Place

Onondaga Lake is a superfund site in my community. This project demonstrates my long-term commitment to the site and reciprocal relationship with the lake. Found materials were collected during site stewardship and include industrial waste used to landfill wetlands along the lake. I use these porcelain shards to document nature’s presence, photographing and drawing individual birds and the lake as witnessed at the site over time. Including “Work in Progress” in this exhibition title marks a moment in time in the continuum of my multi-year environmental engagement with the Onondaga Lake superfund site. 

As the title indicates, this work represents Dohne’s long-term and ongoing relationship with Onondaga Lake, a superfund site near Syracuse University. Dohne writes that her “practice and artwork reflect aspects of the lake’s intertwined ecosystem of nature, people and varied activities and histories of Onondaga Lake.” Such weavings of social and natural ecologies are a hallmark of much contemporary art addressing ecology.Dohne is particularly concerned that this work should acknowledge and honor Haudenosaunee understandings of place. She writes, “originally, the Haudenosaunee cared for Onondaga Lake, their ancestral land, sacred site, and birthplace of democracy. Their reciprocal relationship with the lake is represented by the turtle shell, native flora, and images of bird species.” Syracuse developed as an industrial city around salt mined from Onondaga Lake.

As in so many instances, such industrial activity on indigenous land violated treaties between indigenous people and the American colonists. Another important industry strongly associated with Syracuse was the Syracuse China Company. For Dohne, the shards of Syracuse China that she incorporates into this work “symbolize the legacy of colonization, white privilege and industrialization and are physical evidence of the material history” of Onondaga Lake. For Dohne, the lace doilies she utilizes “represent human touch through women’s work. They present the shards and local biodiversity as a present, fragile, revered treasure. The irregular organic forms of the lace reject the perfection of the machine-made aesthetic, presenting and celebrating biodiversity, inspiring the viewer to appreciate and protect their local ecosystems.”

Text by Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse China

“Onondaga Lake Project Work in Progress”, exhibition view.

Serigraph, Plate and Stone Lithography, on Arches. Varied Edition of 15.

Single print 30” H x 40” W. 

2016 – Ongoing, exhibition year 2019

Materials: Porcelain shards, colored pencil, beach plastic, graphite drawings, photo books, prints.

Bird Pamphlets

Drawings and Details

Stewardship & Community

I draw substantially on the knowledge and inspiration generated through an ongoing investigation of Onondaga Lake, a local superfund site two miles from my home in upstate New York. Initially I documented birds on location, striving to make the ethereal activity of nature tangible. I learned to recognize the reciprocal relationship of birds, plants, and place and began to ask myself existential questions. Gradually, over the course of several years, I came to understand how the essence of a place, its ecosystem, it’s very being, is inextricably intertwined with hidden histories of nature, people and events. 

To more fully understand place, I widened my circles of inquiry into an exploration of what I was observing: biodiversity, indigenous history, colonization, pollution, superfund cleanup, and restoration. I will continue exploring this fertile complexity, the natural and cultural histories of sites, here and elsewhere.

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