Watching Guadalcanal Village - Wetlands Restoration Photo Exhibit
WRCA, April 1 - May 31, 2006, 410 O'Brien Hall

In keeping with its mission of providing access to contemporary water-related materials, the Water Resources Center Archives (WRCA) is presenting an exhibit of color photographs of a northern California wetlands restoration site.

The photos in the exhibit were taken by Sally Mack at a 53-acre wetlands restoration site owned by CalTrans, developed by a consortium of federal and state resource agencies. Named "Guadalcanal Village" after the South Pacific island, it's the site of a failed Navy housing development, now a CalTrans mitigation site, located near Vallejo, CA. It's bordered by Highway 37 and the Napa River. Within a few years it is slated to become part of the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. More info on the area may be found in Sally's article "Watching Guadalcanal Village," published in the March 2006 WRCA News (p.6; pdf).

Although Sally has lived in the Bay Area since 1977, she grew up in the Sonora Desert in Arizona to which she attributes, in part, her fascination with wetlands and marshes. Wetlands seem exotic, the plants that live in them, the birds that use them, the amphibians that cannot live anywhere else. Water seems exotic, the ways in which it reacts to, absorbs, and reflects light, the way it ebbs and flows with the tides, the way plants sway with its movement, the way that sounds travel over and through it. The beauty is everywhere, the mud, the plants, the water, the reflections, the plants growing under water, in all weather, in all seasons.

The photos in the exhibit were taken with a 35mm film camera and printed optically (as opposed to digitally) at a local lab. More of Sally's photos can be seen at http://www.sallymack.us/

For hours and directions to the WRCA, please contact the library (510.642.2666) or visit the WRCA website

Prints on exhibit (Select a caption below to view the image.) Brown Scum #1 Flowers/Rain #1 Grasses/Pool #1 Grasses/Reflections #6 Grasses/Reflections #7 Logs/Reflections #1 Marsh #1 Mud #3 Overview (Winter) #1 Pickleweed/Reflections #7 Reflections/Green #1 Reflections/Underwater #1