Ongoing research: Interdisciplinary Water-based Art Show @ MVTM, March 2018
Too few words to express how much is underway as I’ve been preparing for this multi-year, water-based art project for a gallery show at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum (community consultation; intuitive site work; research; grant-writing, as well as the building of a functional studio space this Summer — allowing for room to breathe, be inspired, and to produce new work beyond the confines of my tiny Hull apartment).
The following images are a recap of the past year in pictures. I am not great at chronology or linear thought, so will allow the archive of this process to flow from this moment in December 2016 backwards in time…
One way to say I love you in Water. Woke up w Outaouais in my eyes. Off for the walking way to express this ongoing crush…
Facing East (Outaouais).
Facing West (Outaouais).
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Facing South (Outaouais).
Catching the city for a breath or two.
To celebrate 75 years of serious cartography, the Central Intelligence Agency has declassified and put decades of once-secret maps online. From Smithsonian Magazine.
A recent article from the Guardian I found by Nick Van Mead, in which Designer Alex Szabo-Haslam has stripped out the street names and highlighted the water features around 11 world cities. Image by Alex Szabo-Haslam/OpenStreetMap
Tomorrow, class is cancelled so my students and I can bond over WATER — we’ll draw and dialogue our feelings with an art and water workshop I’m putting together as we speak. As an educator, I feel I have a responsibility to make space to talk about Standing Rock with my students. Water is life. It’s not very complex. Today, I read a picture book, Shi-Shi-Etko, for my grade 4-6 students about Canada’s residential school history (by Nicola I. Campbell, highly recommended for younger audiences), and was reminded that we all play a role in planting seeds of awareness in the communities that surround us. The world is getting smaller. What we do with the reality before us daily causes ripples beyond anything we can imagine.
All respect and love to the folks on the front lines in North Dakota. Thanks to Dylan Miner of JustSeeds for the powerful images. Attn educators: for more info on the book SHI-SHI-ETKO:
http://houseofanansi.com/products/shi-shi-etko. #NoDAPL #StandingwithStandingRock #WaterisLife
Prep for the next 100 watery drawings. The mappings will flow me South, down the Gatineau to merge with the expansive Outaouais. These bbs will be based on the majestic River O in the form of cyanotypes featuring aquatic life, watershed maps, and memory lines. Stay tuned..the InterconnectedWatershed continues.
Oh poetry. There is nothing quite like you. Paper in palm, mind on each word, every pause, all breath…returning being to place where we know no time, expanding heart to life’s contradictions. Today, I read Ballad from Let Us Compare Mythologies to my grade 5/6 class — on the heels of Veterans Day, and to honour Cohen’s work and life — and was reminded of the absolute pleasure, relevance and potency of the poetic word. Good reboot.
Not many words. Just questions. Last night, the sounds of US election and the smell of cedar smoke filled my room as I burned water lines into wooden tiles. Today, Trump is president. And I’m remembering the workshop that took place in Kitigan Zibi last week. What an honour to hear the Youth’s water stories, to offer creative space for their voices and to the Water through drawing and dialogue. Questions. What else is possible except to return to what’s in my face (or what’s not in my face) daily? Do I have the resolve needed to renew focus on dismantling racism, ignorance and apathy in my own backyard (and region)….every day? Easy to forget when not the minority. What’s in front of each one of us varies. For me, it’s art, and teaching. But we’re all in this together. I think that needs to be remembered. Workshop archives here.
A breath of this beauty before the workshop…w/ Gatineau/Te-nagàdino-zìbi.
Witch nest v 2.0. now complete w woodstove. A place to return to these feet, those dreams.
Studio day w buddies, getting sorted before the cold. Thanks Lana, Faraz & John.
Gatineau River video shoot on the raft in Alcove all day. Perfect weather. Got in the river (then sauna). Preparing for the river again. An unfolding film and project led by Natasha Doyon. Whatta moon! Photos don’t even come close. It was so heavy and golden just before 7pm.
From Tributes + Tributaries, a visit to Toronto, and to see my brother: AGO – Tributes + Tributaires; Globe + Mail Article.
@Wakefest Arts fest 2016.
Work flow. Studio warming in blue at 100 mile farm. Stay tuned for artist residencies: contemporary art & the natural world.
Burn off of old canvases = room for new work. InterconnectedWatershed @ wakefest 2016. layered cyano drawings. save the date: august 19.
Sensitizing. #cyanotypes #bodyprints.
Today on the mighty Gatineau/
roof: west — in Hull, Quebec.
playing with fire + water @ studio site: watershed, memory lines emerge thanks to charcoal from last week’s burn..
“I am not a protester. I am protecting.” Indigenous women at the forefront of the #NoDAPL movement say their fight is not a protest.
Ottawa folks. Looking forward to tomorrow’s conversation with Gail Bourgeois: we’ll discuss the role of the rhizome in her work, life and unique philosophy. Her artworks are rich — expressing fluidity, connection, cartography, movement — making visible what is invisible. Please join us if you feel the pull. Presented by the Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave, Ottawa, 6:30-8:30 pm. “Connection is essential to rhizomatic thinking, a methodology that promotes becoming rather than being: process rather than conclusion.” – Gail Bourgeois
I relish late nights where I can write and putter. Tonight’s reflections for tomorrow’s panel in Montreal fall on WATER as a figure from which we can think through our relationship with our surroundings. I’m grateful to do this in the context of Joan Jonas’ work, who has always been interested in the force of nature and natural elements, which have been a presence in and a subject of her work since the 1960s. Montreal folks, if you’re feeling the draw, I look forward to this conversation with you all tomorrow..
“For this 9th edition of Dissections, we assembled at Studio 303 in the Belgo building […] It wasn’t speakers’ previous knowledge of, or connections to, Jonas’s work that led to their participation. Rather, it was the links we saw between their diverse practices and the intersecting ideas and sensations evoked in Joan Jonas: From Away — in particular They Come to Us without a Word, the multimedia installation Jonas produced for the 2015 Venice Biennale.”
“But as an artist I can look at the bigger picture and act as a linking conduit between many disciplines. Science may be one, but then local indigenous knowledge is often just as significant. What the farmer knows from continual exposure to the processes of the natural world can be every bit as revealing as the latest findings from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The farmer, however, may not know about the similar findings of the ecologist and vice versa. So I have often seen what I do as a way of making connections through the dance of mind and body with material substance.” – Chris Drury
Jenny Holzer // “Truisms For Survival” (1983-1985)
Sunrise at Lac Bernard. That this happens every day is marvellous. bumps = skeeter bites. Seasonal transition time coaxes reflection. Tonight what’s clear is that it’s been a good summer: accepted an offer to teach part time for the next year at a regional Montessori school; built a studio in the Gatineau Hills (balanced, thanks to my digs in old hull); spent weeks with my dearest friend + her fam on a lake; continued to improve my teaching skills at the Ottawa School of Art + 100 Mile Farm; made a mass of drawings inspired by water…curious to see how the enchanted work evolves (cyanotypes/aquatic life). Feeling grounded and grateful.
Half of the install is complete! Come see the end result Friday, 6-8pm. Harvest #cyanotypes #aquaticplants. August 19 @ Rutherford’s ~ Wakefest 2016. New Work!
Inspired, returning from four days of staffing an off-grid, on-land healing retreat for over 200 women of all ages, beliefs, cultures, identities from across North America put together by my dear teacher ALisa Starkweather. We camped out, ate, danced, sweat, sang, circled, laughed, listened, did council, shared stories. We did workshops on circle practice as activism; safe containers; racial justice and dismantling white supremacy; food justice; sex/money/abundance; ceremony; creative resilience; leadership; climate chaos; herb walks; ancestors; healing from trauma. It was crazy full, rich, deep. What I managed to gather: It’s time to integrate all our parts: shadow, shame, unreasonability, sadness, rage. There’s much power in that love you wanna run from. Love all the parts and bring them out of the shadows. Our communities need us, and they need us now. Grateful for the love, courage, resilience of the human spirit. Tell your stories.
First swim of season has inspired tomorrow’s studio day to begin new series of prints inspired by aquatic life. feeling like the body prints series from 2007 will be revived in cyanotypes. self as aquatic plant, obviously. Image: Installation of body prints in ash, herbs and oil. The body print on floor is living installation made with burlap, wheatgrass and trace minerals in the shape of my body. Galerie Sharon Ramsay, Belgo Building, Montreal, Qc. Spring, 2007.
This this. Imagine a variation on freshwater aquatic plants from the Gatineau to the Outaouais to the Mississippi Rivers. Gatineau prints start this week. Stay tuned for nomadic art workshops in the region. Crushing on #cyanotypes #hydrophytes #AnnaAtkins. Full article here.
“me, i’m lying in her. drinking her blue. letting her body surround mine, suspended in wet, only my lips tasting air. windward. me, i’m telling her i love her anyway. i love her more now because.” excerpt from death by water, by leanne simpson.
I miss the old studio. it’s been over a year and a half since i moved on from this place. the rural studio/prospector tent roof collapsed early january, so i’ll need to wait til spring to see if it’s in the cards for me to have space again. seeing this brings energy.
Duke Riley. That’s What She Said (detail), 2016. 40′ x 14′ mural coming soon to the Queens Museum based on the essay, ‘Water and Power’ by Heather Smith.
#queensmuseum #rebeccasolnit #dukeriley #heathersmith #thatswhatshesaid #isis
#hydroquebec #delawareaquaduct #10000DrownedCaribou
Oh, River.
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