that preceded them. In 2013 the Veazie dam was removed, overseen by Penobscot River Restoration Trust (PRRT), and a waterfront park now marks this site. The first event was a June 1st, daylong series of activities in the park with artists, K-8 students, teachers and staff of Veazie Community School (VCS) and local citizens working together to make art.

The second event, in September, was a public fire performance of “SALMON LADDER.” After dusk I ignited alcohol that sits in metal channels of my sculpture representing a fishway (fish pass, fish steps), a manmade structure built around a dam to allow migrating species to swim upriver. The burn event is responding to the removal of the Veazie Dam, and honors the return to open water for the Atlantic Salmon to run farther North towards the head waters of the Penobscot river, no longer hampered by dams and fish ladders.

Hundreds attended the event, and heard the Penobscot Nation's storyteller, James Francis, speak about the cultural role of the Penobscot. Dr. Stephen M. Coughlan, Jr, from the UMaine Dept. of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Biology, talked about the species whose lives depend on the river. Artist Samantha C. Jones provided an all-ages fibers workshop, and musician Ellie May Shufro fiddled before we burned.

This project was supported by Burning Man Global Arts Fund. Photo credits to Amanda Prouty, H. Hovencamp, and Andy Mauery.