Land Markers Marked

I have decided to change my approach to the project in Ludlow, Mass from "art project" to "history project"--for the moment. It occurred to me that while I was making paintings and drawings about my experience of the place, the history of the location had simply become background. This was unacceptable to me, so I picked up the book, Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and also I went to see a series of shortfilms by Thomas Comerford at Woodland Patterns Bookstore/gallery/experimental film venue in Milwaukee. I thought that Comerford's most recent film "Land Marked/Marquette" was particularly insightful in how to layer historical information encapsulated in the city of Chicago's monuments to Pere Marquette alongside contemporary environmental issues. Here is a link to his website: http://www.thomascomerford.net/film.html

The Princess Pines

Lately, I have been talking with my mother about her impressions of the New England landscape as a part of my artistic research, I was really surprised by her initial response that for her the source of the woods "magic" could be traced to a single plant: The Princess Pine. This minature tree grows low along the forest floor in shallow soil over rocks. The plants are actually "fern-allies" and although they are categorized as "ground pines." To find out more go to the University of MN extension site:
Last year, 170,000 ounds of Princess Pine was harvested from Midwestern forests last year for floral decorations.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/specializations/environment/components/lycopodium1.html

Times article on Internet monitoring of new construction

An article in the Sunday New York Times points to the use of the internet as an important new tool is tracking new development and construction in older communities. Often communities close to major cities that are rapidly becoming suburbs may feel that they have little control over the types of developments springing up around them. I thought this community blog did an excellent job of at least documenting the changes in their town, and providing people with a space to comment on the teardown and redevelopment of existing homes (mostly ranch houses built in the mid-1940s). The article focuses on the town of Montclair, NJ but I know I have witnessed similar types of development projects in the older suburbs of Chicago, IL in distant emerging suburbs like Ludlow, MA and even in the rural college town of Athens, OH.
Here is a link to the blog: http://www.baristanet.com
You will find a link to the New York Times article under her October 1, 2006 entry.

the unflower flower

There is evidence of the woods perpetual decay and rebirth in many of the fungi and mushrooms that I compulsively photographed for their various forms and textures, but none were as strange as the "ghost flower." Otherwise called, Indian Pipe, I was reminded when I saw this plant (and heard its unfortunate name) that the woods of western massachusetts have already been through many transformations. The "ghost flower" or "ice flower" (scientific name is montropa uniflora meaning once-turned single flower ) is a small whiteish plant with translucent leaves and flowers. It appears and disappears randomly thoughout the woods in mid-summer. It never comes back in the same spot and actually lives off the fungi that live off dead trees. The "ice plant's" odd colorless color is due to its inability to produce chlorophyll. It is also very difficult to photograph because it grows only in the shadows and washes out with a flash which I discoverd (and others have noted)-so I have included both the drawing and the photograph. Since my earlier works used pearls and icebergs as physical reminders of the welcome presence of indeterminacy in everyday life, these "ice plants" may work their way into the project. At the moment, however, they seem to raise the question, why not think of the development of the land into housing as simply another transformation in an ongoing reworking of the landscape?

Saving the Landscape with Pictures?

My blog has come back to life!
One of the first ideas to write about following my trip to Massachusetts is, what role do the 400+ photographs play in the process of making my work and in the process of preserving the land? It is pretty clear at this point that the land will be sold and developed into housing. What remains of the woods will be the digital photographs and video that I took this summer. I find myself confronted with a strange question, do the photographs contribute to the destruction of the landscape by providing a certain degree of "preservation" in that they are a document of the place? So if the forest is uprooted, should I destroy the photographs along with it?

Somewhere else here

On Thursday of last week in the middle of June, as we approach the pinnacle of summer, it grew cool and damp with the wind coming straight out of the north. I walked to the Lake in a daze, wondering if I was actually in the same place that I had been on the warm, humid evening before. Looking out over Lake Michigan, I was surprised to see that it had the same "character" (color, texture, raging waves) as many of the lakes that I had paddled across in the Boundary Waters. Even after living alongside the Lake for three years, until this particular morning I assumed that Lake Michigan was tame"and industrialized, so I was surprised to see these Northerly, steely grey waves repetitively pounding against the pile of rocks that make up the break water. Based on this experience, I would argue that place is something that we take with us, layering one place over another and then another, that it is impossible to separate one place from another in the memory of an individual, and yet, the preservation of a place requires environmentalists to prove that it is like no other place in teh world. Is there a way for artists and writers to rectify the multi-layered experience of a place with its definition as a complete, unique entity?

Place and Nostalgia

Working on a project about the New England woods--a place I have visited, remember, read about in books, has generated many questions about the relationship between a sense of place and nostalgia. Embarking on a project about a place that is far away geographically, and soon to be rendered inaccessible with its destruction, makes the risk of slipping into a wallowing, romanticized sense of this place even more dangerous. But first--how do I define nostalgia? The phrase "nostos" meaning to return home and the phrase "algia" meaning longing--certainly nostalgia means an unattainable home that remains at a distance. Embedded in this definition is also its opposite--if nostalgia for a lost home implies spacial and temporal distance, this sense is always juxtaposed with the here and now, the place that is not the "home" of which I am dreaming--the lived place. This issue was brought to my attention by the opening chapter of Svetlana Boym's book, "The Future of Nostalgia"(2001). She begins the book, with an excerpt from a Russian newspaper which tells the story of a man from Germany who returns to the Kaliningrad where his parents were born. He recognizes nothing from their stories until he reaches the Pregolya River. Overjoyed he splashes the river's water on his face feeling at home at last, but the terribly polluted water scars him. A gruesome way to start an art theory text and a cautionary tale about the risk of being misguided by nostalgia into "false" identification with a place you know nothing about. But can nostalgia be productive? Perhaps being nostalgic is not so much a state of being on one side of the equation or the other--near or far, at home or away, living in the past or the present, but a condition of ping-ponging back and forth between two poles. A condition of living in both the past and the present, being both at home and away. Perhaps this is why the topic of nostalgia makes many art critics, writers and artists so squeamy, like a slugish, dirty river we can't resist dipping into.

via Iowa

After four years living in various rural towns and mid-sized cities across the Midwest I have come to realize how places act like filters for daily experiences--subtly shapping and forming my thoughts, identity (the midwest may be deemed to be a homogenous blob in the center of the country, but I have found each of these places remarkably different). Do all Americans experience "place" this way? Who even has the time to reflect on their experience of a "place"? This image is taken half-way between two cities--one that I lived in for four years in Iowa and one where I live currently in Wisoncsin.

Artists and "Place"

As I begin the research portion of this project, I am curious about the many types of relationships that have been formed between contemporary artists and places. Here are a few selected models:
1) Artists that convey a "sense of place" through their work combining a description of the physical landscape with the artists memories/experience of that place.
2) Artists whose work is to rebuild or reclaim a place. Their art work is also an act of conservation.
3) Artists who connect a place to a certain historical event or moment, that may reiterate or challenge pre-existing "grand narratives."
4) Artists who reveal how a "sense of place" can become commodified.
5) Artists who find or create borderline places. Places not easily recognized, mapped or preserved.
6) Artists whose works is informed by the place in which they live, but more specifically how this shapes their identity.
7)Artists who explore place as a psychoanalytic construct, fixating on the separation from the maternal body.
With many of the artists whose work comes to mind within the realm of these loosely defined categories what is shared is a sense that the function of the resulting artwork is to enable the artist to establish a connection to a place, while also leaving space for the viewer to enter into their own relationship with the work of art(possibly as a site in itself) and a place. This relationship may be affable, alienating, or abject.

Project Proposal

After many thoughtful requests--here is the project that I have proposed to work on during the coming year:
With the Joan Mitchell Grant I will create a series of works based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Since my work is a critique of the dualities inherent in Western thought and language, I am fascinated by Hawthorne’s ability to muddy the definitions of “good” and “evil” in this early American novel. The recent series of works, What Is Yours Is Mine Is Yours, examines the exchange of words, emotions, guilt and pleasure between mothers and daughters in a puritanical society as represented by Hester and Pearl. While Hester’s richly embroidered “A” is a decoration that accentuates and disguises her identity, her daughter Pearl is an “indistinguishable color” as she defies the parameters of shame placed on her by society. Due to the impact of this text on my work, I would like to take my research a step further. I would like to work in the landscape in which the novel is set--a New England woods. My project would involve using drawing materials and digital imaging to document the woods behind my grandmother’s home in Western Massachusetts, while weaving in Hawthorne’s lucid descriptions. This process would result in a series of painted, drawn and cut works on and with paper that would be installed in a local space with a history that could further expand the work. This project would extend and build upon my current artistic practice, as well as my connectivity to New England as a place of origin both for my family, for Hawthorne, and for an American consciousness. What I imagine I will find there is a barrage of fixed, linear narratives that after further exmination reveal the transitory and liminal space of the forest described by Hawthorne in “The Scarlet Letter.”

Part D. Protection of Natural Features

Doing some research online today of the town planning board that regulates the development of subdivisions in the areas surrounding and inluding my grandmother's land in Massachusetts, I found this detailed advisory for developers on the subject of "protecting natural features" under the heading of "Section III: Subdivision Design Standards," which sounds good in theory:

D. PROTECTION OF NATURAL FEATURES
All natural features, such as large trees (greater than 8 inches in diameter DBH), water courses, wetlands, scenic points, historic locations, stone walls, and similar community assets which will contribute to the attractiveness and value of the property shall be shown on the plan and preserved. Appropriate reseeding and replanting of the non-paved areas of the public way is a component part of the construction of the subdivision, and is to be completed by the developer prior to acceptance. Existing vegetation shall be disturbed at a minimum. Except where necessary to conform to road design, driveways, safety, and drainage, major earth grading shall be avoided. The Board, at its discretion, shall require portions of the public way to be planted with groups of shrubs or trees for aesthetic value and effect as to enhance the property. At least two trees per lot shall be preserved or planted within the right-of-way or within 10 feet of the right-of-way.

Art(s) Project DAY Zero

This purpose of this blog is to document my first year post-MFA. During this year I will be working on a project about my grandmother's land in western Mass. which will be sold to developers in the fall, but the idea for this project came two years ago from Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of the New England woods in his novel "The Scarlet Letter." This landscape has absolutely confounded me since I up and moved to western Mass. for one summer when I was fifteen after reading Hawthorne's book. The first issue to confront in this project is the question of "place"? Can a site exist in reality in an American culture in which site-specificity is readily fabricated? (Example: I went to a restaurant last night in suburban Chicago that was like a theme park--complete with faux tarnished mirrors and "worn" tables). So I started this project by rereading Miwon Kwon's "One Place After Another" (published in October Magazine in 1997). One of the main questions to face in this project is outlined by Kwon in the last paragraph of her essay, "What would it mean now to sustain the cultural and historical specificity of a place (and self) that is neither a simulacral pacifier nor a willful invention?"