Sierra Brown, a master of fine arts degree candidate at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), has given new meaning to the words ‘morning commute.’
The 28-year-old CSULB graduate student recently spent eight Mondays on her thesis project entitled “Port-to-Class Supercommute.” The project was done in an effort to raise awareness about the environment, the cost of fuel and southern California’s lack of public transportation.
Brown, who joined the university in 2004 as a printmaker and now studies sculpture, swam past anchored oil tankers and through cold, polluted water for six-and-a-half hours to make her environmental point. She also dodged semi trucks across 16 miles of Wilmington using rollerblades, a Razor scooter, a bike and her own two feet, using human-powered means to get to her 7 p.m. art class each Monday.
Her graduate project will culminate in April with a campus gallery exhibition and a published book that will include photographs, maps and finish times.
For Brown, the project is an opportunity to create an awareness of how important it is to take that first step toward change.
“I want to raise questions within the art world, but also beyond it,” she said. “I want to be able to push those boundaries a little bit and to raise questions about the relationships between art, society and the environment.”
The roots of the project began after Brown moved to San Pedro from Arizona only to realize there was no easy way to bike to school, which was her mode of transportation when living and studying in Australia for several years. Pedestrian and bike traffic are both forbidden on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, “a straight arrow to CSULB, but riding the bus meant two bus changes and a two-and-a-half-hour commute.” As is, it takes her about 30 minutes to drive to campus three times a week.
Brown wants to encourage her fellow Californians to think about the state’s commuting infrastructure. “When I used rollerblades to reach campus, I made it in two hours, and if there had been any kind of bike path, I could have done it in 90 minutes,” she said. “Still, it has been a fun, enjoyable experience, despite the dangers.”
The swim through the greasy and crowded waters of the port demanded a steady pace. Her father came from Arizona to accompany his daughter on a kayak on her first swim. She also traveled with a lifeguard and support crew on a boat that cruised beside her. Her idea of a break was to tread water every half hour for a few seconds with a drink of water. But she wasn’t finished yet. When she hauled herself out of the water, she still had a mile-and-a-half walk to class arriving with plenty of time for her 7 p.m. graduate art critique class. Mercifully, a professor of Brown’s gave her a ride home each Monday night. On Wednesdays she drove to class.
She has been pleased by the level of support she has received from family, friends and faculty. Ron Stewart, a professional photographer, has been there every week documenting the commutes. “The support boat has also managed to be there for every water event,” said Brown, who also paddled a long board, sailed and pedaled a swan boat in Victorian attire (the last of the eight commutes which she called her ‘Mystery Commute’) over the 12-mile water route. “I even received offers from volunteers who wanted to bike ride with me.”
She received support from a San Pedro bike shop, The Bike Palace, that provided a support vehicle and partial funding, and Byron design surfboards that shaped a custom surfboard for the paddle. “It was very nice of them,” she said. “It was hard to get any support. At one point, I was going door to door to find someone who might support me.”
Another key to her preparation was training by book. “I’ve swum competitively all my life but never in the ocean,” she said. “After training in swimming pools, I began to read about long-distance swimming and found out it was a lot different. I looked through the Internet and found the Catalina Swimmers Association. I analyzed who made that swim and who didn’t and why. It made a big difference in how I trained.”
One of her biggest problems during the swim was the cold water and pollution. “I began training by swimming out to a buoy at Cabrillo State Beach,” she recalled. “I kept running into kelp and plastic bags. It was challenging to keep a steady heart rate and not let my imagination get the better of me. I needed steady breathing and the ability to remain calm when I ran into plastic bags or a sea lion followed me.”
Despite the seriousness of her project, Brown managed to insert a bit of humor here and there with her commutes. She donned a polar bear suit (a sort of pseudo-mascot in the fight against global warming) for her 16-mile run commute to the campus. And, for her final ‘mystery commute,’ she pedaled a swan boat with her mom while both were dressed in Victorian attire, including sun-shading parasols.
“Sierra Brown’s ‘supercommute’ project was certainly an ambitious one, especially from a physical standpoint. It illustrates the type of ‘outside the box’ thinking that is encouraged and supported in a university environment,” said CSULB Provost Karen L.Gould. “At the same time, it’s more than an art project. She chose an unusual and, at times, humorous series of commutes that focused on Southern California’s over-reliance on automobiles and fossil fuels. The project is very much in line with the ‘green’ campaigns that are increasingly at the forefront of the environmental movement, but her approach is very different. More importantly, she not only talks the talk, she walks the walk, literally.”
As she pulled the orange-beaked swan boat up to the dock in Long Beach and disembarked with her mom, Brown admitted that she was “excited and relieved” that the physical aspect of the project was finished. Now, comes the task of putting together the gallery exhibition.
Looking back on the last eight Mondays and their accompanying commutes, she said the swan boat commute, which took six hours and 19 minutes, was easier than expected, but it was the run in the polar bear suit that was the most fun because of the reaction of those she ran by during the commute. She also said her first-week swim, which took about six and a half hours to complete, was challenging, but the most difficult commute was paddling the long board because of arthritis in one shoulder and the fact that the wind and tide were against her on that commute.
