I have been interested in the myriad islands
scattered across the vast Pacific Ocean from early childhood through sailing
experiences with my Dad in the Gulf of Mexico and following the adventures of
Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon Tiki and the Ra. Much later I came to realize that island
cultures evolved by dealing with the daily reality of limited resources as
opposed to the naïveté of wishful thinking that led to the wasteful continental
assumption that a creator endowed man with stewardship of an infinite bounty.
The contrast sparked my own evolution from an IBM engineering yuppie to free-lance
artist tipi dweller in the woods learning to grow my own food over the past
forty years.
The work involves studying the geology of islands
born of volcanic activity and their subsequent erosion to the present to estimate
locations of high fossil concentration probability for future excavation. Beginning with
the area of Dibois’ discovery along the Solo River in East Java, our work has
expanded to Sumatra as I draw the maps and multiple overlays of previous
research into rainfall, volcanic activity, geological stratification and location
and kinds of fossils uncovered to date.
The most detailed map so far is of the runoff and
control of rainwater for irrigation of the ubiquitous rice paddies in the area
of the original discovery lifted from previously drawn Indonesian quad maps.
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| This map is clearer than the enlargement at 25 feet wide |
From detailed topographic data I was able to develop a 3D representation of the
original excavation sites around Ngandong.
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| The small section of the Solo River shown in the upper left is the river shown in the enlargement of the large map above |
It wasn’t until the research expanded into the
ocean to determine ancient sea levels and bathyspheric contours off the coast
that I needed to draw a better representation of the present-day coastline than
was available anywhere upon which to overlay all the various relevant data. My
method was to go into the wonderful Google Earth program and hover 100 kilometers
above sea level, copy and paste each screen in a mosaic of the white beaches
and lagoons lining the Java coastline into the Adobe Illustrator application and
trace the visible waterline and major rivers emptying the plentiful watershed
from the many volcanic peaks.
I so enjoy seeing and tracing the sinuous curves of
the rivers, lakes and coastlines that I have been preoccupied with drawing
beyond the area of the work and have detailed the Malay Peninsula up to
Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, the chain of islands east of Java and Borneo and Sulawesi to
the North. I can see myself doing this for the entire coastline of every
landmass protruding above the Pacific Ocean for both the sheer enjoyment of perusing Pachamama and the
bittersweet realization that those lines could well be several feet under water
in what little is left of my lifetime.
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| This map is 47 feet wide at the detail level obtained 100 kilometers above the earth. |
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