By Jeff Clemetson | Editor
Photographer captures nature’s cycles in ‘Rainmaker’
One hundred years ago, San Diego was experiencing a situation that today’s residents are all too familiar with –– severe drought. Out of desperation, the city council of the time hired Charles Hatfield, a self-proclaimed “moisture accelerator” with an uncanny record of success.
The result of the city’s desperate act became known as “Hatfield’s Flood” because whether through Hatfield’s rain-making process or by a plain, old act of nature, more than 30 inches of rain fell in a period of four weeks, resulting in homes and bridges being wiped out, dams collapsing and farming communities being swept away.
In the spirit of Hatfield’s time and with our own drought looming large in our consciousness, the Art Gallery on the 9th Floor of the Downtown Central Library is presenting “Rainmaker,” a collection of work by 12 artists that focuses on themes of water, drought, history and the future, and runs through Nov. 29. One of the featured artists, Michael Field, has strong ties to La Mesa and is known for his work involving the historic cycles of rain and drought.
Whether he is on the clock or on vacation, Field spends almost all of his time engrossed in the natural world, which is exactly what you’d expect from the exhibit designer for the San Diego Natural History Museum.
“Working here is like I’m always working here,” he said. “My home life and my work life are blurred. When I’m not at work, I’m out camping, taking pictures. I’m kind of obsessed with exploring and documenting what I find.”
Some of the images Field has found on his many camping trips capture the effects of rain and drought in our local desserts over historical time.
“I’m fascinated with these cycles that occur,” he said. “Particularly with ‘Rainmaker,’ the cycle of abundance and scarcity where you have periods of flooding and drought that constantly repeats and has always repeated. We’re just getting a kind of extreme example now with climate change causing that on a different scale.”
The four photos in the Rainmaker exhibit depict this cycle in ways that highlight its effects in both recent and ancient history.
“When I am outside, I can stand and look and kind of see the history of that place,” he said, pointing to a photo that shows what was once an island in ancient Lake Cahuilla, which has filled and emptied several times throughout history. During the Pleistocene period, it was the largest lake in California; now all that remains is the Salton Sea.
In another photo, a long-horned sheep is camouflaged among rocks just below a ring of mineral deposits that show where the ancient lake’s shoreline was at one point in history.
“I was taking pictures and I heard a rock fall. That’s how you usually find a big-horned sheep, they make a noise,” he said, adding that the subspecies of big-horn sheep in our deserts are another example of the cycle of scarcity; there are only around 500 of them left and are almost extinct.
The other two photos show recent flooding and drought. In one, a road in Ocotillo is washed out by a flash flood.
“This notion of flooding and drought in a geologic scale has always occurred here, it’s just a little more extreme right now. The whole dessert is just flooded and then the next year you come back and it looks like this,” Field said, pointing to the final photo, which depicts a parched, dry lakebed. “So, again, we have these cycles of abundance and scarcity that are repeated on many levels through nature.”
Field traces his fascination with the natural world back to his childhood when he’d spend time at, and even bring fossils to, the Natural History Museum while his mother was a volunteer at Balboa Park. Throughout his extensive education, he studied the disciplines that put him on the path to his current job.
“I went to college for 10 years and took every art and design class,” he said. “I was also fascinated with geology and natural history courses in general. So drafting; natural history classes; art classes in metal, wood and painting; all those things converged to what I do today.”
All those things plus a bit of luck 30 years ago when he was working in an art supply store and answered a phone call from someone looking for an artist to help finish some murals for a dinosaur exhibit at the museum.
“I just happened to be there, it was like a dream come true,” he said.
Other than a brief stint at the San Diego Museum of Art, Field has spent the last 30 years at the Natural History Museum, working to create the exhibits that are both creative and educational, like the current exhibit “Coast to Cactus” that he said visitors find the most fun, especially children.
“That’s the biggest reward for me, is seeing children in the exhibitions and they’re laughing, running around and having a great time.”
“Rainmaker” runs through Nov. 29 at the Art Gallery on the 9th Floor of the Downtown Central Library located at 330 Park Blvd; open Everyday from noon to 5 p.m., except Thursdays from 2 to 7 p.m. and closed on Mondays. For more information, visit bit.ly/1PlfcQk.
—Contact Jeff Clemetson at [email protected].
