Search Terms Used in my Research
At this stage in the project, I have narrowed my focus to the study of nurse logs, and primarily of the environmental works of Buster Simpson. As such, many of my searches had very narrow results because of their specificity. For example, common searches were:
nurse logs
tree species that produce nurse logs
locations of nurse logs
buster simpson
ecoart
art in public
installation art
Though these searches are broad, they did not return thousands, or even hundreds of useful resources. This attribute to two things I learned in my ongoing research: Nurse logs have not been intensively studied, work needs to be done on defining and examining the microclimates that seeds growing on logs exist in. Buster Simpson, though prolific and provocative, is often underrepresented. His contributions to the developing world of public art (or art in public as he insists) have not been thoroughly documented.
In attempts to begin to synthesize these disparate ideas, of Buster Simpsons’s guiding philosophy, of art in public, of the science of nurse logs and the idea, I performed a few more queries:
the woodman
crows
nature in the city
soil chemistry
mycorrhizal fungi
nurse logs in non-Pacific North West forests
tree decay
This final search has brought up an interesting image, and prompted me to start thinking of unguided nature as a force of decay, while Buster Simpson is also a “force of nature”. The key difference being that he uses nature to renew instead.
La Recoleta Cemetery; Small Vault in Decay. 2012. Contemporary Architecture, Urban Design and Public Art (ART on FILE Collection), Junin 1760, Recoleta Neighborhood, Buenos Aires, Argentina. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. ART on FILE. Web. 29 Jan. 2016.