November 4 - January 11, 2023
From the Houston Climate Justice Museum & Cultural Center:
“The Houston Climate Justice Museum & Cultural Center presents “Creosote Stories: Seeding Planthropocenes in Northeast Houston,” at the Rice University Solar Studios. An opening reception will take place Friday, November 4th from 6:30-9:00pm, accompanied by a reading and conversation with author Kathryn Savage and Houston-based writer and artist Willow Naomi Curry from 7-8pm.
Creosote Stories invites visitors to explore the legacy and future of the creosote plume in Northeast Houston through the different narratives that made the wood-preserving industry possible. Tracing the story of how the industry developed in the American South takes us to the expansion of commercial logging and the closing of the frontier, the USDA Forest Service that in large part was developed to conserve forests out of economic concerns, and the pseudo-science of race and the African American labor that was used to treat railroad ties.
The first study linking creosote to cancer was documented in 1775: through the reconstructed room of 111-year-old Alice Neale Wynter, the exhibit highlights the oral histories and present-day struggle between local community activists and the financial interests of multinational companies. Another room questions the role that institutions, governmental agencies, and philanthropic foundations have played in keeping the general public in the dark about the health impacts of the wood-preserving industry. As Northeast Houston residents grapple with the contamination and ongoing legal battles, they lead us to consider questions that get to the heart of our environmental crisis: How can we hold vested interests accountable for the slow violence that their wealth is predicated on? How can storytelling be a method for survival? How do we create environmental alliances across culture, class, age, gender, and other forms of difference?
As part of the opening reception, author Kathryn Savage will read from her debut novel Groundglass (2022) which draws on her own experiences growing up on the fence lines of industry and explores how past environmental actions reverberate across landscapes and in our bodies. Kathryn and Willow Curry will discuss the process of using personal stories to investigate brownfield and superfund sites, and the ways in which fiction can be used for critical inquiry.”
Reception: November 4, 2022 | 6:30–9:30 pm
The Solar Studios at Rice University
6100 Main St (The corner of Alumni Dr. and College Way in front of South Servery)
Houston, 77030 Texas
Get directions