North Carolina Piedmont
Map of Umstead State Park
North Carolina’s Piedmont region contains almost all of the state’s metropolitan centers--Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte. According to data gathered from the United States Census Bureau, these five cities alone make up over 20% of North Carolina’s population, not including city suburbs and small municipalities in surrounding areas. Centuries ago, American bison, elk, bobcats, and wolves roamed these lands. As settlement increased during the 18th century, large parts of the region became timberland and were cleared for homes, roads, and most importantly for this region, agriculture.
While agriculture is central to the economy of the Piedmont region, historical one-crop farming is responsible for the depletion and erosion of soil quality and crop irregularities in some parts of the state. As this very clay heavy ground has been worked over and over throughout the last few centuries, it begs the question of food security and the continuity of profitable farming in the Piedmont. As colonization of the region continued and more forests were cleared for farms and timber, many non-native species of plants were brought to the state. The species overtook large parts of forests which when left unchecked, causes great stress on both the native flora and fauna of the region. North Carolina used to be home to large Beech wood forests, but early logging in the Piedmont almost entirely erased the tree from the state’s biomes. Today, there is a 61 acre preserve in William B. Umstead State Park, Piedmont Beech Natural Area, where this disappearing type of forest hangs on to the last hopes of survival. The area is not open to the public and a permit is required to visit the site.
Before Umstead was as you may know it today, it was a different place. Seventy years ago it was two different places - Crabtree Creek State Park off of Highway 70 in Raleigh, and Reedy Creek State Park off of Harrison Avenue in Cary. Land was allotted in 1950 for Reedy Creek, a park for Black use. It was not until 1966 that the park was desegregated and Reedy Creek and Crabtree Creek State Parks were united as one under the name of former North Carolina Governor, William B. Umstead. Today the two entrances to the Park, Harrison Avenue and Highway 70, are a reminder of how white supremacy shaped our landscape. Even now you still cannot access the eastern and western sides of the park from within it. This is a trend across parks in the state. Segregated Black parks during the 20th century did not receive the same amount of funding that parks for white people did. In North Carolina it has not been uncommon for white supremacy to rear its head in Black communities by exposing them to toxic materials and hazardous, life-threatening living conditions, further exposing Black communities to the early onset conditions of a collapsed climate.
Wake County is in the heart of North Carolina, where the flat landscape of the coast begins to transition into hills leading to the mountains in the west. This unique mix of flat and hilly landscape, combined with the number of large rivers flowing towards the coast mark the land as subject to frequent flooding. Have you ever noticed the amount of artificial lakes in central North Carolina? Several of the rivers running across the state were dammed to create lakes for the purposes of drinking water, flood control, and hydroelectric power. While we have a plethora of water reserved in these lakes for our use, illegal dumping of hazardous materials, contamination via industry (coal), and over fishing in NC’s watersheds jeopardizes our access to clean water. On top of the waste contaminating our water, rising temperatures globally threaten our access to the life-giving molecule. As temperatures rise globally, the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation) will be disturbed. A warmer atmosphere holds more water in a condensed state, causing drought. Drought leaves land, riverbeds, and streams dry. The impacts of this will be far reaching, impacting everything from agriculture to how you brush your teeth.
Map of Fish Kill Events in the Jordan Lake Watershed, 1997-2018, Ayla Gizlice
Map of Fish Kill Events in the Jordan Lake Watershed, 1997-2018 Ayla Gizlice
Ayla: “The work speaks directly to local water quality issues, which are one piece of the broader climate crisis. It also speaks to an imbalance in the relationship between people and their environment -- an imbalance that we know has ripple effects across the planet.”
How can I, as an environmentalist, justify the consumption implicit to art making?
Ayla’s answer to this question is twofold: She makes work that advocates for the local environment, and works in the most sustainable way possible. Ayla works primarily with found objects, and gathers her materials from specific locations that relate to the environmental issues that she speaks to. As a result, much of her work is sculptural. The role of labor is also a key element of her practice; by collecting and displaying material with limited intervention, the authorship of the work shifts.
Rather than the environment acting as a cornucopia from which she can pluck materials, she becomes a laborer or mediator for the material. Ayla compliments the abstract, poetic gestures made by her sculptures with more pointed multi-media work that contextualizes and displays data, which together act as a quiet protest against environmental degradation.
Coal Ash River by Waterkeeper Alliance Inc.
