Deborah Kaitlin Lenahan

dkatelenahan@gmail.com / 970.261.9058Master of Landscape Architecture I

2015

Research IDigital Media and Photography IIIDrawing, Painting, and Sculpture VHarvard GSD - Phenscape VIIHarvard GSD - (Storm)water Cycle Park IXGreenpoint Bioremediation Project XI

By creatively activating the scientific imagination, I aspire to script landscape design as a public, performative interface that may be symbiotically, practically, and equitably engaged by ecosystem inhabitants--human and nonhuman alike.

Cover: Google Earth image distorted in Processing, 2013. Academic. At right: Preliminary mycelial inoculation experiment for the Greenpoint Bioremediation Project, using soil samples from three test sites. Petri dish-es, soil, oyster mushroom mycelium. 2014. Professional.

Intent of study

Table of contents

I

The practice of research as art is at the heart of my work. It always has been--whether by haphazardly altering code, playing with color resonance, or gathering data and information as a basis for design, my art has continually amounted to experimentation. Research is about relationships: testing how one part connects to another, and how these connections manifest, breathe, altogether. It is ignoring the disciplinary barriers between art, life, and science, because none of these live in isolation. The Greenpoint Bioremediation Project (p. XI), pictured here in snapshots, has most profoundly allowed me to pursue this research. 2014. Professional.

I am author of an extensive bioremediation database, at right, that correlates local species of microbes, fungi, and plants with the contaminants they are shown to degrade, as well as the scientific studies that demonstrate these abilities. The database will ultimately be hosted online as a public resource, and can be used to consider site-specific remediation strategies for the GBP.

Research

Below, left: Bins containing mushroom-inoculated soil samples from three test sites, respectively. We measured petroleum hydrocarbon and microorganism contents to ascertain the impact of urban soil conditions on the fungus’s bioremediation capacity.

Right: Sample from expanded experiment, at left.

Above: Peparation of agar plates. We cultured and expanded the mushroom specimen (Stropharia rugosoannulata) for further experimentation (as seen below).

Below: “My Celia,” time-lapse images of oyster mushroom growth on agar, March-May 2014. I expanded My Celia from the first generation sample for use in experiments aiming to cultivate a strain that grows successfully on contaminated soil.

IIResearch

By destructuring the image, digital media have afforded me a means of interweaving the various layers of the worlds on and off the screen: from raw content and color channels, to history and my imagination of the personal and the natural. As such, this work enabled me to challenge and deconstruct my own identification with a Picturesque Wild, cultivated through an upbringing in Colorado. The images here belong to two bodies of work: one produced through an art course on hacking and glitching, in which I explored items of personal significance. The other, sampled at right, consists of a series of images made by interleaving photographs of ‘Nature’ with artifice, erasing the cultural dichotomy between the two. Academic.

At right: Pleistocene, interleaved photographs of an overlook in CO and the steps of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, Photoshop, 4.5” x 7,” 2012.

IIIDigital Media and Photography

The Other Highline, hiking path / Long Island Railroad.

Footprints / cathedral nave. Apple tree / arcade. Photoshop, 8.5” x 11,” 2012.

I distorted a number of images in Processing by modifying pixel sorting and value. Below, left to right: (1) Processing code for cover page image, (2,3) X-ray image of a defibrillator, (4,5) Photograph of a weed in my hometown of Grand Junction, CO, raw color channels interleaved. 2013.

IVDigital Media and Photography

V

I have sketched since I was a toddler, whether with crayons or charcoal. At an age when words were difficult, pictures could better express what I had to say, and they still do as much today. The body has always been for me a central element, as subject, physical medium, or gesture. With some technical training, I have better learned to define form and shadow, while in painting I developed color as a compositional tool to build depth and resonance on the flat canvas plane. Academic / Personal.

At right: Untitled paintings, 3’ x 3’, acrylic, 2012, My process coupled time with action as I spilled and pooled paint to dry, relinquishing full control over the visual outcome.

Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture

Above: Sculpture after model, clay, 4” x 5.” Museum figure sketches, charcoal pencil, 5” x 7,” 2012.

Left: Hand sketch, charcoal on paper, 11” x 14,” 2006.

Below: Planting catalog, summer/winter. From left to right: Serviceberry, Redosier dogwood, Eastern redbud, Groundsel bush, European alder, European ash, and sycamore maple. Pen, 2014.

Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture VI

Phenscape transforms the landscape into a solar calendar that follows blooming patterns through space and season. The resulting walk traces the arc of the shadow cast from an overlook as the sun changes place over the course of the year--shorter in the summer and longer in the winter. Vegetation, planted by blooming period, flourishes sequentially along this vector as it receives light, such that viewers and plants share the same path. I thereby aimed to integrate physical participation with ecological processes. 2014. Academic.

At right: Model, mixed media, 7” x 12” x 3.”

VIIHarvard GSD - Phenscape

Below, left to right: (1) Proposed contour plan, lead on vellum, 7” x 12.” (2-4) Shadow studies: July 21, March/Sep. 21, Dec. 21 at 3 pm, foam core board, 7” x 12” x 2.” (5) Proposed circulation plan, lead on vellum, 7” x 12.” (6) Model, mixed media, 7” x 12” x 3.”

The project began with a contour plan. Over time, this topography metamorphosed through iteration in model as I applied hypothetical biogeological and anthropomorphic pressures. The final design emerged from research, observation, and experimentation.

Right:Base contour plan, pen on vellum, 5” x 11.”

Left: Phenological calendar of plant species.Right: Planting plan, lead and colored pencil on vellum, 7” x 12.”

Paper model iterations, 7” x 12” x 3.”

Harvard GSD - Phenscape VIII

(Storm)water Cycle Park is a response to an urban area slotted for redevelopment in Boston, MA. The proposed site was largely impermeable, littered with trash, and erupting with spontaneous plant life. My design addressed the congestion of waste and water at the junctions of hard infrastructure and biological pathways--infitration and vegetation. By re-scripting the waste stream as waste cycle, the project attempted to re-position these flows in a playful, porous infrastructure. The normally veiled sewer system is echoed on the surface as a water channel that both collects stormwater from above and brings clean water for play from below, permeabilizing the ground. Vegetation responds to moisture, light, and contaminants as they cross the site, working to absorb, cool, and remediate. By these means, water and plants are made to reiterate and frame the fluid processes and communities that aggregate at the urban surface. 2014. Academic.

At right: Model, with Target retroffited as shade garden, pedestrian bridge and artificial wetland, mixed media, 14” x 18” x 6.”

IXHarvard GSD - (Storm)water Cycle Park

Above: Mass/void existing plan (left) and proposed plan (right). Surrounding neighborhood (grey), transit routes (yellow), permeable surfaces (teal), impermeable surfaces (red), buildings (black). Illustrator, 11” x 14.” At right: Conceptual collages, Photoshop. 11” x 14.” Below: Two of seven serial sections, autumn, with rerouted road and water pipes, lead and colored pencil on vellum, 18” x 3.’

Harvard GSD - (Storm)water Cycle Park X

The Greenpoint Bioremediation Project (GBP) has allowed me to reframe landscape through relationships--to incite its potential to foster exchange among people, life forms, and ecological processes. An artist-led initiative, it is a collaboration between fellow artists, scientists, and community organizations in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY. Together we aim to involve and empower underserved communities in the remediation of Newtown Creek and its surrounding neighborhoods, a region severly contaminated by industrial activity, combined sewer outfalls, and an oil spill that has lasted for nearly a century. We view our cross-community engagement as an art of collaboration, as the project seeks to stimulate the public imagination to collectively--rhizomatically--improve our environmental health through bioremediation. In this web, my part is to participate in lab testing and in vitro cultivation of mycelia; providing background research and scientific support; producing written content and reports; and assisting in project development. In these roles, I conduct research as an artistic practice, bridging laboratory and scholarly work with community engagement and environmental remediation. 2014. Professional.

At right: Expansion of first generation garden giant mushroom mycelium on agar. Successful strains were cultivated for inoculation in test soils.

XIGreenpoint Bioremediation Project

Testing sites, left to right: (1,2) Eastern Parkway EPA bioswale. (3,4) Apollo Street end. (5,6) Plank Road street end.

From left to right: (2) Collecting soil samples from the Eastern Parkway site. (3) Lab colleagues prepare soil samples. Samples were tested for metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and biodiversity. (4) Lab colleague sorts oyster mushroom mycelium

samples growing on rye. (5) Oyster mushroom mycelium in sawdust, for testing of cultivation media.

Above: (1) Collecting soil samples from a community garden for contaminant testing.

Camera-phone snapshots of test sites and lab work. The GBP relies on qualified research to ultimately develop targeted remediation techniques for potential use on-site.

Greenpoint Bioremediation Project XII