Oxford Tire Pile #1, Westley California

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in pen, lower left: "CARRARA MARBLE QUARRIES

Label

This manmade landscape, of hills and high mountains of tire, visualizes the often forgotten afterlife of commercial production. It shows the largest tire pile on the planet, which held over 40 million used and discarded tiles at its peak capacity. What seems to be a graveyard of tires marks in fact only the penultimate stage in the life cycle of the oil product. They spend several years in this “temporary storage,” as they await an energy intensive recycling process and subsequent environmental cleanup.

A special concern in managing such tire piles is fire control. Tire fires are extremely difficult to extinguish, and even after being extinguished externally may continue to burn inside, undergoing slow-burning pyrolysis for over decades. Such fires release copious amounts of carbon monoxide, lead, and arsenic. In 1999, lightning struck a tire dump in Westley, causing it to burn for 30 days. Toxic pyrolitic oil flowed into the nearby stream, damaging the local ecosystem.

From the 2021 exhibition A Legacy for Learning: The Jane and Raphael Bernstein Collection, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Katherine W. Hart, Senior Curator of Collections and Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming; John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director; Jessica Hong, Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art; and Melissa McCormick, Professor of Japanese Art and Culture at Harvard University

Course History

ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Spring 2012

ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2013

ENVS 80, Writing Our Way Home, Terry Tempest Williams, Spring 2012

GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Jennifer Fluri, Winter 2012

GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Jennifer Fluri, Fall 2013

ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2014

WRIT 7, Religion and Literature: Revisioning the Invisible, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

SART 17.9, The Photographer as Activist: Making Art Inspired by the Hood Museum's Collection , Virginia Beahan, Winter 2015

ENVS 7.3, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2015

GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Abigail Neely, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

ENVS 7, Ecopyschology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2019

ANTH 12.26, GEOG 68, Environmental Justice, Maron Greenleaf, Winter 2019

GEOG 68, ANTH 12.26, Environmental Justice, Maron Greenleaf, Spring 2020

ANTH 12.26, Environmental Justice, Maron Greenleaf, Winter 2022

ANTH 12.26/GEOG 39.01, Environmental Justice, Maron Greenleaf, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

A Legacy for Learning: The Jane and Raphael Bernstein Collection; Landscape(d): Modern Photography and the Environment; William B. Jaffe Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; April 3-August 1, 2021.

Looking Back at Earth: Contemporary Environmental Photography from the Hood Museum of Art Collection, Friends Gallery and the Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Mueum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 7-August 26, 2012.

Publication History

John R. Stomberg, A Legacy for Learning: The Jane and Raphael Bernstein collection; Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art, 2021, Plate 6, p.17, listed p.94.

Provenance

Edward Burtynsky; given to Jane and Raphael Bernstein, Ridgewood, New Jersey, November 30th, 2001; lent to present collection, 2010; given to present collection, 2013.

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