Once there were thousands of sockeye salmon leaving
the Pacific Ocean to spawn in Idaho’s Redfish Lake. Only one
sockeye salmon made it to the lake in 1994, 1995 and 1996; and not
even one bright-red fish returned to spawn in
1997.
The decline of these once abundant native
fish is something we ought to be “slapped in the face with,” says
Gregg Schlanger, a sculptor who grew up in Idaho. So Schlanger
rounded up grants from several places, including the New York
Foundation for the Arts, and started jigsawing fish from
plywood.
His temporary exhibit at Redfish Lake,
“Sockeye Waters, Sockeye Dreams,” features 238 giant fish from two
to eight feet long, and all but one are painted a ghostly white.
One fish is painted red. Schlanger hopes the July 10-Aug. 10 show
can help build awareness of the salmon’s plight, for besides the
sockeye, some 70 species of wild salmon are in danger of going
extinct.
The exhibit travels to Boise, Idaho, for
a Salmon Days celebration Sept. 11, and the sculptor says 4,000
fourth graders will get a chance to paint his wooden fish in the
brightest colors. What he’s aiming for ultimately, Schlanger says,
is a 900-mile-long sculpture of 150,000 cutout fish, stretching
from the town of Astoria on the Oregon coast to Washington and
Idaho.
“Because fish are underwater, they can be
ignored,” he says. “I’ve been trying to pull them out of the
water.”
Gregg Schlanger works and teaches in
Tennessee; he can be reached at 720 Perkins Ave., Clarksville, TN
37040.
* Betsy
Marston
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ghostly fish swim in Idaho.
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