Writer Profile
Books & Essays
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Title:
The Southern Frontier: Landscapes Inspired by Bartram's Travels
Date Published:
Telfair Books 2011Description:
Presenting stunning reproductions of oil paintings by landscape artist Philip Juras, this exhibition catalogue offers a glimpse of the presettlement southern wilderness as late eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram would have experienced it during his famed travels through the region. Juras?s work combines direct observation with historical, scientific, and natural history research to depict, and in some cases reimagine, landscapes as they appeared in the 1770s. Juras spent years researching Bartram and revisiting important sites the naturalist wrote about in his celebrated Travels. Juras?s paintings recreate the lost southern frontier for contemporary viewers in much the same way that nineteenth century American landscape painters like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran brought the western frontier to the consciousness of the rapidly industrializing East.
Juras?s work explores many of the important and imperiled ecosystems that remain in the South today. These little-known, remnant natural communities, depicted in well-researched and meticulous paintings, are further illuminated by essays placing them in the context of Bartram?s legacy and the American landscape movement. The catalogue features more than sixty reproductions of Juras?s paintings. Presented with essays by the artist as well as Dorinda Dallmeyer, director of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program at the University of Georgia; Holly Koons McCullough, director of collections and exhibitions at the Telfair; and Janisse Ray, lauded poet and environmental advocate, the catalogue provides readers with a rare glimpse of the Southern frontier before its essence was irrevocably altered by European settlement.
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Title:
Bartram's Living Legacy: The Travels and the Nature of the South
Date Published:
Mercer University Press 2010Description:
Accompanying sixteen plates of his landscapes, Philip Juras's essay is entitled "A Glimpse of the Southern Frontier."
Bartram?s Living Legacy: the Travels and the Nature of the South reprints Bartram?s classic work alongside essays acknowledging the debt southern nature writers owe the man called the ?South?s Thoreau.? The book was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award.
The anthology includes contributions from sixteen of the South?s finest nature writers: Bill Belleville, Kathryn Braund, Dixon Bynum, Christopher Camuto, Thomas Rain Crowe, Dorinda Dallmeyer, Doug Davis, Jan DeBlieu, Whit Gibbons, Thomas Hallock, John Lane, Drew Lanham, Roger Pinckney, Janisse Ray, Matt Smith, and Gerald Thurmond, strikingly illustrated with Bartram-inspired landscape paintings by Philip Juras.
Book Review #1:
"The ecosystems that once defined the southern landscape have disappeared, as though some cataclysmic geological event had simply obliterated them. We know of them chiefly through William Bartram's Travels published in 1791. It would be about two centuries before a group of southeastern writers/naturalists/activists began to survey the landscape that we are left with, and to think about the consequences of what has been lost, and the power, beauty, and richness of what remains. Dorinda Dallmeyer, the editor of this wonderfully conceived volume, has been at the center of that group. Her idea of combining the text of the Travels with reflections by contemporary southern writers is a brilliant one. Bartram remains an indispensable writer, whose work has been neglected for too long. Now at last he, his book, and the land he describes have their champions. Some of the essayists here focus on Bartram the man, some on Bartram the naturalist, some on Bartram the writer and artist. And some focus, as he himself had done, on the landscape and ecology of the South as it now is, and as it once was.
Some of the essayists in this book I have known and admired for years; some are entirely new to me. They do not speak with one voice, or on behalf of any preconceived agenda. But their contributions, taken all together, indicate that the South now has its own distinctive tradition of environmental literature. Bartram, not Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, or John Burroughs, is its progenitor, and this book, I believe, will come to be seen as its cornerstone."
?Franklin Burroughs
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Title:
The Presettlement Piedmont Savanna: A Model For Landscape Design and Management
Date Published:
1997Description:
Description of Topic
Savannas and savanna-like landscapes are of high aesthetic value to humans and, when in a "natural" condition, are often ecologically rich. Once covering a large percentage of the Piedmont, generally on the uplands, savannas or savanna-like landscapes gave much of the presettlement Piedmont woodland landscape an open appearance, with trees widely spaced amidst a ground cover of grasses and forbs. Whether resulting from conditions on the extreme ends of the moisture gradient, from the influences of human and/or naturally caused fires, or by grazing and browsing animals, this ecologically rich and culturally valuable landscape persisted to various degrees for hundreds and potentially thousands of years. Even though the post-settlement European methods of land use caused presettlement savanna landscapes to all but disappear from the Piedmont, these landscapes can still be of value as aesthetically preferred and ecologically sound models for landscape design and management.
Methods
In order to understand the history, composition, functions, and aesthetics of the Piedmont savanna, I will in this thesis examine descriptive historical information, especially that of early explorers; savanna remnants found in the region; the ecology of nearby tall grass prairies and savannas; general savanna properties; human landscape preference; and Piedmont ecological history.
Application
The application will consist of a restoration design and management program for a demonstration of a Piedmont savanna landscape located at the South Carolina Botanical Garden in Clemson, South Carolina. The program will consider restoration design goals, inventory of site features, restoration design issues, site preparation, site installation, management goals, management units, objectives, strategies, methods, and management implementation and monitoring. A site inventory/analysis, a mass/space plan, a planting design plan, a management zones plan, and lists of potential species will be included.
Need for Research
Different types of savannas are common in today's southern Piedmont. These savannas are manifest in the manicured lawns and specimen trees of suburbia; the perfect rows of pecan and peach orchards; the summer-mown sward and trimmed trees of road right-of-ways; and in the landscapes of private estates, corporate properties, and public parks designed in a manner reminiscent of the English pastoral landscapes of Capability Brown two centuries ago. Though they are widespread and seemingly aesthetically preferred, these landscapes are often expensive to maintain in terms of labor, fuel, fertilizer, etc.; they are usually ecologically impoverished; and they often fall short of their aesthetic potential. In the interest of making these landscapes viable over time by reducing resource input and increasing ecological and aesthetic value, it is necessary to find a better model for their design and maintenance. The historic Piedmont savanna may serve as the best model. In the Piedmont of today, however, very little exists to give popularity to the concept that there is or was a native savanna or that it is an appropriate regional landscape. This is because the native savanna is neither a part of the present landscape, nor understood as having been part of it in the past. Historical misconceptions about the presettlement landscape result in poorly informed landscape decisions. In this thesis, I will attempt to expose these issues in addition to exploring the aesthetic and ecological properties of the Piedmont savanna in order to provide an informed model for landscape design and management.