On Farming



Me helping out the runts, March 2012

I have an interest in soil revitalization.  I didn't realize it until I was living in Hawaii and trying my best to start a garden.  As I plunged the shovel into the ground, I anticipated finding rich volcanic soil, but instead it was grossly depleted due to heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and herbicides.  It was hard for me to accept Hawaii’s love affair with Roundup, known there simply as "spray."  You would hear spray referenced in everyday talks as if it were a dear friend.  "Spray saves everyone so much work," they would say, including a lot of work for the County of Hawaii that hoses down every single roadside on the island with poison.

The depleted soil was the catalyst for me to seek out the lone organic gardener at the farmer's market, who consequently opened up the world of tropical organic gardening for me. It didn't take long before I learned that severely damaged soil was only one of the issues I had to deal with.  There were also predators with the dramatic name, "Africanized Land Snails" that were golf ball sized numbers roaming the garden in packs.  On the other side of the coin were centipedes that are the length of your hand, that would sting the heck out of you, but if you could get on their good side and give them their space, they would defend your greens.  All this took place on the side of a volcano.  It was like gardening in a fairytale. I wasn't going to give up, but I did need to understand how they all worked together.

I was raised on a farm in Southern Wisconsin, and for the first ten years of my life, it was everything that I knew.  My family and many other families got taxed and zoned out of farming due to the nearby city's expansion to make way for what are now known as "Box stores" and "McMansions."  By the time I was seven years old, I knew the end of our farm was near.  You could read it on people's faces.  I recall many a stoic, weathered farmer advising me to "never marry a farmer."  In the third grade, I had not yet made any plans to marry anyone, but I did know that they didn't mean it; they were just speaking with a broken heart. Those were hard days to witness, as each one seemed to bring another bulldozer to take out another farmhouse.  My brother and I coped by imagining ourselves to be bionic farm defenders that could halt the destruction with our imaginary ray guns. We would at times booby trap the machinery like little farmer vigilantes.  Unfortunately for all, it didn’t halt the city expansion. I often wondered why those old farmers never told me not to marry a land developer.

We grew up and my brother and I were the first generation to graduate college.  I studied business because I thought I should, and then went on and studied art because that vigilante part stuck with me for life.  I used art as a gateway to travel the world.  It allowed me to continue to study natural science and view all experience through the lens of art.  It provided many opportunities to inspire and educate others.  Art became a beautiful way to share my world view.

I made opportunities to travel to faraway places so to make my artwork, but also to simply learn about the world by living as other people live.  It allowed me a valuable education that I have drawn from and continue to build upon every day since. I often just showed up as an extra helper, and by doing so, I was able to have extraordinary experiences like herding sheep with four wheeler in Southern New Zealand, carving out a garden from a 7ft tall nettle forest in Ireland, hunting eels in the flooded taro beds of the South Pacific islands, bring in a Wahoo on a hand line somewhere near the island of Takutea, and rolling up the pant legs to plant rice in terraced fields of Java.  I feel lucky to have inherited my Father’s curiosity for all things, as well as being able to maintain enough of the inner fire that it takes to live these dreams.

In Hawai'i, my art got increasingly influenced by the land and waters that surrounded me.  Many creative ideas appeared when I was digging in the mud or harvesting passion fruit or avocados.  There wasn't a rift between art and gardening; they worked in harmony together because they both were creative endeavors.  I soon found other artists who also loved tending their gardens.  Many were potters who's hen's clucked and picked alongside fired pots and clay faces that peered out of tomato vines. I got to know the bee guy, Connie “the native plant lady,” and I had the bat guano man on my speed dial. I was hooked.

I left Hawai'i to attend to family matters, and soon realized that I was quite lost in New York City in an apartment without a garden.  I made efforts to explore Urban Gardening within our Nation’s largest city. I made a windowsill herb garden, and volunteered my labor at big rooftop farms where I turned giant rows of compost several stories up in the sky.  I became a regular customer at many farmers markets and used the New York Public Library to research sustainable living.  I was interested in solar power, so I took a six week course in green construction.  I learned how to carry half my body weight up the stairs repeatedly, how to calculate voltage drops, swing a hammer and how to seal and insulate a room.  I graduated with top marks in solar electricity and mathematics.  Upon graduation last year, I was hired by the City of New York’s to help train a thousand volunteers on the ins and outs of retrofitting NYC's buildings to be more sustainable.  The program focused on reducing their summer energy costs by cooling the roofs through white roofs, known also as cool roofs.

When this program ended this past winter, I took the opportunity to complete my underwater film project in the cenotes of Mexico.  The cenotes are underground interconnected rivers that supply fresh water for the entire Yucatan Peninsula.  I was able to give talks at science symposiums and give visual presentations about the beauty and importance of our waterways.  The time away from the city gave me the hours of reflection, and the physical distance to evaluate what I would like to occur in the next chapter in my life.  I realized that I am collecting an interesting skill set that includes many areas within the permaculture curriculum, but I could benefit from a more formal course of study.

This week I am happily visiting urban farms, feeding chickens and spring goats.  A friend forwards me information about internships.  My muck boots are appropriately muddied and waiting at the door. I excitedly pour through seed catalogs like I used to do on many a childhood winter day, dreaming about summer and all of the possibilities that my hard work could bring forth. As I sip another cup of tea, I reflect on the words of the old farmers, noting that they advised me never to marry a farmer, but they never advised me not to be one myself.

Black and White

A storm passed through New York City the other night. It left the city noticeably stark and weathered in appearance. For whatever reason this turning of season leaves me wanting to be outdoors and then reflect upon those observations in the micro studio that I inhabit. Late last winter, my sculptures took on a bold b&w color banding that I find myself again drawn to as winter makes it's approach.

Although I was disappointed as I watched the gorgeous leaves being sucked off the trees and promptly loaded into bags within Central Park, one gift remained in place of the leaves, it was a small group of migrating ducks. Now you may be thinking that autumn splendor can not be matched by ducks, but these are the designer ducks that I have only seen in my Peterson First Guide on Birds. As a child on a farm in Wisconsin, I spent many a long winter afternoon questioning if these ducks even existed or if it was some field guide ploy to make you spend your life seeking made up creatures. They did not look any thing like the big white roast-able (sorry ducks) ones that roamed our land and took dips in my plastic swimming pool with me. No, these had ruby red beady eyes and head fans that raised like sails. They looked slightly demonic and completely fake, that is until yesterday.

Yesterday changed everything. There they were flaunting their beauty to an uninterested female duck, and a very interested female human. Swimming in loopy loops and stretching their necks out to make a call that I can only compare to some of the uttering of cranes. A small bold duck that made an otherwise distracted jogger stop and ask me, "God, what is that?" The Hooded Merganser: Lophodytes cucullatus was there with three friends (one potential mate and two males that needed to get lost.) It was almost a mockery of adventure travel, here I was in central Manhattan viewing 5 species of birds that are rare or nonexistent in the many homes and home bases that I have had. One good storm was all it took to have them take shelter for the night. Here they were flopping about in the rays of the early morning sun in a very artificial pond in an artificially planted park. They were in paradise. Central Park would become their winter holiday home. When the couple "connects" they may push on to the lake or Turtle pond and nest there, but that is about all the searching they will probably do.

Every nature guide to New York notes that these "exotic" Canadian birds winter in the parks of New York. But most people when questioned say that they have never seen them. If I go to Jamaica Bay, I see Brants and Buffleheads, Osprey and a Black-Crowned Night Heron. One day I even got to see a White Pelican far far from home. But never the Hooded Merganser. Although the wind carried my leaves away, it left behind a childhood dream come true. It seems like a pretty fair trade.

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.