Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Over The River

[Related News] Balancing the scales for fish in the river

source: Copyright © 2006 The Pueblo Chieftain

[Related News] Balancing the scales for fish in the river

Wildlife workers try to remediate the damage to aquatic life in Arkansas River.

By CHRIS WOODKA
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

SALIDA - Good news: Christo’s proposed draperies wouldn’t hurt fish in the Arkansas River.

Bad news: People could, if they’re not careful.

Colorado Division of Wildlife biologist Greg Policky took a look at the Arkansas River from the fishes’ point of view last week at the Arkansas River Basin Water Forum.

Overall, better management of the river since World War II is starting to make up for the damage done in the century before, but more has to be done, Policky said.

One question veered off-course from the scientific to the political realm: Will Christo impact the fish?

“No, he’ll impact the fishermen more than the fish,” Policky said, referring to a proposed artwork that would drape stretches of the river with colorful fabric. The project still does not have state and local approval.

If tourists view the project from a passing car window, there would be little impact on the fish. But if they get out of the cars at a few turnouts to get a closer look, they could contribute to the ongoing erosion problem, Policky said.

More damaging are the everyday impacts people have on the river - impacts that have continued for 150 years, he said.

Today, the river above Canon City is constricted by U.S. 50 on one side and the railroad on the other, cutting off its natural meanders that used to slow its velocity.

“It cuts a deeper, faster channel through the canyon,” Policky said.

Poor land management has reduced undergrowth in the watershed, causing more erosion and sedimentation. The problem is worst during floods.

“Blowouts drop tons of sediment into the river,” he said.

Mine tailings continue to leach into the river, although they have been better controlled in the past five years, he said.

“A lot of us remember when the Arkansas River turned orange all the way to Salida in October 1985 from a blowout in the Yak Tunnel,” Policky said.

A voluntary flow program regulates the amount of water in the river, allowing fish to spawn in the fall and protecting them from rushing whirlpools of water to some extent at other times, he said.

But that same flow program can lower the elevation of Twin Lakes by feet in late summer, taking the warmest water off the top of the lakes when they are in their most productive period, at least from a fish’s point of view.

Policky traced the history of fish in the basin since man’s arrival in the mid-1800s.

Two native species were virtually wiped out because of overfishing and introduction of non-native species.

While the yellowfin cutthroat trout became extinct by the late 1800s, a population of greenback cutthroat trout is being restored above Twin Lakes. The greenback cannot compete with the brown trout on the Arkansas River mainstem, however.

Policky said the greenback recovery program has been a success.

“The goal of the recovery plan is to develop catch-and-release fisheries,” he said.

In bygone days, the federal fish hatchery at Leadville, along with numerous other hatcheries in the valley, stocked the river with non-native species. While increasing the supply of fish, past practices did little to improve habitat. Commercial fishermen harvested the river to feed the miners. Grazing went unchecked, disturbing the ground cover. Mines belched heavy metals into the streams.

After World War II, wildlife management, conservation and habitat improvement efforts began on several fronts. Limits were placed on anglers, water quality regulations were implemented and grazing restrictions were put in place. Boulders were placed in the river by the Bureau of Land Management to improve fish habitat.

While fisheries still must be stocked, a sustainable fish population is developing. The fish in the river today are more plentiful, larger and healthier than 10 years ago, he said.

“We could not make good fisheries by throwing rocks in it or sticking a regulation on it,” Policky said. “The fish population is the ultimate indicator of how well we’re doing.”

But what’s good for the fish may not always be good for people.

During the drought of 2002, when river flows were sluggish, the fish thrived.

“Normally, there’s too much water in the Arkansas River, too much velocity,” Policky said. “If you’re a fisherman, you’re still seeing the difference today.”

Christo visits the Business (!) School

source: Copyright © 2006 the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Christo visits the Business (!) School

Renowned artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude tell grad students how they do what they do

By Ken Gewertz
Harvard News Office

At the Business School, after environmental artists Christo (left) and Jeanne-Claude talk about how they fund and plan their enormous projects, they show pictures and maps of their current work-in-progress, 'Over the River,' an installation that will span parts of the Arkansas River in Colorado. (Staff photos Maggie Mastricola/Harvard News Office)

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the husband-and-wife team known for their enormous outdoor art installations, were at Harvard Business School (HBS) April 5 teaching M.B.A. students about being entrepreneurs.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's many projects have included suspending a nylon curtain across a 1,200-foot valley in Rifle, Colo.; surrounding 11 islands in Biscayne Bay, Fla., with floating mantles of pink polypropylene; constructing a fabric fence, 18 feet high and 24.5 miles long, across the hilly grasslands of Sonoma and Marin counties, Calif.; wrapping the massive Reichstag in Berlin, Germany, with more than a million square feet of silvery fabric; and, their most recent project, erecting 7,503 vinyl gates hung with billowing saffron-colored fabric along the sinuous footpaths in New York's Central Park.

These projects (which they characterize as "gentle disturbances") generally take many years to complete. Designing, engineering, fabricating, and constructing them is a daunting undertaking in itself, but what causes the most delay is obtaining permission from the dozens of government authorities and private individuals affected by a project. The Central Park "Gates," for example, took 26 years from conception to fruition at a cost to the artists of $21 million. "The Gates" remained in place for all of 16 days.

Christo: 'What is great in art is the freedom of the creative process. When a project happens, it is never because someone else decided that they want it there. There is no other reason for it to exist. That is why they attract so many people.'

Working for a quarter century on a project that lasts for two weeks and doesn't bring in a penny of profit hardly seems like an entrepreneur's dream. What do these two have to teach future business leaders?

"They're really applying the principles of entrepreneurial management even if they're not making a profit," said Josh Lerner, the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking, and a member of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. Lerner also co-wrote the case study on Christo and Jeanne-Claude (with professor of management practice Felda Hardymon and senior research associate Ann Leamon) that was used in the first-year M.B.A. course on entrepreneurial management in which the artists appeared as guests.

"They still have to have vision, the ability to undertake an ambitious project, to leverage resources, to manage financing. We thought it would be very useful for the students to look at a situation that was very different from the normal one," said Lerner.

Although it is unlikely that very many HBS students are going to model their careers on those of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, there may still be important parallels.

"There are a significant number of students who see themselves going into nontraditional entrepreneurial ventures, and for them it can be very instructive to see how one takes the entrepreneurial model and applies it to a nontraditional setting," Lerner said.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were both born June 13, 1935, but in different parts of the world. He was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria, the son of an industrialist; she, Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon in Morocco, the daughter of a French army officer. Christo fled Communist-controlled Bulgaria in 1956 and settled in Paris in 1958. He painted portraits to support himself and met Jeanne-Claude when he was commissioned to do a portrait of her mother.

The two have worked closely together ever since, choosing to let the world know them under the single name Christo. Now that recognition is no longer an issue, however, they have begun branding their projects with Jeanne-Claude's name as well. Now 71, spare, wiry, and approximately the same height, they might visually blend into one another were it not for the fiery orange beacon of Jeanne-Claude's hair.

According to Jeanne-Claude, the two were surprised when Lerner and his colleagues approached them with a request to speak at HBS. They had visited art schools before, but this was new territory, and they wondered whether they had anything to contribute.

"We thought maybe it was not totally appropriate," Jeanne-Claude said. "We build works of art, of joy and beauty, we refuse all sponsors, we use all our own money, and we get none of it back, just like parents do when they bring up a child."

Financing their own projects is a principle the two have followed from the beginning. The money comes from the sale of Christo's preparatory drawings to collectors, museums, and galleries. Obtaining lines of credit allows them to make sure their employees are paid on time, but they have always been able to pay the loans back in full. They believe that to accept outside funding in any form would impair their creative freedom.

"We create our projects basically for ourselves, just like an artist working in the studio. No one's going to tell him, 'Use red here,'" Christo said. Growing up in a communist dictatorship, he added, contributed greatly to his desire to protect his creative autonomy.

They also believe it is freedom that gives the projects their unique value and attracts people to see them.

"What is great in art is the freedom of the creative process," Christo said. "When a project happens, it is never because someone else decided that they want it there. There is no other reason for it to exist. That is why they attract so many people."

They also believe it is the projects' brief existence that contributes to their popularity.

"You are enjoying it, but already you are missing it," Jeanne-Claude said.

"There is such trivialization and banalization of imagery today," Christo added. "People like to say, 'It happened once, and I was there.'"

"Yes," Jeanne-Claude intoned. "Once upon a time there was the Valley Curtain."

Likewise, the permitting process, involving years of meeting with local officials, town councils, property owners, and environmental regulators, and finding solutions to endless problems and objections, slowly winning over one unbeliever after another until a consensus is reached - from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's point of view, this is an integral part of the artistic process and lends power to the project.

"A thousand people try to help us, and a thousand people try to stop us, and this creates energy," Jeanne-Claude said.

The artists are now trying to realize their next project, "Over the River," which they have been working on since 1992. They plan to suspend silvery nylon canopies over a 40-mile section of the Arkansas River in Colorado. Motorists driving along Highway 50 will see a shimmering surface billowing in the breeze, while those rafting down the river will pass beneath sections of fabric that will let in both sun and rain.

The artists must obtain permits from 17 federal, state, and local agencies, and provide for every possible contingency ranging from the impact of the project on bighorn sheep to the disruption of traffic patterns. Simultaneously they must solve the many technical problems involved in this huge, unprecedented construction. It is a time-consuming process.

"We have no life other than our projects," Jeanne-Claude said.

ken_gewertz@harvard.edu