The River2022 · Nooksack Valley Middle School, Everson, WA
One free-flowing river, followed from the falls below Mount Baker to the salt water at Bellingham Bay.
The River follows the Nooksack, the free-flowing, undammed river that ties the Nooksack Valley together from the base of Mount Baker to its mouth on Bellingham Bay. Commissioned for the Washington State Art Collection in partnership with the Nooksack Valley School District, the work is permanently installed at Nooksack Valley Middle School in Everson, Washington.
Peter de Lory walked many sections of the river and photographed it in glimpses from along its banks: Nooksack Falls in the North Cascades, Lower Racehorse Falls, the broad gravel reaches near Deming and Lynden, and the estuary on the Lummi Reservation where the river meets the sea. The photographs are installed as a grid of panels that wraps the walls of a stairwell landing, black-and-white studies of falling water set beside color views of the open river, so that the whole course of the Nooksack, from mountain to salt water, is read at once.