︎

Matéa LeBeau 


wilsonistheworst

hand poked tattoos
in Ithaca, NY

                                                       





Backslide


Thompson Oil Field, TX Thompson Oil Field, TX Thompson Oil Field, TX Abandoned oil infrastructure in rural Ohio Abandoned oil infrastructure in rural Ohio Abandoned oil infrastructure in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania; site of the world’s first commercial oil field. Abandoned oil infrastructure in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania; site of the world’s first commercial oil field. On the road in West Texas Thompsons Oil Field, Texas Boehmer Lake, Texas * Boehmer Lake, Texas * Boehmer Lake, Texas * Boehmer Lake, Texas * Abandoned oil infrastructure in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania; site of the world’s first commercial oil field. Abandoned oil infrastructure in rural Ohio Abandoned oil infrastructure in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania; site of the world’s first commercial oil field. Thompsons Oil Field, Texas Thompsons Oil Field, Texas On the road in West Texas On the road in West Texas




2021

Digital images, manufactured into 35 mm slides and projected on a slide projector.  
All taken during summer 2021 during a cross country road trip to look at abandoned oil throughout the US – specifically in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Archaic technology displayed on a piece of archaic technology.  Viewers were able to flip through each slide at their leisure.  


Slides 1, 2, 3, 9, 17, 18

Thompsons Oil Field, Texas

Slides 4, 5, 15

Abandoned oil infrastructure in rural Ohio

Slides 6, 7, 14, 16

Abandoned oil infrastructure in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania; site of the world’s first commercial oil field.

Slides 8, 19, 20

On the road in West Texas

Slides 10, 11, 12, 13

Boehmer Lake, Texas

* Unnatural body of water continually fed by an orphaned oil well, drilled into the San Andres Aquifer roughly half a century ago by wildcatters.  Named Boehmer “Lake,” this body of water emits a nauseating smell, surrounded by dead vegetation encased in salt crystals.  It is now a slow land sink disturbing a country road and threatening the ground water in Pecos County, Texas.



Funded in Part by the Gibian-Rosewater Traveling Research Award