PROJECTS
The Salmon School
A Collaboration in Conservation
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The Salmon School is an international traveling exhibition spearheaded and conceptualized by artist Joseph Rossano that casts light on the diminished state of global salmon and steelhead populations. The installation features a life-size school of mirrored salmon-like forms, sculpted from molten glass by concerned individuals from around the world, as well as firsthand video accounts from renowned scientists, artists, and indigenous peoples.
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The Salmon School is inspired by the Skagit River, the fourth largest outflow to the Pacific Ocean in the continental United States, and its dwindling run of salmon and steelhead. Once numbering in the millions, the Skagit’s salmon stocks now number barely in the tens of thousands. Whereas the river's steelhead population, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, now numbers only in the hundreds.
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Because the steelhead return to the Skagit in the late winter when cupboards were historically bare, they once served as an important food supply to indigenous peoples. The stories of the region’s people and their use of its land over thousands of years offers captivating and actionable insights that Rossano hopes will bring disparate groups together for the benefit of these fish and those dependent on them.
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The Salmon School is an outgrowth of SCHOOL that has become an international community art program and traveling exhibit quantifying the state of global salmon and steelhead populations.