Daniel McCormick

Thank You Charlotte, North Carolina

2011-11-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Creative Loafing Charlotte

Methods, Materials & Iterations of Ecological Art

2011-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Two new shows this Spring.

Materials and Methods: Ecological Art in Practice at the David Brower Center in Berkeley CA.

and...

Iterations of Ecological Art and Design at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art

Charlotte Takes Note

2010-06-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jeff Shiner/The Charlotte Observer for the pictures that accompanied this recent newspaper article.

Intersections

2010-02-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

The work in Charlotte is transitioning well through the changing seasons.

Thread Trail Installation in Charlotte, NC

2009-09-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

My latest installation is sited at the newly established Carolina Thread Trail in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. On September 15th a crowd gathered for the groundbreaking at the edge of Little Sugar Creek near the Charlotte Nature Museum in Freedom Park.

For more information see the Creating a Thread blog.
A unique partnership between Catawba Lands Conservancy, the Carolina Thread Trail, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation, the McColl Center for Visual Art, the Charlotte Nature Museum, and the involvment of local volunteers and merchants is helping make this project possible.

On KQED's SPARK Program

2009-06-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

Click here to view the episode:

Daniel McCormick: Spark KQED Public Media for Northern CA

Watch "Watershed Sculptures" on Make TV

2009-03-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Maker TV visited my West Marin site and featured me on an episode on MAKE. http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/maker_profile_watershed_sculptures.html
"Journey upstream with environmental artist Dan McCormick, a maker who crafts intricate watershed sculptures out of woven willow branches. Dan places his eco-art in gullies and riverbanks to help reduce erosion and filter out sediment and farm fertilizers that can clog streams and suffocate spawning salmon."

100' of Diversion

2008-08-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

Mid-July and midway through the construction of this new sculpture that will divert a large section of the runoff from the adjacent ranch. I worked again with the Marin Conservation Corps Regen Group as construction contractors.

The sculpture winds through a low swale feeding the John West Fork of Olema Creek.

Public Television Comes to John West Fork

2008-08-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

In conjunction with a documentary on "Makers" of the Bay Area a film crew from Minnesota Public Television visited the site on Olema Creek on one of the days I was working with the service-learning group of the Marin Conservation Corps--Project Regen. The film crew stayed with us for the day filming the installation of a new silt trap basket and then visited me in my studio at the Headlands to see how my watershed sculptures are created.

Watershed Sculpture at the Maker Faire

2008-05-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the support this weekend. And my special thanks to the pros--Phil Ross and Maria Mortati for their encouragement, inspiration and excellent logistics.

The response was overwhelming and visitors are writing their own reviews of my exhibit (see my links in the Recent Publications section on the right). Stay tuned for more updates and photos to come (we're still recovering!)

More Images and Information

2008-03-25T10:53:00.001-07:00

Green Museum included me in their featured artists listings and included some good descriptions on my latest projects. See my listing at this link: Green Museum

There's also a case study in their Toolbox for Park and Resource Managers here: CASE STUDY

Concept Drawing-Site Plan

2008-03-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

This illustration is part of my process for developing public art installations. This concept drawing is of a site plan of an installation I have done in agricultural area with a salmon spawning creek.

Before & After

2008-03-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

Before

Since the publication of my work in magazines such as Orion Magazine, I have received a lot of inquiries about how people can view my finished work. This is often tricky, since my intention is that the art eventually disappear into the land leaving thriving vegetation to stabilize the creek banks. These photos of a project I have done in a creek on agricultural lands makes the point better than anything I more I could say.

After

Fan Mail!

2008-03-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure who she is, but someone at "Blog4Jen" has given my work a great review and added terrific insights into my intentions in her blog entry titled "Careers I Admire".

"...the idea of intervention and interpretation rather than just observation, is what I really admire about McCormick’s perspective. He inserts his work into the creative forces of nature, they become a working and influencing part of a much larger process in a direct and intentional way, as opposed to the way we walk around without realizing our influence. His work is grounded in physical process. Each piece is ephemeral, its creation and disintegration are participatory. That participation reveals the process, brings it to our awareness, makes it perceptible and visible."

Read the whole text (with additional links to publications that cover my work that I didn't even know were on the web) at: Blog4Jen

Sculpting the Land

2008-01-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

I received some good press for my solo exhibition at the Bolinas Museum this month.

The Marin Independent Journal ran with a front page story. And, some of the local papers picked it up as well.

West Marin Citizen

January 10, 2008
ARTswell
by Claudia Chapline, Stinson Beach

Environmental Art
In the 1960s, earth artists began working with the landscape as object to be manipulated for aesthetic use. The most well known examples of Earth Art are Spiral Jetty and Lightning Field. The latest environmental art movement is Eco-Art. Ecological artists are working with natural systems to encourage restoration of habitat. This month the Bolinas Museum features the work of Daniel McCormick in the exhibition, Sculpting the Land, opening January 19 and continuing through March 2.

McCormick was once a student of James Turrell, earth and light sculptor, now famous for his work on Roden Crater in Arizona. Armed with a degree in environmental design from UC Berkeley, McCormick set out to go beyond witnessing and documenting environmental change. His work is a positive intervention working toward restoring ecological balance. McCormick’s work is watershed sculpture, primarily basket forms of woven willow. His sculptures are made from materials found in the watershed. The sculptures are placed strategically to stabilize stream banks or fit into the curves of the streams and gullies where they fill with leaves and twigs, collecting sediment that would otherwise suffocate the salmon and steelhead eggs in their spawning areas. The exhibition has process sketches, site plans, models, construction drawings, as well as large sculptures. McCormick works mostly in Marin, with students, the National Park Service, and the County. The sculptures gradually disintegrate, returning to the earth. McCormick’s Eco-Art is a collaboration with the community on public lands.

Watershed Sculpture at Sleepy Hollow Creek

2007-12-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

The December/January 2008 issue of Orion Magazine carried my story "Healing Sculpture" about my public art installations in Northern California.

"Nature Bound" Exhibition at the Meridian Gallery

2007-07-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

Click here to read the review from the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Weaving and binding willow branches and twigs, he makes "restorative" objects, like the ribbed kayak-shaped form dangling from the ceiling and the big curling noodle on the floor, that he sets into the banks of streams to hold back silt that hurts fish and other aquatic life. "

Landscapes of Meaning

2007-06-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to the full article in Landscape and Art Magazine:
Landscapes of Meaning

Flood Plane Wall Sculpture

2007-04-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

This sculpture is one of several public art works that I created in the Arroyo Seco for the Cty of Pasadena, CA.

“You can't replicate what was there in the historic flood plane, but you can recreate parts of the environment. The good thing about McCormick's sculpture is that it doesn't change nature, it just helps it along. In this case he created a small structure that replicates the function of a natural stream bank levee encouraging gradual deposition of sediments behind it. When the wall develops new growth from the riparian plants woven in, it will sustain itself for years to come and it will produce a lasting floodplain behind it that is structurally identical to a natural one. "

Martin Kammerer, Environmental Scientist
Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

Come to My Open Studio

2007-04-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

Please visit my studio this Sunday 4/22/07 during the Headlands Center for the Arts Open House. My studio is in building 960, basement level. This is always a fun art day. For directions go to:
http://www.headlands.org/article.asp?key=23

I couldn't have said it better

2007-03-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

When it comes to describing my restoration art, Peter Selz says it so well in his latest book, Art of Engagement, University of California Press, 2006 in the chapter "Toward a Sustainable Earth".

"Rather than retelling nature's story, Daniel McCormick has decided to work directly, hands-on, with natural habitats and watersheds. He intervenes in the environment, with the goal of reestablishing the equilibrium. His own environmental sculptures lose their identity as manmade artifacts, deconstructing as natural processes are reestablished."

Thank you, Peter. To see more of my work go to: http://www.arroyoseco.org/watershedsculptures.htm