Tracking

Somewhere along the way I stopped writing and started simply posting images of seaweed. Although I love those images, I think it is very telling about my life here in New York. I miss the days when my computer crashed so frequently that I was really unable to spend more than a few minutes here and there on the computer. The crashing was frustrating, but it also pushed me away from the computer and made me write in a journal, read a book, film or walk. Today, I have been on a self imposed lock down. Sifting through visual art images on my laptop and organizing them into a potential presentation. I am trying to build things when I feel like it rather than when I have to. This was an organizational day if there ever was one. I am struggling to find a workable solution to the growing disconnect between the underwater work that is amazing to produce and the number of hours on the computer that are spent editing. As I have said before, I miss windburn.

Having completed the most difficult time, the first year in New York, I am getting back into a studio practice. The balance between making work, writing, and researching is never easy when there are so many other things, daily struggle sort of things that pull at you. Somehow I have held on to the practice of creativity, even though my hands are questionably clean. Lately I have had several old friends note the inspiration that they have drawn from my blog. I am always surprised and relieved that others are drawn into the space where I dwell. I guess I am honest about the chaos. I do not pretend that everything is easy.

But with that being said, I am still finding my ways at times at odds with my true self. The constant checking in that is our current cultural norm still baffles me. Scattered bits of notes, fractured sentences, abandoned thoughts go into in and out of virtual boxes. Seemingly we are afraid to be alone for a day, a week or even an hour. The more we are connecting, the larger the disconnect grows, and I am joining the ranks. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter in the mail. Folded notebook paper, handwritten with a postmark from my past home. It carried sad news in an honest voice. I fell asleep with it on my chest and woke with it still in bed with me. It was a fragile reminder of what can so easily be lost.

Sound of the Waves

New images that I am working with this week. The bottom of the waves, Waikiki, Hawaii.

Current

My photograph of entangled seaweed, 11 feet below the surface, 2007 Newfoundland

The Graveyard, Grand Banks

Stills from the newly edited video "Entanglements," filmed in 2007 by me in Newfoundland

Its hard to say whats going on here, so let me explain. It was at the end of my residency just as I was pushing to see this place is yet another light. After capturing so much unexpected beauty, glaring, soaring and at times boring beauty, I wanted to set into something darker. I had been told by the elder fisherman that the sea in this area held many pockets with unusual currents that swept anything be it net, body, or in my case camera to the bottom and held it there. A captive of sorts. This sounded like just what I needed so to push the limits of my filming. I wanted the sea to really be the force that was making the images. That was growing ever more important to have a clearer vision of how the movement of the sea changed the perspective that I was allowed to view. What the sea filmed is what I saw.

So I set out to look for one of these pockets in the sea, one of these"graveyards" where the sea held its prisoners. I was given a riddle-like list of clues of what to look for, along with head nods and twitchy gestures that indicated the far end of the cove. I set out after refusing the offered beer, and promising to take them up on one when the weather grew warm (gave me a good month I figured) It was the area that I had completely avoided, and later became the place of broken equipment. After several minutes of tricky climbing with a sagging load of snacks and cameras, I was very grateful to have not added the beer to the climb. One beer for me is the equivalent of twenty for another.

As I faced a twenty foot drop, a young mother gull sat on a distant nest and watched me. I needed to make sure that she did not abandon the nest because of me, but like the fisherman she seemed to welcome the interest in her home and even seemed to be entertained by my unravelling sixty feet of cable and casting it to the wind. My efforts were humbling at best. But I did manage to hit a spot where the undertow took the camera down to the "graveyard." Bleached old kelp and seaweed swayed softly to a rhythm separate from the surface of the sea.

So when I rediscovered this footage, I realized that its tempo was so different that I needed to work with that. Also the tangle of these uprooted plants became a labyrinth when filmed from within.