Other side of Pluvius

Abstract

Watching the news and reading the paper provides the public with an image of logging that is seldom a positive reflection of the industry. Environmental groups protesting, unconcerned loggers “raping” the forest and long-winded politicians are the images facing the general public. Having been surrounded by the lumber industry from a young age I find many of these images to be untrue or at least misleading. The existence of the logger is continuously being threatened. Using charcoal and paper in my drawings, I hope to show the reality of the timber industry and the influences of people, machinery and ideas within that industry. With the current debate about environmentalism and the “new social conscience,” this way of life is facing difficult times. In a few years this environment may be lost, if not by the closing of the forests, then through introduction of new, high-tech machinery. “The logger needs a spokesman, something or someone to represent the thousands of smaller loggers and the cork shoe wearing men that work in the brush” (Finley Hayes). I hope that my work can provide a pictorial record of this lifestyle, the way Darius Kinsey’s photographs document early logging in the Northwest of huge virgin timber, using oxen, axes and crosscut saws. I would also hope that people unfamiliar with this way of life would come away with a new perspective, and a positive one.