Welcome to Blanca Mesa's site.
A sampling of published articles
The National Park Service has always used art to make us pay attention to our national treasures. Photographers, artists, and writers helped save some of America’s most iconic places. And promotional posters lured tourists to the peaks of Yosemite and boiling cauldrons of Yellowstone.
Then came the vast swamp of South Florida.
Everglades National Park was the first national park created for the protection of its unique biological diversity. The majesty lay within the swamps and cypress islands, and in the thick mangrove forests beneath tropical skies.
“Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no mighty glaciers or rushing streams wearing away the uplifted land,” said President Harry S Truman, making the case for Everglades National Park to a bewildered nation looking for grand vistas at the dedication ceremony in 1947. “Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in the country.”
The National Park Service turned to U.S. artist Charley Harper (1922-2007) to make the case, too, hoping the whimsical “minimal realism” of his images would inspire the world to love America’s newest treasure.
Parker’s drawings present their wild subjects -- from alligators and shorebirds to insects and the tiniest leaves -- in context. He used patterns, colors, textures, and shapes to convey the delicate balances found in nature. Each picture, he said, was an ecosystem in which all the elements were “interrelated, interdependent, and perfectly balanced.”
Now his drawings are on view to inspire a new generation. His work is part of an exhibit, “This Land Is Your Land: A Second Century for America’s National Parks,” celebrating the centennial of our National Park Service at the Coral Gables Museum (coralgablesmuseum.org).
“The drawings are playful, accessible, and modern,” says guest curator Jacqueline Crucet, “and I knew right away I had to have them.”
Crucet, program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association, says she discovered the original drawings in a vault at Everglades National Park. The drawings were the basis of a now-dismantled interpretive mural at the Royal Palm Visitor’s Center.
The museum exhibit focuses on South Florida’s four park sites: Everglades, Biscayne, and Dry Tortugas National Parks; and Big Cypress National Preserve.
While celebrating the first 100 years, the National Park Service also looks forward to the coming century, one that is fraught with perils and threats, both political and biological.
“All our national parks came about as a result of an active citizenry calling for the protection of our national and cultural heritage,” says Crucet, adding that it will take an equally involved citizenry to shepherd the parks safely into the next century.
There are many perils -- from insufficient funding to proposals to dismantle the system of federal lands in favor of state management. There’s also the pressure to open protected wilderness areas to the extraction industry for mining and oil and natural gas exploration.
In South Florida, the impacts of climate change, including ocean acidification, sea level rise, and saltwater intrusion, are already eroding shorelines and threatening the survival of some species. In the Big Cypress, the specter of oil exploration looms large.
“It’s up to our generation to ensure these places remain protected,” says Crucet.
Though deceptively simple, Parker’s work, like all the art of our national parks, can play a part. His love of nature bursts forth in the Everglades drawings. Harper’s sense of wonder and awe of the natural world is transcending.
Titles depict a typical day-in-the-life of the park: Feeding at Everglades, Life Under the Magnifying Glass, or Rainy Season at Water Level. Within these worlds, the iconic creatures of the Glades eat, fly, perch, slither, and swim, catching their prey in midair or chomping down in a pond. Their shapes at times are mere suggestions -- a mouse with a triangular head and cut-out holes for eyes -- at other times, exquisitely detailed, like the many-colored leaves scattered on a forest floor.
“The drawings really do communicate the experience of wilderness,” says Crucet.
You can see Harper’s vision, as well as photos and videos of the four national park properties, through January 8, 2017. The cavernous room is filled with the sounds of gurgling water and bird calls. And there are tales told through the numerous artifacts, including a life-size alligator, “Bob,” and assorted skulls of creatures long gone.
Corals, too, are on display, ghostly white and arranged under glass like specimens in a lab. Only their names recall the Technicolor brilliance of their life in the sea: starlet lettuce, knobby cactus, and maze.
Their whimsical names, like Harper’s drawings, are a reminder to the visitor to get out there and see the real thing, national treasures in our own backyard, ready to be experienced.
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com