Melt

Opening title screen, Melt, 2009 by Anna Peach

There is nothing like art season to get us all creating again. I often find myself taking the subway home from a fantastic show filled with inspiration. In the last weeks I have moved between many points of inspiration. A trip to the Met, two concerts, a video festival, a Spanish film festival, Roni Horn's exhibit at the Whitney (twice) just to name a few. But few things inspire as much as finding just the right coffee table book cast away into the corners of the neighborhood book sale. One of the great perks of my neighborhood is the high concentration of intellectuals per city block. The used books come from the shelves of the best and the brightest that this city has to offer. So it is no surprise when the neighborhood sale throws you a bone in the form of a perfectly inspirational art book.

The book The Snow Show moved it's way onto my self just days after I had completed spending several long nights trying to make sense of the emotional state of a lot of things including the trapped under the ice footage that I made in Newfoundland in 2007. The footage lies somewhere between pulling a warm blanket over your head while sleeping in on a rainy day, and complete claustrophobic vantage points that leave you gasping for breath. I rather like the physical effect that the vantage point carries, I think it is it's strong suit (while others may disagree.) It was wonderfully perfect to see this bound volume that captures the temporal ice and snow works by such artists as Cai Guo-Qiang, Do-Ho Suh, Kiki Smith and Yoko Ono, all curated under Lance Fung in the Lapland light. The book is a little gem of inspired moments for anyone who needs a reason to celebrate the onset of winter.

It is in these quiet little moments of synchronicity that I feel most at home as an artist. So as I edit myself through this winter while up to my elbows in Mayan cocoa spiced tea, I wish you the clarity to see all of the wonderful things around you. For those of you who have left your creativity behind, I hope this season allows you the courage to push onward through the fog and write, paint, sculpt or film once again.

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.

Life seen through an iceberg

I spent this day with the gulls on guano topped rocks in the cove. A beautiful swell blew in to create quite a show like uncorked champagne frothing over the rocks. I was happy to simply sit and watch instead of struggling to capture it.