Merging and Offering
Having the great fortune to return to Mount Desert Island in the summers has made witnessing the impacts of climate change unmistakable. As other artists have done for years, my initial artistic reaction to MDI was to simply observe, and then try to capture its beauty. I’ve also felt called to bear witness to the changes, such as by returning to paint the same place at high tide. Now I find myself grasping at what can be done to represent our environs and to convey my own feelings about the changes happening to a place so dear to me. In some sense, I empathize with what the place/ earth is feeling and feel moved to offer small gifts however inadequate they seem.
This work is about the passing of time when the natural world we inhabit is shifting and its seas rising. It is about how we pass the time, as it is about how we as individuals and societies have inhabited this place as and how others have passed through these waters and traveled these lands over time. Showing the smallness of the ice cubes, say, in the vast ocean highlights our powerlessness and suggests that collective action is warranted to make an impact.
Thinking about how to awaken consciousness on this theme and visually express my feelings about the impact of the climate crisis, I undertook a series of lyrical performative actions; I used my body as a pencil; I gathered rocks from the shore to construct walls to hold back the rising sea; I traced and meditated on the high tide line, whether in the dried seaweed left by the receded waters or along the dark tideline the ocean leaves on the rocks. In 2023 when the waters were warmer than ever in the Gulf of Maine, I sprinkled and pushed ice into the ocean. My actions are an invitation to contemplate place and its changes; they are absurdly inadequate but they propose an opening to the need to change; and they are spiritual tributes/ gestures to rebalance the human impact on this earth. In this mode, I continue with a common theme in my work—that humans are part of and not separate from nature. I create these works to shift perspectives about how we engage with the rest of the natural world and to provoke that we reunite with nature.
Having the great fortune to return to Mount Desert Island in the summers has made witnessing the impacts of climate change unmistakable. As other artists have done for years, my initial artistic reaction to MDI was to simply observe, and then try to capture its beauty. I’ve also felt called to bear witness to the changes, such as by returning to paint the same place at high tide. Now I find myself grasping at what can be done to represent our environs and to convey my own feelings about the changes happening to a place so dear to me. In some sense, I empathize with what the place/ earth is feeling and feel moved to offer small gifts however inadequate they seem.
This work is about the passing of time when the natural world we inhabit is shifting and its seas rising. It is about how we pass the time, as it is about how we as individuals and societies have inhabited this place as and how others have passed through these waters and traveled these lands over time. Showing the smallness of the ice cubes, say, in the vast ocean highlights our powerlessness and suggests that collective action is warranted to make an impact.
Thinking about how to awaken consciousness on this theme and visually express my feelings about the impact of the climate crisis, I undertook a series of lyrical performative actions; I used my body as a pencil; I gathered rocks from the shore to construct walls to hold back the rising sea; I traced and meditated on the high tide line, whether in the dried seaweed left by the receded waters or along the dark tideline the ocean leaves on the rocks. In 2023 when the waters were warmer than ever in the Gulf of Maine, I sprinkled and pushed ice into the ocean. My actions are an invitation to contemplate place and its changes; they are absurdly inadequate but they propose an opening to the need to change; and they are spiritual tributes/ gestures to rebalance the human impact on this earth. In this mode, I continue with a common theme in my work—that humans are part of and not separate from nature. I create these works to shift perspectives about how we engage with the rest of the natural world and to provoke that we reunite with nature.
Merging I, 2023,
8 x 12 inches, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta
Merging II, 2023,
8 x 12 inches, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta
For Sisyphus, 2023,
11 x 8 inches, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta