Officium

Newfoundland Kelp


There is a CD that I own that was recommended to me by a punk rocker who worked in a Borders in Chicago. I had just received my first and only tip for my elaborate floral designs a few blocks North on Michigan Ave. I walked in and decided to use the 'tip' to upgrade my inspirational music. I walked up to this man who most were trying to avoid. It is almost an unwritten code. I often do the same, but in reverse. I seek the creatives, remaining a bit leery of the suit clad tribe. I walk up to him and plea my case. I note my travels, my love of change, diverse taste and of course share my soul within two minutes. I ask only one thing, "If you were to just buy three Cd's tonight, what would they be." It was almost if he was waiting for this opportunity to be able to share his wealth of music knowledge with an otherwise unreceptive audience. He lunged forward speaking quickly and taking long strides through the space. He had a practiced way of weaving through the labyrinth of the earphone wearing customers to gently nudge his way into the the richness of music that would never reach popularity with those seeking to be considered normal. He pulled out Officium, by Jan Garbarek and the Hillard Ensemble, he pulled out Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane's Autumn Serenade and Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic. It was a frighteningly broad range of music. He turned to me and said "think you can handle it?" I said "Yes, Sold."

So off I went to figure out why this music was brought into my life by a punk rock guardian angel. It took me over ten years to figure out the inspiration of Officium, which resulted in my artwork, Spirit House. It took a few years more to figure out my need for Bryars work. I ended up creating my Grand Banks series from a perspective of a drowning person. Focusing on the bottom of the surface of the sea. I listened to each Cd repeatedly. I used to sink myself into a tub of water and listen to The Sinking of the Titanic with ears below the surface in the initial days of my ownership of the Cd. Twelve years later in Newfoundland, where the Titanic lays off shore, I filled a bathtub with freshly harvested sea weed and repeated the process. I made a cast of a boat as some readers may recall. Taking pounds of kelp up the cliff and weaving it onto an abandoned boat like a skeleton ghost ship. Why did Bryars work inspire this? and also why did I nearly miss my flight because I had to go back and grab this Cd that had been selected by a stranger years before. It had crossed the world with me and was not being listened to due to my partner who hated the music. Perhaps it was a liberation for both the Cd and myself.

In doing so, in some small way my work seemed to also liberate the dead who had drowned on the spot where I felt compelled to work. The people of this place were at first angered, then relieved that some woman from afar had found it in herself to take on the death of so many strangers and find beauty and hope in a form that all could watch on a little humming laptop. Messages of support still trail in from up there, an occasional email from the Coast Guard, a letter from the quilt maker that fed me hamburgers when I was cold. Best wishes from the Medivac Nurse who is now back in the Artic, dedicated support from a gifted young painter. Our lives become interwoven in the process. That is the greatest gift from this desire for understanding. It allows me the patience to retrace the steps of others, and find friends along the way. I repeat their lives, but with an artist's hands and heart. I learned about the sea by immersing myself in it, by shivering as I sunk my arms into it to lower a camera and watch the seaweed grow. By sleeping in a bathtub full of seaweed, that slowly oozed its jelly core into a gelatinous blur that left my skin like silk. "Oh gross!" some of the other artist's replied, until I offered the skin of my forearm as evidence of the power of the stuff. How is that possible, that something so "gross" can become so beautiful in anothers hands? That is the artistry of life, finding what other's cannot see.

So I trust that other's have this ability as well in different areas, just like the punk rocker who helped sway the inspiration for my life. If we let them help, who knows were our lives will lead. I would never have guessed that I would listen to Officium several hundred times in the course of a multi year art piece. I would never have thought that I would not tire of the work, and it was natural to begin and end each day in it's presence. When I went to Newfoundland, I brought it as well, but upon trying to play it, it failed over and over again humming and clicking until it simply read no Cd. I guessed it wasn't the soundtrack for that time. The Titanic Cd was of course the one to have. It was the right choice that led me down a new trail. I felt a little sad that I had played Officium until I broke it, like a doll that had been loved too much. That is, until today. I decided out of the blue to try once again to try to play my old friend, and after ten months of not working, it played again. What does this mean? I am not sure, but I do know enough to be guided.