Art: Minneapolis artist examines lingering effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill

Dig a few inches into the rocky beaches of Prince William Sound or Alaska's Kenai Peninsula and the water that seeps in may shimmer strangely. Or the shallow pit will fill with a dark, viscous liquid. The effluences are oil left from the Exxon Valdez tanker that ran aground on Bligh Reef 21 years ago.

The midnight accident dumped 10.8 million gallons of oil into the cold sea and eventually soiled 1,300 miles of shoreline. Despite four years of cleanup efforts at a cost of $2.1 billion, the Valdez disaster lingers. Bigger spills have happened elsewhere since then, but none caused more extensive or lasting environmental damage.

You don't do "issue art" on a short timeline, and artist Carole Fisher has no attention-deficit disorder. After two decades she is still bulldogging the Exxon Valdez. It has been the catalyst for more than 25 of her art installations nationwide, the most recent opening Friday at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). "Sticks in the Mind: Alaska Oil Spill Project, 1989-2011," which runs through Feb. 20, is a three-dimensional collage of words, images, brochures, film and video footage, interviews and memorabilia related to the Valdez incident and more recent environmental episodes, including the 2010 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Oil spills happen everywhere, so why do I focus on this one?" Fisher asked rhetorically. "Because Alaska is the grand land, and we need to preserve it."

The MCAD show will include a sample of Valdez oil gathered this past summer by a research vessel in Prince William Sound. Pockets of oil are still lodged in the crevices of the shores, potentially poisoning wildlife and ruining the coastline for fishers, hunters and tourists.

"It smells like a gas station," Fisher said. "It's on the beaches and in the sediment. It leaches into the water continually because of the wave action."

Trained as a painter and printmaker, Fisher taught at MCAD for 31 years before her retirement last summer. Over the years, her work has addressed such volatile topics as rape, incest, toxic waste sites, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and even the U.S. Army's secret spraying in the 1950s of her childhood neighborhood with zinc cadmium, a known carcinogen.

"I love to draw, and the images are my romantic attachment to that activity," she said. "So there is something of the traditional work of an artist, the mark of the hand."

She adapts her material to each setting, sometimes littering the floor with a maze of electrical cords to remind visitors of their energy dependence. Or incorporating piles of oil debris. This past summer she and an assistant spent weeks in Alaska, interviewing and photographing more than 50 environmentalists, fishermen, park rangers, naturalists and others about Valdez and the 2010 Gulf spill. She was able to elicit thoughtful reflections and heartfelt insights into the tragedy. Transcripts of the interviews will be included along with poetic wall texts that weave interview excerpts, facts and figures into an evocative palimpsest of memory, incident and even policy issues.

"I'm not a scientist," she said. "I take it in and put it back out. I just think we are interested in each other's stories."

And what of the Exxon Valdez tanker itself?

Now called the Sea River Mediterranean, it hauls oil across the Atlantic. It is prohibited by law from returning to Prince William Sound.