New work

I was inspired to work from the moment I opened the door. A whale was slapping about in the cove before I even unpacked my bags. I think that is a very good sign. I also found a mermaid's purse first time I slipped along the cliff down to the little stone beach. Its funny the whole mermaid's purse search. I was coming up empty for days then found six all at once. I guess it is just the luck of the tides. I am up to eight now. They are fast becoming the local fascination as most people have never noticed them before I started collecting them. Granted they are wonderfully disguised the same color as the kelp, and when they was in they blend in perfectly.

I have been in a writing frenzy even though my thoughts escape me at the present time. I managed to begin with the slow process of viewing and making an event log for my videos. Something I was dreading is actually now a great task. I am viewing them all at half or even quarter speed and I am finding all kinds of creatures making brief cameos. Cherry red thimble jellyfish and bubble gum pink ones as well. Zoo plankton with their long floatation strands trailing behind. The sea butterfly (a highly disputed name as it is called something different in different parts of the world) is a polar dweller mainly so I am very fortunate that I found it this far south. It is also supposed to be nocturnal and living at depth most of the time...so very lucky that it was in fifteen feet of water in the evening light.

I wait it out for the replacement part to come for the ice camera. Replacing the frayed wired that no repairman wanted to touch. Think they were just giving me the run around as I made a map of the circuit and which wire was which, but I think that made matters worse. Got the woman treatment, I am sorry to report. Really was a quick soder job. But instead I must wait a few weeks. One week to go, so they say. Cod open season is upon us in the morning, and the boats are at the ready. Even have a chance to start going out on the sea myself...working with a line in hand...we will see what the days bring.

I did work like mad with the silk thread and fish bones. Part of my initial work spurt this week. Spent yesterday being rewarded with a jar of strawberry rhubarb jam, then delivering photos to my former landlords, and today Sunday dinner... Makes you feel like you are right at home.

Oh Canada...

*photo of me in the much warmer Pacific ocean

I feel a world away as I repack my bags for the sixth? time for short hops between locations. I am heading back to isolation and introspection after a short but memorable look at town. Funny thing is that I feel a world away from the summer buzz of town life. People prowling about til four or five are then followed by men spraying the streets down to remove their residue. The town cleans up nicely with many hosers and sweepers happily picking up the remains of the night. It doesnt help any that the messages I receive from home are filled with much the same partying. I cannot even reach anyone since there is a party every night I ring up. I am left with my rather innocent whale and seabird footage and little inspiration to take part in the chaos.

I miss the ocean and the sound of the birds. Entire days filled with nature observations, cooking and art. The town offers distractions, too many it seems, for everyone is running about and I am not sure where they are going. I realized that I enjoyed the two months in the cove, even though the inability to make a phone call, buy groceries, or even have a cup of coffee in a cafe took some getting used to. It isnt so unlike what most of the people north of here have to do for the winter.

I think we are spoiled rotten. It changes your perspective on things when you have to think ahead and buy groceries for the month...or the winter. I have watched artists panic after viewing the options at the 'mom and pop' shop. The die young crowd from Toronto is no exception.

I will be hiding out in yet another cabin, though not as close to the sea. The sea is still visible and my main source of inspiration. After an amazing amount of video, I will be returning to the basics, working with fine silk thread and fish bones. I have high hopes of continuing my writing that I have been avoiding. The camoflage piece will make another surge ahead...
*note to self... work on it please*

Gannets nesting

Gannet Island

Any of you out there reading this have probably figured out that I have been spending every moment possible in the highly variable weather conditions here in Newfoundland. The heavy fog is no exception. The largest Gannet colony in North America is on the southern shore, and I have spent a good part of the past week watching the frenzy that came from the caplin run. With fish tumbling ashore, you can image the sound of hundreds of seabirds gathering to strike. The Humpbacks are there as well, and even my beloved Beluga was out there somewhere(though I never sighted her) The fog closed in and out and in its sweeping motion, several hundred Gannets would be revealed above.

The video camera was soaked, fighting to focus on the water droplets on the lens, the wind was ripping through, and the gannets are fast flyers who begin their dramatic dives in unison when they locate a school of fish. Basically, it was chaos. Everything cut loose at once, filming with both eyes open and peering them through a slit in hood of my raincoat. It was so out of my control that I found myself laughing out loud at my desperate act to try to capture a bit of it on video.

The resulting footage shows the birds flying into the monotone fog bank and simply disappearing in a wingflap. Chaos is controlled at quarter speed as you can actually focus on the wingbeats.

My love of gannets began as I had to both be a spotter and photographer many years ago in Ireland. I had to hang out the door of a helicopter and yell the locations of the birds in relation to the chopper blades, so that we didnt collide and take us all down. It seems that I relate the swift gannets to chaos, although they were beautiful on their nests,they were not terribly serene even when perched as their fluffy chicks were at the edge of a two hundred foot drop.

environmental art show

Still from underwater video by Anna Peach, Newfoundland 2007


I had a funny last couple of weeks, trying to get some closure with the spring residency. (It still is spring up here to me...since I am wearing a sweater most days)I decided to participate in an environmental festival which included an art exhibition. I spoke with the director and next thing you know I was told to bring my laptop and screen my unedited (as if they will ever be edited) videos to show along with some of my zoo plankton inspired sculptures to float in midair in the corner. All went well, video charmed even the most cynical environmentalist so it seemed. It was all going so well until I checked the silent auction book and someone actually bought my sculptures...oh no...that wasn't supposed to happen. What were the odds. Yes, I do realize that art does occasionally sell and that is really part of the whole process...but I have to admit that I really loved my portable hanging zoo plankton made from old cork floats and white silk threads. So now to plan B...finding more old cork so to try to replicate the pieces as best as I could for the upcoming show in Honolulu. Ah, life is funny that way. I spent a good part of a week combing the harbor for any trace of cork...something, anything. The first ones were washed under a slipway in Pouch Cove. I was able to find some suitable ones in an antique store, but a lengthy talk by the 86 year old proprietress had me in a panic as it turned into a "good luck sister" sort of talk about the demise of the Spanish cork trees and the historical value of these artifacts that have slipped from use due to scarcity. So I grab up all the decaying bits of dusty cork from the bin in the corner and find myself grateful for anything...

Rainy days

I baked gingerbread today to fight off the rainy cold that has snuck back into the days here. The fog and rain have swept in amazing sea things in the weeks past, from ice to seals (though dead), Capelin (fish) that have provided food for the whales and birds, and of course my favorites the plankton, zooplankton, jellyfish and sea snails. I try to remind myself that this place is best in fog, though I am having a harder time with the rain. It did drive me back to my to do list which was growing so long that it seemed impossible to overlook. I had to do obvious things like organize the mess of papers that I continued to pack without sorting through. I had to organize the DVD’s and actually try to make some kind of label system that I would later recognize as order. Last but not least I had to try to figure out what is next.

It is a funny thing that happens when traveling, time suddenly is running. I went for a few outings to view nature again after feeling like a hermit in my room. I went out at night as well so to hear a friend’s band play. At some point the fun activities became too much like distractions that never end, and the to do list grows. I need to recapture the tenuous balance that allows order in the relative chaos that is travel. At times I need little more than the smell of homemade cake to set things right, to follow the list of ingredients until completion. It seems to have worked thus far in ordering my activities, or you would not be reading this.

I have also found it amazingly hard to work surrounded by people at all times. Artist residencies can be like that, with an ever changing list of characters that cycle through. I had found my writing nearly stopped again due to it. Writing is my most private creative acts. I need to complete a thought in one go; else I drift never to return. One day I just stopped my excellent daily writing discipline. The chaos ensued. You do not learn these things until you go through them. It made me think about how we live in a short attention span kind of world where even the news interrupts itself. I find myself doing the same and then regretting it. I sometimes wonder if it is somehow a result of our coffee drinking excess as I find myself thinking, and acting in frantic spurts when I return to the stuff.

Meltdown

Still from video by Anna Peach, Newfoundland 2007

Meltdown seems to be the theme of the days here. All things are in motion, even if the motion is the slow disintegration that eventually leads to the destruction of the form. A slow shift that is barely detected as an object drifts in its own melt. Not sure if that is too much description given for a video made of melting ice created when the growlers (broken sections of icebergs) pushed ashore. Beautiful in their simplicity. Elegance found in their isolation from the environment in which they belonged. I often wallow in my own melt, but it just seems better when they do it.