September 12, 2026 through October 07, 2026

David White • Immersion

Please join us for the Artists’ Opening Reception on Saturday, August 8 from 4-7pm

The Cascade Mountains of Oregon experience time on a different scale than humans. Humans come and go in a few decades, mountain ranges come and go at the speed of continental drift. After millions of years of tectonic movement and volcanic activity and erosion, the central Cascade Mountains underlying Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters Mountains are a fractured, porous sponge soaking up rain and snow where it slowly trickles down to a vast underground body of very slowly moving water. In places that tremendous reservoir spills over and emerges as roaring spring-fed creeks like Olallie Creek in the McKenzie River watershed. After thousands of years immersed underground, this pure, pristine water creates an ecological environment that is unique. The water in this creek is crystal clear and tinged blue due to the lack of impurities. Relatively immune to weather, the Olallie Creek never floods, never dries out, never freezes and always flows at 40°F., providing conditions that never change for the plants and animals that call this home.

This exhibition is the result of soaking myself in this dynamic, interconnected web of coexistent flora and fauna that survive in comfortable equilibrium in this compact area. This study is limited to the last 200 yards of this mile-long stream just before it merges with the McKenzie River. It is steep – no longer a creek, not quite a waterfall, but a steady, roaring tumble over rocks and under fallen trees that generates a mist that keeps everything above and below the waterline in a steady state of immersion.

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