along a long line

2009-07-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

Goodbye blogspot

To take advantage of new tools like Google Earth, and Panoramio, I’m making the switch to WordPress. “Along a Long Line” is moving to a new address, Alongalongline.com, and new stories and images from Botswana will be posted at Antipodes.us. In addition I’m opening a Pro Flickr account so you can upload pictures from both blogs.

The book, “Along a Long Line” is being published by Hard Press Editions and will be available in bookstores by September 2009 and can be pre-ordered at the Hard Press website Hard Press Editions

Next, Botswana!

2009-05-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

In late June of 2009, I’m traveling to Botswana to continue picturing the globe with a small French easel. This trip will inaugurate a new project called “Antipodes”, in which I plan to visit opposite points of the globe to paint comparisons. The trip to Botwana will be paired with a visit to Hawaii, its antipode. Future trips to antipodal pairs include Italy/New Zealand and Mongolia/Patagonia. Like “Along a Long Line”, I’ll be posting photographs, stories and paintings. Please come along!

Teresa Mind

2008-06-15T16:00:00.001-07:00

My trip along the 70th line of longitude is over and it’s time to consider it. Painting in the landscape has been great fun. Ecstatic, really. Using the word “Ecstatic” to describe a year of plein air painting may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the term is a fair approximation and it makes a useful bridge to other, similar experiences. Ecstasy is the experience of losing one’s boundaries. In the ecstatic moment, the self merges with what is outside of it. Think how one’s edges are lost at the moment of orgasm and one becomes briefly, but wonderfully, merged into the world of the sheets. Oddly, this moment is often described as a “loss of the self”, but perhaps it is more accurate to describe the experience as an “addition of the other”. In an ecstatic moment the little dams that hinder the flow of consciousness and turn it into an eddy of self-consciousness, are opened and one experiences the flood of the outside world as it passes through the body. I don’t think this experience is mystical; it most likely has to do with certain brain functions being inhibited and others excited. But most often it is a delightful state of being that can engender love for what is outside. Sex and spirituality are the best known pathways to this neural intersection of delight, but many other experiences, like witnessing the birth of a child, club dancing, and singing with abandon also qualify.

Ecstasy is not necessarily all pleasure, since pain can also pass through the body once the defenses are down. The “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” by Bernini is a great visualization of the complexity of the ecstatic experience. Teresa is in a swoon. As if a bolt of electricity has just passed, her body is limp and her gown is in a frenzy. A smiling angel delicately exposes her breast to a spear and her face shows the pain and pleasure of being wantonly open to its advance. Her eyes are shut, so she does not see. Instead, she inhabits the world at the atomic level, where the animate and inanimate are the same and she feels the orbit of every little electron.

Do I look like Teresa when I’m painting out of doors? There is a lot of comic potential here. Does my mouth hang open and my tongue wander from its mooring? Probably. Like Teresa, I feel excited and open and greedy to be filled up. When making a painting, I’m not very aware of observing the scene. Instead, the scene passes through me. Thinking is not interrupted by words. There is no lag time between the provocations of the outside world and the response of the brush and the knife. Stimulus and response become one thing and the experience obliterates linear time. Hours go by in a blink and the world does not feel separate from the self.

It is tempting to say that art making is the best way to have this satisfying experience and that it deserves an exalted place in the hierarchy of human activity. But this would be silly, since that argument would mostly reveal how one’s ego tends to evaluate its own experience as superior.

The ecstatic experience that I am trying to describe is worth considering, not because it is special, but because it is common. There are many ways to make time disappear, let the tongue loll about and send the eyes rolling back into the head. Science could help here by evaluating people as they engage in deeply absorbing activities. Does the brain light up similarly in a computer game designer who is writing break-through code for an exciting, new effect and a retired woman paddling a canoe on a quiet lake at sunrise? Does the brain map the same for an investment banker as she wires millions to start-up companies in Beijing, a Buddhist nun in prayer, and a country singer who feels the lament about which he sings? Although these examples veer between creative action and meditative repose, they are all moments of being plugged in, like Teresa.

The Teresa moment is a powerfully receptive state of mind that, if cultivated, could be very useful for addressing the politics of everyday living. What if the ecstatic experience was stripped of mystery and was understood as a biological event ¬– a mode of perception that is common to the species? What if this experience of wanton openness could be directed toward a new philosophy of ecology, replacing old policies of ecological dominance and separation with new policies of ecological exchange and permeability? What if heightened states of receptivity could help one see a face simply as a collection of colors, shapes and textures, rather than as an accretion of associations forged by cultural prejudices?

Painting along the 70th line of longitude this year, I’ve lived hours and hours of Teresa moments, and I’m convinced that the experience is more than an indulgence. It is a platform from which the world is felt as a profoundly integrated place, and a solid launch pad from which to jump into action.

In Emergency Break Glass

2008-05-17T18:46:00.001-07:00

Gardens are for touching, walking, sitting, sniffing, admiring, and most importantly, pondering.

Approaching the Enid Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden, I wondered if the contemporary cultural world is constrained by its own success. I'd like to think that art is potent pollen, whipped into the air by the need for change and carried to unlikely places to seed the imagination of people working in many disciplines. But often it seems a casualty of its container.

The Botanical Garden is preparing a major exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures. The large bronzes have been thoughtfully sited to take advantage of the composed vistas and textured backgrounds of the rolling 250 acre campus. In this setting the pastoral qualities of Moore’s art come to the fore. His abstract bronzes can evoke the effects of wind and water on rock. And they can also describe the gesturing flesh and the durable bone of beautiful, living things. But what about the meanness of Moore? He lived through two World Wars, soldiering in the First and reporting eloquently through a series of drawings about life during the Nazi Blitz in the Second. How would a Moore sculpture look if it was placed in a contemporary scene of trauma like an abandoned air force base, or a clear-cut jungle whose soil is so depleted that it can only sustain scrub, or in Harare, the capitol city of Zimbabwe, during the election battle between Tsvangirai and Mugabe? Would the line of Moore’s edges be more taut? Would the hollows seem to have been blown-out and eroded rather than scooped and polished into being? Would the bone-like forms seem less bleached and clean? We’ll never know, since these sculptures are worth too much money. Now, they live in World Headquarters, private villas and museums curtained in glass. The owners do the world a favor by protecting the art, but it is regrettable that some of the urgency of the objects is lost in the safety of their display. With this regret in mind, one can appreciate the visual violence of the day-glow, crowd-control netting which ensnares the sculpture (a fallen warrior in the above illustration) as it is prepared for exhibition.

Entering the Conservatory, I wondered at what point the vibrancy of something is diminished by the urge to protect and preserve it?

Emotion has seeded and money has watered the contemporary art world so that it has grown into an extravagant collection which is magnificently housed.

Strolling through the collection of carnivorous plants, I thought about the large number of contemporary art works that try to be socially provocative, but rise only to the level of Xtreme entertainment. Even if the art object is as extravagant and terrible as the 8 foot, Sumatran Corpse Flower, which releases the stench of putrefaction at peak bloom, the art work will most likely find care and shelter.

In contrast the spontaneous vignettes of the day that are composed by chance and are as vigorous and common as weeds, seem so free and sneaky and lovely.

My wife called to tell me that dozens of sparrows were dust bathing in the paths of Bryant Park, behind the New York City Library. The birds rubbed their shoulders and cheeks into the path, and made furious, little dirt clouds with their wings. The park paths were packed with people, but every foot was carefully placed, leaving the sparrows undisturbed. It was a pretty little moment of peace that can not be captured, commodified and preserved. Perhaps insignificance and impermanence is a way to shatter the glass that contains culture so elegantly.

A Ramble

2008-05-04T07:10:00.001-07:00

On the streets of New York City words and pictures fall around you like leaves in the forest.

Along the walk there are cascades and…

cliffs and…

colorful canyons.

Shallow pools line the way and offer a chance to reflect…

and celebrate the glory of nature.

In this Arcadia on the Hudson,

Nymphs and…

Satyrs dance with the animals.

And when the night comes…

and the moon rises…

people search the forest for love.

7 Paintings in Progress

2008-05-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

The view from the rooftop of the Avenue C studio.

The following 7 paintings were made in New York City. Complete titles coming soon

Wall Street

7th Street Garden

Avenue C

Avenue C Delivery

Seventh Street Garden

Seventh Street Garden Wisteria

Wall Street

Divine Comedy

2008-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo, Creation of Stars and Planets, 1508-1512, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome.

Today, April 22, 2008, is Earth Day. Its approach was heralded by Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich and Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who appeared together on TV, warming a park bench as they promoted cooperation on global heating.

Too bad the Pope, while in New York last week, didn’t add his voice to the Green Chorus. Imagine the impact he could have if he would re-write the following critical bit of text and insert it into Genesis.

The original line from Genesis:
“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’"

And the new Green version:
“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Plan a small family, so that you don’t kill each other over limited resources, and follow the golden rule when you encounter the creatures of the earth. And remember, the natural world is fine with or without you; the issue is saving yourself from side effects of arrogance.’”

The Pope probably won’t make this re-write, so it is up to a legion of individuals to start making incremental changes in the way people think about the earth. And the artist Justen Ladda is doing his part by creating an instructive, sculptural comedy on Allen Street.

In the Chinese section of the Lower East Side, Ladda has installed a handsome collection of Chinese spirit stones on the narrow traffic median that divides Allen Street, a heavily trafficked artery that pumps buses, cars and trucks into the heart of Manhattan.

Great comedy like this is rooted in surprise. The appreciation of unusual stones in China is an ancient tradition whose earliest known reference is found in an historical text from the third century B.C.E. (before the common era). A stone was not considered a static object, but as a dynamic, miniature universe in which the inchoate forces that formed it could be felt. Unusual shapes and textures that evoked mountains, the course of water and even animals and plants were collected and those which best expressed the exuberance of the natural world were highly prized. Those stones that were not adequately imbued with the power of primordial fire and erosion were enhanced by human hands. Over time a culture of connoisseurship evolved and fine stones became a sign of the social status and sophistication of the owner. As objects of meditation, stones were traditionally mounted on graceful, carved stands for indoor viewing or composed with plants and water elements into serene garden vignettes. But the spirit stones of Allen Street are surrounded by the rushing-smelly-honking chi of New York and it is in this arena, where refined tradition meets the democracy of the street, that the comedy is played.

If comedy is defined as the drama of conflicting expectations, then the effect of the spirit stones of Allen Street is similar to 4’ 33”, the infamous musical composition by John Cage in which a pianist sits quietly at her instrument, so that the ambient, random noise of the auditorium can become the music. Like the dignified, classical musician of 4’33”, the spirit stones of Allen Street hold still so that the contrasting swirl of the New York street can also be felt as art.

By framing the street as a work of art, the spirit stones coax the mind into a pleasantly complex state of awareness that trots between three points. First, one notices the beauty of the stones themselves and the Asian aesthetic from which they derived. Second, one is transported through memory to other landscapes and, finally, one feels the richness of the contemporary, urban moment. This state of perception is comic in its unexpected collisions of time, space and culture, but it also enlightening.

The ideas threaded through Justen Ladda’s spirit stone installation are part of a progressive movement to think inclusively by collapsing a number of opposing ideas into larger concepts. The installation, for example, collages the East onto the West, effectively emphasizing the global nature of this time. Similarly, Past and Present in the artwork are no longer irreconcilable moments on a line of time, but are, instead, floating moments that may cohabit consciousness through memory. It was wonderful, for example, to look at the wild, vertical shape of a stone and remember a family trip down the Snake river through the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming, and at the same moment, assess the progress of a Chinese grandmother as she negotiated a pram up the Allen Street median. Landscape and Cityscape, also, are folded into one pot; each no longer discrete but part of a single, encompassing ecosystem. In this new way of thinking, men, mountains and metropolises are part of a single environment that progresses through the laws of evolution. The relationship between Man and Nature is no longer one of dominance and submission decreed by the Divine, but rather it is a search by people to balance and preserve a complex habitat.

The comedy of the spirit stones of Allen Street begins with a laugh at the collision of art and life, but it resolves into a new, complex consciousness that attempts to see the connectedness of things before they are parsed into bits. This new emphasis on inclusive thinking is a hopeful sign. Thanks Justen.

(The information on Spirit Stones was culled from “Spirit Stones of China”, by Stephen Little. Published by the Art Institute of Chicago with University of California Press, 1999.)

Suspension

2008-04-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

On a fresh April morning after breakfast, I took a walk across the Williamsburg bridge, which connects the cultural hash of Manhattan to the ethnic scramble of Brooklyn. On the Manhattan end Jeffrey’s Meat caters to a diverse group of carnivores, who inhabit the Lower East Side. To appeal to all tastes, the butcher shop is decorated with a Caribbean palm, a Chinese Buddha, an Egyptian hound and paintings inspired by film noir.

As I began to walk across the bridge, the excitement of colliding culture that was embodied in the décor of Jeffrey’s Meats, gave way to a different sort of New York thrill. The bridge was so physically dynamic that memories of human differences were suspended just long enough to demonstrate a fundamental human connection, i.e. the kick of defying gravity.

Who knows the most about gravity? Astronauts know how to deal with its absence, but acrobats know how to overcome it, which, I think, gives them the edge. Maybe bridge engineers actually know more about attraction, since they can interrupt the pull of things and suspend masses in space for centuries. Ultimately, everything collapses, so this debate is pointless. But when one is standing in the middle the bridge, hovering 135 feet above the East River, the tension between mass and the fundamental force of gravity is magnificent.

This suspension bridge, built at the end of the nineteenth century, is a stunning instance of mass in defiance. The material burden of cars, trucks and trains is collected by four cables, which arc in perfect parabolas between pillars that accept the load and transfer it to the ground.

It’s an ecstatic moment in which matter is relieved of its gravitational burden so that independence of form can be expressed.

The poise of the steel bridge is magical, transforming pedestrians into elegant illustrations of the mechanics of movement. The knee straightens and raises the torso so that the free foot can pass the supporting leg. The left hip swings forward bringing the leg with it, while the right shoulder falls back for balance. The right arm swings forward in unison with the left leg, adding momentum to the advancing figure. Like cables to pillars, tendons transfer the weight of muscles, organs and fat to the bones which accept the load and transfer it to the ground.

And all of this is accomplished with little break in the conversation.

At the Brooklyn end of the Wiliamsburg Bridge, the cultural collage began again. I was met by bedraggled George Washington just back from Valley Forge.

And to gain the strength to overcome gravity during the return trip, I ate an excellent budin (bread pudding) at a Spanish bakery with a French name that serves a community primarily composed of Yiddish-speaking, Satmar Hassidim.

George Washington at the Bollards

2008-04-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

Every time I hear a plane pass low over Manhattan, I wonder if the whine of the engines heralds the next missile made of jet fuel and people. I heard a plane as I was walking through Wall Street, which is at once an historical site, a financial center and, after 9/11, a trauma point. As I listened to the plane and looked up at the statue of George Washington, who was inaugurated there, my stomach lurched with a mix of pride, worry and disappointment. The pride was for a nation founded on the principles of equality and freedom. The worry was for the future of family, friends and self and it is a worry that will not to be quieted by Homeland Security procedures or the war in Iraq. The disappointment was for the nation’s response to 9/11, which was rooted in hubris, fueled by fear and executed with extreme violence.

With this mix of thoughts and feelings, I continued to walk through Wall Street, studying the look of the place.

The colors of business on Wall Street are black and white with accents of gold and red. Black is impressive. It enhances the contour of powerful form, while minimizing detail and imperfection. White is divine. It is all the colors of the spectrum at once, bright and pure. Gold is power. The stuff of crowns, it signifies the material wealth and wisdom of the sovereign. Red is the imperial body, all busy meat and wine.

The colors of Wall Street business, however, are interrupted with slashes of warning-orange at perimeter defense stations where retractable, vehicle barriers are inserted in the center of the streets leading to the New York Stock Exchange. Before these steel barriers are lowered into the ground, vehicles are checked by men and sniffed by dogs.

Classical forms, both Greek and…

Modern, dominate the street. These styles plainly display the logic of construction and both claim that the physical order of the exterior is a reliable indication of the civic virtue that resides within.

There are a few opulent sights, which in this classical environment seem naughty. But they are discreetly tucked away like the paisley lining in a wool suit.

Since the streets are narrow and the buildings are tall, the sky is cut into shapes like a dagger and …

a pointing hand and...

a falling star.

But at one intersection, the street opens to a breathtaking vista in which a classical temple, aped in glass and steel, seems to sit majestically on an acropolis of competing businesses. It’s an, “oh my god moment”, that is really funny. I wonder if the visual joke about the collision of classical ideals and capitalist competition is intentional.

There is little advertising on Wall Street and the few images that are there appeal mostly to men and predictably portray them as massive chins in pin stripes.

There are colonnades grand enough to host legions of well-groomed, financial workers.

But the streets at 10 AM were quiet and populated mostly by smokers idling in granite niches, avoiding the wind.

Security on Wall Street is high and photography is not allowed on private property. Several times I was stopped and warned about taking photographs, so I stayed in the public domain. One security guard, however, approached me very aggressively and challenged my right to take pictures on the street. Our encounter got a little heated, and afterwards I regretted the exchange. It would have been easy to diffuse the situation if I had stayed calm and introduced myself instead of responding in kind. Responding to aggression with more aggression is not usually as effective as getting to know the adversary in attempt to find common ground. Someday, I hope a majority of people know how to resolve conflicts without resorting to escalating threats. It would be great for George Washington to once again preside over a Wall Street free of bollards.

Flesh and Blood on 14th St.

2008-03-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

14th Street in Manhattan is an exhausting, dreamlike space of suggestive and discordant sights that seem logical at the time. It’s a stream of consciousness made from flesh and blood.

While walking through this steam, I thought of a recent dinner party. Over calamari, roast duck and red wine, a friend brightened and asked what to date had been most surprising about my trip. “I forgot my body”, I said without thinking. “When planning the trip, the thing was all in my head. I forgot to consider how my body would react”.

I made nearly twice as many successful paintings in the Caribbean as I did in the arctic or the rainforest because my body was comfortable. In the arctic, I was stressed by carrying 50 lbs of gear across difficult terrain and in the rainforest, I was bedeviled by the heat and the humidity. In the Caribbean, however, my body was happy, so I was more productive. Contrary to popular myth, creativity does not require suffering. Abundance of anything, whether it be paintings, potatoes or human spirit, develops when the conditions for growth are optimal. With this in mind, sustainable designs that promote the quality of life should be celebrated and ancient ideologies rooted in threat and suffering should be reconsidered.

I arrived in New York City over Easter weekend. This should be a joyful celebration of strengthening sun and a fresh season. Instead, Easter is flavored with blood sacrifice. I don’t believe in a God who demands the torture and death of his only son to appease his anger over human failings. Moreover, ritualized cannibalism in the form of communion does not instill me with hope. The snowbells that are shivering in the March air are much more reassuring signs of the persistence and the potential of life. There is no afterlife. Being here, sentient in this sensual world, is what we have and it is enough.

Hope comes from this world. It is something that we make because we need it like food. Perhaps it is time to find hope in new places like 14th St., where young and old bodies, all vibrant in time and space, are a celebration of the season and testament enough.

8 Paintings from St. John

2008-03-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

The following 8 works were begun out of doors in St. John, Virgin Islands. I've been home in New York State for the month of March, working in the studio to complete these Caribbean paintings. The title of each work includes the date that the work was begun, the temperature of the moment, the latitude and longitude of the place, and a verbal description of the subject that motivated the painting. I also made a few changes in the Caribbean paintings that were previously posted ("9 Paintings in Progress", February 4, 2008), and that post has changed accordingly.

"January 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 74° F, Round Bay"

Detail, "January 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 74° F, Round Bay"

"January 26 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 78° F, Haulover Bay"

"January 30, 2008, afternoon, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 73° F, Haulover Bay"

Detail, "January 30, 2008, afternoon, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 73° F, Haulover Bay"

"February 6, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 79°, Haulover Bay"

"February 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 81° F, John's Folly"

Detail, "February 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 81° F, John's Folly"

"February 20, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 80°, John's Folly"

Detail, "February 20, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 80°, John's Folly"

"February 21, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 75° F, John's Folly"

Detail, "February 21, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 75° F, John's Folly"

"February 22, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 78°, John's Folly".

Out of the Blue

2008-02-29T17:10:00.001-08:00

I’ve been painting on the beach using a church barbecue shed for a studio, which I occasionally share with a herd of goats that wander freely across the island. One afternoon I heard a loud sizzle and crack, and looked toward the highway from which the noise came. A white pick-up truck stopped in the middle of the road. The passenger door slammed, a man ran into the road and returned with an unconscious goat which was dropped into the truck bed with a thud and the truck sped away. The event was disturbing, not so much for the fate of the goat which was raised for meat, but for the quickness with which the goat met its fate at the end of a stun gun. Documentary images of speeding Toyota trucks packed with death squads and spiked with automatic weapons popped to mind. Before witnessing the startling efficiency of the goat harvesters, I had protected myself with the fantasy that deadly attacks could be avoided if one was quick.

This seemed like a good a moment to take a break and enjoy the day.

I decided to take a walk up Ram Head, the southern most tip of the island of St. John. To some this rocky mound that stretches on a long neck from the body of the island looks like the broad brow and curling horns of a ram. I don’t really see the ram, but I do see this thrusting spit of dome and cliff to be as bold as one.

The trail begins near a salt pond that the trade wind works to a lather.

From the salt pond I walked along a crunchy, coral-rubble path that skirts a pretty curve of bay. Soon the trail rose over a dry, sunny ridge…

that is home to barrel cactus and wild orchids.

At the crest of the ridge, Ram Head came into view. Without warning, a slab of cloud slid under the sun.

And in minutes the brilliant colors of the evening where extinguished and replaced with pewter. It was an afternoon for abrupt events.

As I proceeded up the trail, squalls swept in from the North, but each skirted Ram Head, which sat in its own patch of light.

On the crown of Ram Head, I saw the distant rain travel across the sea like a wet sable brush passing over fresh paper.

The tip of Ram Head…

makes a hasty drop to the sea, where the surf breaks over the rocks and swells the pools only to make a sloshing retreat.

Looking up and out to the west where I had hoped to celebrate the end of my visit to the island with a glitzy, sunset spectacle, there was only a cloudy sky and a sober stretch of silvery sea. I was disappointed.

But I soon noticed that the subtlety of the scene was just as beautiful as a dazzling sunset, and considering the suddenness of the other afternoon events, pleasantly uneventful.

Sunrise on Drunk Bay

2008-02-18T04:35:00.001-08:00

On Friday, February 15 I walked to Drunk Bay early in the morning before the sun showed itself. Drunk Bay on the island of St. John faces east and lies on the 18th parallel of latitude not far from the Tropic of Cancer, that imaginary ring around the earth which marks the most northerly latitude at which the sun can appear directly overhead at noon. Waiting for the sun, I looked across a stretch of ocean that breaks next on the shores of Dakar, Senegal and wondered what was happening around the world on the 18th parallel at that moment.

It didn’t take long for the sun to show itself on Drunk Bay. The first ray hit the beach at 6:45 AM to light a field of figures made from coral, drift wood and flotsam.

Due east at the same moment the sun hit its noon peak over the desert that lies between Timbuktu, Mali and the Darfur region of Sudan. That morning the Sudan Tribune had reported the following story:

Crammed into school buildings in the centre of Suleia, just 200 out of the West Darfur town’s original 25,000 population were left after an attack by militia and the Sudanese army.

Thursday was the first time anyone from outside had been able to reach the town and the people remaining were mostly elderly women, those with babies or old men.They were not able to run as far as others to escape the bombing and the militia who looted and burned and killed.

Suleia was targeted as part of an army offensive on three towns to retake them from the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) almost a week earlier.

Among the survivors, Hawa Suleiman had no breast milk to feed her five-month-old baby after she spent a week under a tree with no food following the attack."The Janjaweed came and took everything, our food, our furniture," said the 35-year-old mother, who did not know where any of her other six children or her husband was.Her face, cut with traditional tribal markings, was worn with worry as she struggled to quieten her crying, hungry child. She said she came back on Thursday because she heard aid workers had brought food.

A joint U.N.-humanitarian convoy brought food to the area for the first time since mid-December. Some 160,000 people had been cut off from aid since then, said U.N. official Amy Martin.

"We have not bathed for a week," said 75-year-old Mohamed Eissa Abdallah, bent over double with age and leaning on a wooden staff. His face and clothes were caked with dust and mud."I buried my brother with my own hands," he said.
Many of the survivors said at least one member of their family had been killed.

A Sudanese staff of the International Committee for the Red Cross was killed in the attack on Suleia.

Washington calls the Darfur violence genocide, a term Khartoum rejects, blaming Western media for exaggerating the conflict.

The offensive was the largest in many months and aid agencies say it affected 50,000-60,000 people, less than initial rebel estimates of up to 200,000. Up to 12,000 refugees fled into neighboring eastern Chad, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Further east on the 18th parallel, the day was windless and dry in Sana, Yemen and very humid but dry and calm in Da Nang, Vietnam.

I don’t know who made the figures which lie on the shore of Drunk Bay. Probably one person got it started and then others added to the display.

The light was pink on the coral figures and the temperature was a pleasant 72 ° F. In Mumbai, India it was late in the afternoon, and a steamy 88° and the Times of India reported that Pakistani police had arrested another "important suspect" allegedly involved in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, taking the total number of people apprehended in the case to five.

It was 8 PM in Manila and earlier that day the Manila Times reported that Security officials said they had uncovered a plot by Islamic militants linked to the al-Qaeda network to assassinate President Gloria Arroyo and ‘other targets.’”

It was 70° and still dark in Acapulco, Mexico, but in nearby Port-au-Prince, Haiti the sky was just beginning to lighten.

When the sun was high enough to shorten the shadows and flatten the forms of the figures on Drunk Bay, I left.

Failure

2008-02-11T06:47:00.001-08:00

Once I made a drawing using the phrase, “Total and complete fucking failure”, which was repeated in neat lines, over and over, until the page was completely filled. Oddly, the drawing was a minor success since the combination of the self-negating phrase with the grim determination to fill the page was comic. But sometimes projects fail, without any hope of redemption.

The life of a failed painting begins like any other. In the case of this small catastrophe, a pristine panel was placed before beautiful Haulover Bay in St. John. A few tender blues and greens were picked from the morning waves, before the sun was high enough to fully penetrate to the white sand below and send back to the surface the intensely saturated aquamarine for which the Caribbean Sea is famous. The pale colors were applied with a small brush in concave strokes to make interconnecting, stretchy pentagons, which is a motif that describes the undulation of small waves. This cool color area was surrounded then with the yellow of an old sea grape leaf and tempered with small patches of white from the sun-bleached coral rubble. In the upper left a smudge of grey-green was added to represent the distant island of Tortola. The painting session was finished when a large, stretchy pentagon appeared on top of everything else as if to describe a large bubble rising from the floor of the ocean.

Back at the house, I returned to the picture. The bubble of space was the most engaging thing, so I set to work to litter the floor below the boil with interesting detritus like fragments of brain and fire coral. Next, I decided on an orientation for the image and placed a vignette of sky and shore in the upper third. And then the picture was put away.

After a few days of looking at the painting, I picked it up again. Although I still liked the bubble of space, the vignettes beneath were pedestrian and isolated from one another. Painting a discrete object is relatively easy, but painting the strong and weak forces that glue a diverse universe together is hard. To get deeper into the world of this picture, I re-entered with a disruptive attitude, intent on destroying the status quo. Large strokes of blue and red, saturated like the colors of the American flag, replaced the shoreline and set off an exciting collision of color. I turned the picture upside down and forced this new orientation into dominance by weighting the new bottom with large forms and intense pigments. By now the nuanced tints copied during the initial session at the beach were lost and replaced with coarser colors, which was a result of working from memory and impulse rather than direct observation. But there was still hope for a successful resolution, since a new visual drama appeared which seemed to benefit from the rawness of color. With the addition of fins, eyes, shiny skin, and slithery shape, three large brush strokes became a barracuda and two fat, fleeing fish. Satisfied with the visual invention that arose through insurrection, I put the picture away and went for a swim.

As more time passed the new spatial disruptions began to bother me, so I put the picture on the easel and once again turned it upside down, back to its original orientation. The crudeness of the scene would have been a virtue if balanced with a little finesse, so I worked with care to soften extraneous detail and strengthen the focus on the fish and the bubble of space. Several times the picture neared balance, but each time something was off and each time the correction led to new problems. The barracuda, disgusted with the lack decisiveness, left the picture. After so many corrections, the surface became overworked. So, in a last-ditch attempt to bestow grace, I rebelled once again by downing a rum and coke early in the day. Predictably, the alcohol improved my confidence but not my judgment and the picture failed.

All that was left was a fish, alone in a muddy sea of compound mistakes.

It’s time, now, is to get rid of everything. The shapes and colors and textures must be destroyed. History must be eradicated. Get the stripper and scrape the surface new. It’s time to annihilate this little failed world. There is a point when an environment can not sustain the mistakes of its inhabitants.

9 Paintings in Progress

2008-02-04T04:38:00.001-08:00

The following 9 works were created out of doors in St. John, Virgin Islands. The title of each painting includes the date that the work was begun, the temperature of the moment, the latitude and longitude of the place, and a verbal description of the subject that motivated the painting.

"January 8, 2008. 75° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay"

"January 13, 2008. 73° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Leduck Island"

"January 14, 2008. 75° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay"

"January 15, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Morning"

"January 15, 2008. 78° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, noon"

"January 15, 2008. 78° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, noon", DETAIL

"January 18, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Round Bay"

"January 18, 2008, 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Round Bay", DETAIL

"January 23, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Morning"

"January 23, 2008. 83° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Afternoon"

"January 23, 2008. 83° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Afternoon", DETAIL

"January 30, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay"

Snorkeling in the Dark

2008-01-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

Round Bay is a tranquil scoop of sand and sea that is fringed with reefs. After a morning of painting in nearby Haulover Bay, I occasionally put on a mask and flippers and go for a swim there. Even though it is not a risky sport, or one that takes any skill, snorkeling is a thrill.

Just beneath the surface of the water, skeins of light are crocheted across the backs of sea fans and fish and turtles.

Unusual chromatic chords of ochre, crimson, celadon and lilac spread across the coral structures, whose organic forms are both ancient and futuristic.
But there is more to the thrill of snorkeling than seeing novel form and color, and I’m wondering what it is, and I am reminded of a favorite work of art.

In 1968 the American artist Bruce Nauman made “John Coltrane Piece”, “a 36-inch-square, 3-inch-thick, 400-pound aluminum plate laid on the floor, with the word 'dark' written on its unsee-able, mirror-finish bottom surface”. (Saunders, Wade, Not Lost, Not Found: Bill Bollinger, Art in America, March, 2000) Nauman provides little explanation for the reference to Coltrane, other than the fact that he likes his music and that Coltrane had a habit of turning his back to the audience. ( Auping, Michael, “Sound thinking: Michael Auping on Bruce Nauman at the Turbine Hall.”) It is understated to say that this sculpture is laconic. The one bit of excitement, the mirrored surface, in which one would at least expect to see an imitation if not an explanation of life, has been pressed to the floor, all the light squeezed out. In the tradition of the other minimal art works of the time, the obduracy of the "John Coltrane Piece" may be a purposeful denial of the usual delight that is to be had in indulging one's fantasy in front of an art object. But the mirror is a chestnut in the repertory of symbolism and the act of denying light to it is just too provocative to go without more explication.

Snorkeling is an occasion when simple technological enhancement of the body opens the door to a different world. Like the electron microscope and the space shuttle, flippers and a mask extend the body into new space. With each kick of the flipper, something new comes into view, and this is the reason that snorkeling is so thrilling. It’s not just the discovery of something new, it’s the realization that there will always be something new. Anticipation of making a discovery is thrilling, deeply thrilling, like falling into the well of hope. Discovery may be satisfying, but it is the anticipation of discovery that is motivating, particularly for creative people like scientists and mathematicians, who log countless hours developing the tools to extend knowledge in hopes of making discoveries. And it’s here, where bodies wait for augmentation to explore unknown worlds that the John Coltrane Piece lives. The mirror facing the blackness is forever a threshold beyond which there is something we do no yet know. Thinking about The John Coltrane Piece is like wading into the reflective surface of Round Bay on a moonless night, putting on the flippers and mask and setting off for the center.

Haulover Bay

2008-01-22T05:30:00.000-08:00

About 25 years ago I visited with Leon Golub in his studio, when he was painting his great “Mercenary” series. Standing in front of gigantic men of war, we fell into a conversation about the unusual painting process he had developed. After drawing the rapacious figures and giving them heft with broadly defined areas of light and shadow, Leon would pull the canvas to the floor, saturate the surface with solvent and scrape the paint with a meat cleaver. The scraping took the paint down to the weave of the linen, leaving the figures clearly visible but distressed. Although aware of the aggressiveness of the abrading and its tragic implications, Leon talked about the process with self-aware humor. Laughing, he said something like, “If they live long enough, all artists grow into their own strange ways of working”.

Now, painting in Saint John, I’ve been thinking about Leon’s comment. He was talking about the connection between making an object and living a life. Over time, he suggested, the elements of an examined life -- the values, the psychic habits, the social relations -- find expression in the process of making art. One would expect the subject of an art work to reveal the motives of the maker, but Leon was noting that the process of making the thing was just as illuminating.

Currently, I’m working on windy, Haulover beach under a canopy of sea grapes, making pictures from shadows cast by the sun as it rises. It’s an exciting process, since the sun and the wind have become active collaborators.

The beach fringes the north shore of a narrow, flat isthmus, which divides the open water of Sir Francis Drake Channel from the shelter of Coral Bay. Slaves once hauled the boats of the Danish plantation owners across this narrow strip to save the masters the trouble of sailing around the east end of the island to get to open water. Hence, the name, Haulover Bay.

I arrive at 7:30 AM, more than an hour before the sun rises over the mountain that shades the bay from the east. Sea Grapes line the shore and at one spot they have grown so tall and thick that they make a shelter. Someone has dragged an old timber that floated ashore into the cover to make a convenient bench. After setting up the easel in this fresh air studio, I take a look around to see what’s new, which is usually a lot of plastic crap that has washed in from the boats. But in a few minutes it’s possible to pick up the worst of it and get back to searching for colors and forms.

First, I mix up little pools of paint to match the color of the water, which changes from minute to minute in response to the sun and passing clouds.

The shades of turquoise are intense, so I balance the palette by adding the neutral colors of beach stones.

And to this cool collection of colors, the copper of a fallen leaf is included for warmth.

Once the palette is set, I look for interesting forms to paint. The shapes of light on the water made by the wind are often inspiring. The sun will soon be rising over the hill, so I have to work quickly to make an interesting ground.

On this particular morning I choose to start with the sky, which is pale and dotted with peach-hued clouds, which I paint upside down as an inconsequential poke at convention. To this up-ended skyscape a few blobs of sea and chlorophyll green are added as well as the ochre of a coral that I observed while snorkeling the day before. Abruptly, the sun rises above the mountain and the strengthening light intensifies the action of the wind and the water so that everything seems to expand and contract, as if caught in an elastic net. On the panel ovals and bars of light shoot across the picture plane and undulate to the rhythm of the wind in the sea grapes. I trace the edges of the waving shadows and let my hand move to the rhythm. Sometimes I use a knife and scrape out ovals of light. There is no lag between the provocations of the sun and the wind and the response of the brush and the knife. Stimulus and response become one thing and the experience is transcendent, like a moment of shared belief.

When the sun first rises, the shapes are slashing diagonals. But as the morning progresses and the sun circles behind the sea grapes, the shapes become rounder.

To check on progress, the panel is turned away from the light and rotated. If one looks at a picture sideways, it’s easier to ignore the subject and study the scaffolding of lines and the repetition of motifs that make a well-built composition.

The picture is complete, when it asks for nothing more.

I love and admire Leon Golub for his life and work and over the years I have felt myself respond to his accomplishments. His mercenaries-in-action are good representations of violence, but they are great paintings because they are convincing demonstrations of violence. His pictures embody the human capacity for destruction because of his actions, which are to use a mighty size, to overwhelm with big gesture and to flay the surface as if it were alive. In life Leon was far from being a violent or destructive man, but in his art he could conjure brutality and show it nakedly. Like Leon I’m interested in human potential, but I’m working on the flip side of the same coin. Playing with the light and wind and water on Haulover Beach is an attempt to demonstrate the human capacity to embrace.

Christian at the Petroglyphs

2008-01-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Christian goes belly down on the ledge, cups a little fresh water in his hand and splashes the design carved in the rock. Fresh water pools are rare in the Virgin Islands, so animals and people have been congregating here forever. Christian wets the rock again and runs his index finger around the grooves. He runs his finger around and around and he doesn’t think much about the image, but he notices that the bottom of the curves hold water and are slippery with algae and that the tops are dry and rough with emptiness. His finger scoots fast through the slippery stuff and drags across the dry part. A little skin is left in the rough section.

Christian is on vacation with his parents and three younger brothers. He lets his finger go around and around until the sensation in his finger is so big that his ears stop working. Mom is bubbling with nonsense, much like her sleep machine which covers clamor with the sound of jungle birds. She would be pretty if her fists would relax, but she is worried that Dad will blow. Dad would be handsome with his shirt on. He loves them all and he is proud of what he has made, but the intimacy of vacation is too much for him. Boo, the youngest, will be the trigger and target of Dad’s discontent. Boo is tired from the hour long trek from the SUV, but he is too young to notice, so he wanders around the pool tempting the edge to make him slip. Dad says, “Stay away from the water, son”. But Dad thinks “Don’t make work for me”. Warned, Boo scoots back from the edge and wanders innocently, waiting to test the edge again when no one’s looking.

Christian lies there, deaf, with everything in his fingertip, when suddenly he passes through his fingertip and he is on the other side touching his own fingertip as in a mirror. Now he is the carver, one of the Taino who were the pre-Columbian inhabitants of St. John. Or maybe he is the one of the first people from Africa to stand here and draw images from the Ashanti culture from which he came. He slips naked into the pool, and hears the tap-tap of his labor, and he sweats and feels his sweat, and he is strong and independent carving something important, and he draws a breath over a 1000 years. His body and his carving reflect in the pool, both existing as matter and as light.

Of course Boo slips. He needs to know when slime and angle overcome mass and friction. But Dad can’t appreciate the brilliance of this physics lesson. He’s pissed. “I told you not to get so close to the water. See what you’ve done, your feet are all wet and you won’t like walking back to the car. You won’t like it. You don’t listen. It’s a long walk and it’ll be real uncomfortable, and you won’t like it one bit and I won’t carry you either. No, you are on your own. It’s a long walk, and don’t complain and don’t expect me to carry you”. Dad’s point about the consequence of action is a good one, but the point is lost in the harangue and Dad’s anger traumatizes Boo, altering his brain chemistry just a little and irreversibly.

Christian takes his finger out of the groove, and his hearing returns, and he also changes just a little and irreversibly. Fantasy sheltered him from the present unpleasantness, but it also opened, unexpectedly, into human history. He hasn’t listened to Dad, but he knows his youngest brother just got it. He is happy it wasn’t him who got it, but he is resolved to stick it to Dad soon. He stands, a little older, in this own time.

Anxious to cover up the little bit of shit that just dropped on everyone, Mom uses Christian’s rising as the cue to end the scene. “Christian, does that sign next to you have information about the petroglyphs? What’s it say? Will you read it to us?”

Wish You Were Here!

2008-01-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

On New Year’s Day as the temperature and the snow dropped on New England, I arrived in St. John, Virgin Islands, and began to fret. The temperature here is perfect. The sea is thrillingly blue and the beach is bone bright. I’m living in a house that clings to the side of Mt. Bordeaux, the highest spot on the island. Hurricane Hole, a nicely protected deep water bay, is visible from the porch, as are the islands of Tortola and Virgin Gorda. Little yellow birds, out for the evening feed, are negotiating the wind to land on my work table in hopes of a crumb. Chimes and motorcycles can be heard in the distance. The only real challenge to peace of mind is remembering to drive on the left. But with everything being so bucolic, I’m worried about making art that is cliché. So, I thought it would be wise to spend time studying the landscape through photography. For five days, I’ve hiked through the National Park land, diligently looking for the unique panorama and revelatory detail. After reviewing hundreds of photographs, it seems that I am living in a postcard.

Wish you were here!

Bug Eyes

2007-12-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

Maybe people see like bugs.

Light comes into the human eye through a single lens. But like the compound eye of a bug which receives information from multiple points of view, the human brain understands that single shaft of light by sending it through innumerable, interpretive lenses, each ground into a unique shape by genes and polished by experience.

Living in the rain forest of Ecuador for two months was physically uncomfortable. From moment to moment I felt my body probed for weakness so that it could be reabsorbed into the biomass at the first opportunity. Pricked and irritated by heat and dampness, I began to see the life in land as exploitive and grotesque.

At night lightning illuminated the forest like a horror movie on a television playing in an empty room.

In the light of day, parasitism paraded as lushness and…

a poisonous nature was flaunted through a display of brilliant color.

Blossoms took the shape of spears and fists and sported petals as thick as lips.

And the trees, competing for light, grew into odd shapes that were a record of their striving. But now that I have left, the distress of the body no longer dictates the story and other lenses in the compound eye of the brain can focus the image of the forest into a wider angle.

I remember the grotesquerie, but I also think about the vitality. The weather, for example, is as capricious as a teenager. Although the light and heat and humidity are constant throughout the year, the rhythm of each day is unique. Clear skies rapidly mushroom with fat white clouds that darken and hurl drops that sound like a carpenter’s rasp as they tear through the leaves. Sometimes the rain passes like an express bus, but sometimes it is as fixed as a waterfall at full flood, roaring for hours.

The greenery is so dense that it can induce a panic attack. But the light offers relief. Like Matisse with a pair or scissors, the sun cuts sharply through the canopy creating melon slices and asterisks of light which spread across the sky in a jumpy rhythm. The visual jazz is accompanied by birdsong that is in turn as sad a Mahler, as sweet as Satie and as rude as a whoopee cushion.

The agents of decomposition thrive here and consume every helpless scrap with a speed that is unnerving. As a result the occasional, drifting thought on mortality which lands in this over-ripe place is fertilized beyond reason and bursts into sex and …

other creative adventures, like painting pictures in the rainforest with the eyes of a bug.

7 paintings in Progress

2007-12-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

The following 7 works were created out of doors in the very rainy Oriente of Ecuador near the primary forests of the Jatun Sacha Foundation. Arranged chronologically, the paintings are mostly complete, although touch up may be necessary when I see them in the studio. The title of each painting includes the date that the work was begun, the temperature of the moment, the latitude and longitude of the place, and a verbal description of the subject that motivated the painting.

October 27, 2007, 92° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, Ceyba tree, rainforest

October 28, 2007, 90° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, rainforest

November 7, 2007, 80° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, bananas and rain

November 10, 2007, 87° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, canopy and ant nest

November 11, 2007, 80° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, banana, light and wind

November 16, 2007, 83° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, leaves

November 21, 2007, 80° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, canopy

Shape and Surface

2007-11-30T08:18:00.001-08:00

Casa y Jardin

2007-11-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

Very naturally, as if I was one of her babies, Juanita patiently repeats simple Spanish words and phrases to me. Juanita Cerda is the cook where I am staying and we have become friends through simple exchanges. “Como esta?” is her morning call and “Muy bien” is my proud response.

Juanita lives with her husband, Anibal Torres, and their four children in the San Cudo Community, which is a mile away at the end of the path by the river. San Cudo is named after a type of mosquito, not an obscure saint.

The night before my visit to Juanita’s home, the rain fell, heavy and drenching for 8 hours without a pause. The Rio Napo breached its banks and the canoes were pulled up near the path for safety. We set out for her house after lunch, but the track to her house was still flooded and fish were swimming among our feet. With a leap and cry of, “Pescado!”, Juanita lanced one with the tip of her umbrella and wrapped it, still flopping, in a foot-long leaf to carry home.

The Torres-Cerda family lives in a five room house. The ground-floor room is mostly for storage. The stair to the second story leads into the kitchen, which has a large window, without glass or screens. Off the kitchen are two bedrooms and a family room with TV and VCR and a couple of beds for lounging. There is electricity but no running water, so rainwater is collected in the cistern for cooking and washing. The bathroom is in a small separate shed behind the house.

At home were three of Juanita’s four children, Edison, Andrea and…

baby, Natalie, who enjoyed chicken for lunch. Couples tend to have large families in this region and are proud of the fact. In a place were income is small, perhaps many children and...

many chickens are satisfying sources of wealth. After the kids and fowl were fed, Juanita and I followed the line of laundry into the garden.

The laundry, like family flags, hangs on a rope that stretches from the house deep into the garden. Sheets and towels and shirts and shorts hang flat, until they catch a little breeze and inflate into the shape of people whose sweat and stain is bleached and sweetened by the sun. It’s better than confession to watch laundry on a line.

The clothes line ends at a quiet stream, which catches the light of the sky and tucks it beneath the lemon trees.

Unlike gardens in the North which are sown and harvested on a timetable set by the seasons, this garden grows and dies everyday. Lines and grids are suitable for gardens on a schedule, but a garden with no beginning or end forever evolves and the shape it takes is irregular and temporary.

When the banana tree flowers, fruits and falls, the trunk quickly rots adding nutrients to the soil, which is so quickly rinsed to depletion by the constant rain.

The space left by the old banana tree is used for a new crop of yuca, a ubiquitous plant whose tuber is a staple of the Amazonian diet.

Besides yuca and bananas, the garden produces plantain, corn, rice, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, sugar cane, papaya, cacao, grapefruit, lemons, limes, and a variety of medicinal plants like, Sinviyo, (pictured above) which is a natural insect repellent.

Juanita also grows Cuyamuyo, a fruit whose hard shell is used for bowls. Like fancy china, this tableware can be monogrammed.

The stream feeds a fish pond which is stocked with Tilapia and ringed with beans and bananas, and …

another lemon tree loaded with the drooping nests of the Oropendola.

Hidcote and Longwood are glorious but this little equatorial garden is just as lovely and more poignant for feeding the family of Juanita Cerda.

Accumulation

2007-11-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

It’s good to share the stories of a day with those you love forever. But when it is time to speak to those important people, it seems at first that there is nothing much to say. Maybe this delay is just the slowness of memory rising like bubbles through syrup. Or maybe it's stinginess or maybe it's the fault of melodrama which makes everyday events seem unremarkable. But each round day is full of accounts that should be banked and spent on family and friends.

It was cool last night as I stood in the bathroom debating my fate with a scorpion at my feet. But the morning broke clear with a distant view of the volcano. After breakfast the heat and the humidity mixed like yeast and flour into a dense, redolent lump. It sat all day under a floral towel in a gray bowl at the back of the stove to rise. Late in the day, the swelling burst with waves of electricity, sound and water, propelling a pair of buzzards to their stinking nest at the root of a six-story tree where I spent the day painting.

Soon a stranger arrived with a brown sloth hanging from her neckline. Middle- aged, short, and voluptuous, she wore thickly drawn lines around pretty eyes that did not blink as she peppered me with urgent comments and questions. Since I could not understand her, she pantomimed a request to paint her portrait by posing like Betty Boop, one hand on a shifting hip, the other behind her swiveling head. The sloth held on with as much fervor as a sloth can muster, swinging from the neckline, exposing increasing amounts of motherly breast.

Most of the people here are Quichua, the dominant group of indigenous people in this part of Ecuador. Curious about native culture and history, I asked about the Quichua and other indigenous rain forest groups like the Huaorani, who by legend are fierce and aloof headhunters. To answer my questions about traditional life, Freddy, a Quichua, offered a CD of Mel Gibson’s, "Apocalypto", which stars, he says, the Hoarani, who filmed on location nearby.

Insects are eating the ears of the Great Dane who lives here. The tips are gone.

There is a bird nearby whose call is the “submarine” prompt on a Macintosh computer.

An enormous tree flowers profusely on tiny stalks which shoot directly from the trunk. It’s disconcerting, but reassuring to see sexy, fragrant growth sprouting from the thickened core and horny surface instead of the youthful tips.

That’s it. Those are the unnecessary details of the day, rehearsed for the telling so you’ll know I love you.

7 Paintings in Progress

2007-11-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

The following 7 works were created out of doors in the Oriente of Ecuador near the primary forests of the Jatun Sacha Foundation. Arranged chronologically, the paintings are mostly complete, although touch up may be necessary when I see them in the studio. The title of each painting includes the date that the work was begun, the temperature of the moment, the latitude and longitude of the place, and a verbal description of the subject that motivated the painting.

October 10, 2007, 94° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, 2007, orange spotted butterfly

October 11, 2007, 89° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, caciques and heliconia

October 14, 2007, 90° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, morpho butterfly

October 20, 2007, 89° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, rainforest

October 22, 2007, 91° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, rainforest canopy

October 26, 2007, 88° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, rainforest canopy

November 1, 2007, 92° F, S 01° 02, W 77° 36, , elephant ear shoots

The Slopes of Peak Heat

2007-11-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

If one could not see the beauty of the hours that bracket the equatorial day, they still would be acutely felt and heard, since the air is cool and the birds feed noisily on either side of a midday peak of 95° during which little stirs.

Friday was a day like that and it began with a trip to Tena, I rode with Angel, Jenny…

and Naya, their daughter of 20 months.

It takes an hour to reach Tena, a town of 30,000 people at the headwaters of the Rio Napo which descends into Peru to join the Amazon.

The road from the Cabanas to Tena is paved in anticipation of a big, new airport even though the airline that once flew here has stopped, since most people can only afford the bus. The road is dotted with gardens cleared from the jungle and sensible, wooden houses, built on pilings to catch the breeze.

In Tena the architecture is basic. But there is one extraordinary exception…

The Politecnica Ecologica Amazonica. If quality architecture in the global age is a fusion of periods and cultures, then this may be the best building in the world. Built on Inca-inspired terraces, the façade features a Greek colonnade surmounted by a Chippendale pediment not unlike the ATT building in New York. The undulating glass porches which line the sides are separated by four story columns with palm tree capitals at every floor. Living vines climb to the finale of a fifth floor which sports a quartet of Wright, Prairie House style roofs and Medieval towers. Wow! So as not to ignore Asia, there is also a small adjacent building with a Taj Mahal style dome.

The Politecnica is a hopeful thing, but since no one seems to occupy the building, it is also a futile thing, just like the airport. These grand plans may or may not bear fruit, but the soul of Tena is the street life, which is gritty and sweet.

The commerce of Tena is daily need like selling produce from the home garden…

or Tilapia from a local fish farm…

or pollo asado…

or clothes…

or beauty.

There are several parks in town and like all good, town parks they have statues…

and people hanging out…

and small celebrations.

We got home in time for a lunch of lemonade, beans, rice, and papaya and the temperature and the humidity peaked and all movement stopped.

When the heat passed, I went to the Rio Napo to walk along the banks and look at the final hour of sunlight through the palms and grasses.

Nice day.

Two Kinds of Terror

2007-10-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

One
The rain forest is a impious Mass whose chords have nothing to do with human music.

Standing at the easel studying the landscape, I realize that converting this visual cacophony into an “artistic composition” requires willful incomprehension. There is no subject here, only a density of detail. Dynamic lines and suggestive forms abound, but to comb clarity from the tangle, to make the impure immaculate, is to misconstrue. People like to differentiate and rank to make order; it is said to be an ancient need to differentiate prey from camouflage or a modern need to build the ego by distinguishing it from everything else. But these evolutionary strategies and psychological accommodations do not separate fact from fiction. The truth about art is here in the rainforest; the world is competitive chaos and artworks that represent the world as a series of discreet and understandable moments are lies. And artists are nothing more than agents of denial and perpetrators of delusion!

It would be treachery to represent this in the traditional manner, and isolate a few forms from the morass and enshrine them in layers of smoothly unfolding space. No, the truth is that there is little middle ground or deep space in the jungle. All is compressed into a block of foreground which is itself sliced into infinite parallel planes, each with it’s own drama.

It’s deceitful to separate the mist…

from the leaf,

or the leaf from the butterfly,

or the butterfly from the light,

or the light from the water,

or the water from the root,

or the root from the tree,

or the tree from the owl,

or the owl from the prey. Making a comprehensive picture of this anarchy is impossible. This is all too much. I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to lunch. Damn, I stepped on the grasshopper.

Two
This morning a million red-bottomed ants hurry to the forest floor via the highway. The opposing 4 lanes of this 8 lane intrastate are not side by side, but superimposed, so on-coming traffic is either dodged or mounted. Dead leaves, whose empty veins are the last to rot, pave the road in slippery shades. A finger sized stick, stripped and smooth on one end and flowering with mold on the other, is easily traversed by this living stream of air breathing invertebrates, who hook and climb in unison to make a knobby ribbon of thoraxes and abdomens that arc over the cylinder on six-times-a-million legs.

Upon arrival they spread out to recover the dead and pillage the living. A squad reconnoiters a lace-winged grasshopper crushed by a careless human step. Since the carcass is too large to recover whole, a division of labor is imposed and an artful dismemberment is commenced. The juice of the head is already being sucked by a dozen small beetles, so labor is focused on removing the legs and sectioning the abdomen for transport. Within an hour nothing but a little stain is left and the red-assed squad is headed to base carrying a hind leg. Since the limb is awkwardly long and the serrations along its length catch easily, the load is assigned to three ants who enter traffic carrying the leg like a telephone pole on an eighteen-wheeler. Up to speed in the cruising lane, the leg-transport team is passed by a speeding group of eight who carry a whole millipede raised like the Madonna in a holy day procession. All march safely home and the forest floor is swept clear for the next bit of protein to fall.

Canopy

2007-10-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

The forest nearby is mixed growth. Thirty years ago this forest was cleared to raise cattle, but many of the most impressive trees were left for shade. The ranching was abandoned fairly quickly and now vigorous young plants compete with the towering old growth.

Through this forest passes a stony road, which is under siege by the jungle. Over the edges of the lane, the biomass bulges to reclaim the light and space. The soil is shallow and trees are easily unmoored by the tropical storms which routinely sweep through, dropping leaves as big as baby blankets, and white trunks, like bleached carcasses, into the road.

One morning I set up my easel on the side of the lane, when a thin man appeared at the bend and began to clear the road. As he worked, he kept his body low, torso parallel to the ground so that his machete could sweep an inch above the surface, neatly slicing grass at the root. Sometimes he straightened and used a rod held in his left hand to position shoots for severing by the blade in his right. Bending at the waist, he also used the rod to push refuse to the side and the tip of the machete to impale large debris and flip it into the bush. He was dressed in long green pants, rubber boots and a rust-colored tee shirt and as he progressed toward me, I noticed the toughened complexion and enlarged joints of an older man. The skin of his face, pulled tight over his skull, was stretched irregularly around a damaged right eye. The asymmetry of his face, however, did not confuse the benignly sober look he gave me when he arrived at my easel and introduced himself as Antonio. Since I don’t speak Spanish, our greeting was as incomplete as an embrace without arms.

Through gesture he asked to see what I was painting and I showed him a composition inspired by an orange-dotted butterfly that had been commuting between us. He smiled and laughed a little over the image and said that it was good. In pantomime, I returned the complement and praised the efficiency of his work. We bowed and smiled and got back to our tasks, now companions.

By noon he had cleared one side of a half mile of road. After lunch as the temperature and humidity continued to climb, he began on the other side, adeptly defining an edge between road and jungle. On his return trip down the road, he stopped again to check on my progress. I looked at Antonio, who was dry and calm, through spectacles fogged by water that gushed from my brow and cascaded merrily over my nose. Although he registered my distress, he did not embarrass me by noting it. Once again he complemented the picture, and returned to his work.

As he moved down the road, I realized that Antonio’s performance was one of the most poised I have ever seen. The action, clearing a mile of road in a day, was well defined, necessary and challenging. The pacing of the event was hypnotically engrossing. His stately rhythm was a result of a body perfectly attuned to its climate. The movement was elegant. Each of his gestures was composed to cut and clear without waste. His understanding of the heft, hardness and edge of his tools was absolute and, consequently, never awkward. In contrast to my sweaty performance under the mixed canopy that day, Antonio demonstrated that grace is self-made not bestowed.

Porous

2007-10-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

In Quito I chose to stay at the Swissotel. Anxious about living in a place in which multiple inoculations are recommended, I chose the hotel for the antiseptic reputation of the managers, the Swiss.

The room was what I had requested, a chilled, tan asylum in which noise, germs, noxious gases, and strangers were effectively blocked. Except for an oblique view of the Andes, I could have been in any good hotel on earth.

I left Quito for Amazonia in a Mercedes diesel van, piloted by Raoul. If willing to drive at 100 km an hour over dirt roads and dodge potholes that could challenge an avid spelunker, one can leave the labyrinth of Quito and reach the Oriente, the Ecuadorian Amazon, in 4 hours.

For the first hour we climbed through the Andes to a dry summit, miles above sea level. The next three hours were spent rolling down mountainsides, testing for the point at which the friction of the tires was trumped by the inertia of the bus to send us rocketing through a line of space instead of hugging a curve in the road.

On the Oriente side of the summit, the scrub changed from tan to olive.

Then we passed through a cloud…

and the forest appeared.

The Tres Marias , three ribbons of spray and foam, fell from unencumbered heights to the warm and untidy valley floor.

Within just a few hours we had dropped thousands of feet and entered the tropics.

I was greeted by the very friendly staff of the Cabanas, who have been taking excellent care of me, the hapless gringo. But the first night was rough and nearly ended this Amazon adventure. Before dinner, sitting on the second story porch of the cabana, I heard rustling in the roof. Nested between corrugated sheet metal and the wooden slats of the ceiling is a colony of bats, who with wing flapping and butt thumping, scoot through the tight space to emerge into the coming night to feast on fruit and insects. Unnerved by the proximity of so many omnivores, I humored myself with the thought that I will not need a clock to know when it is the cocktail hour. After an excellent dinner of chicken, rice, fried plantain and a jug of fresh tamarind juice, I browsed the guest book. Most of the entries extolled the delights of sleeping to jungle sounds, eating fresh local foods, and conversing with the wonderful staff.

I was, however, haunted by one brief entry which read, “I survived”.

I returned for the night to my hot Cabana, and showered under the cool, rain-fed tap half expecting a tarantula to drop on my head. As it turns out, the shower is communal, but so far my only bath mate has been a frisky tree frog, who makes comic splats as he careens from wall to wall. In equal measure distressed and amused by bats, frogs, and the cryptic words of a guest gone by, I climbed into the sheets with a book. The attack of the bugs was immediate, merciless, and focused on my exposed head and neck and arms. Anxiety level rising and tolerance dropping, I switched off the light. The attacks continued through the night, but at a slower pace. At 4 AM, when the bats returned from carousing, something large landed in my ear. I jumped up to swat the wasp off the pillow, and was stung for the effort. “Be calm, Mike. In the morning, you can caulk and disinfect and reestablish a barrier between you and the vivid world”.

Back in bed, I settled to the sound of light rain, which quickly escalated into a deluge. The rain continued to build until it overwhelmed the roof and began to drip on the foot of the bed, which I didn’t sense until a volume of disturbingly rich brown water penetrated the sheets and soaked the mattress, giving notice to my toes. The wetness was trial enough, but when I realized that the exceptionally fertile juice that was leaking from the ceiling was a liquor of seasoned bat guano, I decided to leave the tropics and get back to the sanitary Swiss. But by noon the next day, the windows were sealed and the roof repaired, and patience and hope were restored.

This difficult night was a lesson about boundaries and the materials from which they are made. In the modern Swissotel, the boundaries are made of steel and glass and are impermeable. Air can not penetrate those defenses without mechanical aid. Here in the Oriente, the boundaries are made of wire mesh, whose gauge is small enough to keep out the large predators, but ample enough to let everything else penetrate the senses. I’ve adjusted to the scratching of bat feet, slowed my own pace to accommodate the heat and improved my bug management skills. And for the effort, I am getting a daily reward.

After finishing a lunch desert of sweet, tree tomatoes and sugar cane syrup that was made by Rita with the wicked laugh, I am currently sitting in a thatched, two-story viewing platform overlooking the Rio Napo. Two ants are crawling around the computer screen and three volcanoes, Sumaco, Antisana and Cotopaxi punctuate the river view. Earlier, a cartoon butterfly drifted up from the river on six inch wings of cobalt blue. A bird calls “whoo plop” in the distance and another one screams like a terrified child. Nearby, a Yellow-rumped Cacique is making a ridiculous, “loud, liquid schweeooo, with a downscale skeek, weer, and wrup”*. Black with school-bus-yellow back and rump, the Caciques dive from the cliff on which I sit to the island in the river below, where five women are slowly moving a net through the backwater for fish. It’s hot, but not like yesterday, when my sweat glands opened like fire hydrants on the streets of the lower east side in July. The thunder has started up, and it’s starting to rain.

It’s stupid to romanticize the natural world since it would just as soon eat you as it would enchant you. So it’s good to have protective barriers. But the energy intensive barricades that protect middle class Americans like me have become too isolating. Especially since the Bushies have shamelessly made fear the driving force in America. That awful first night in the Oriente was a tool, a blunt but effective one, that ripped a few holes in my defenses to let in a less filtered and more pungent life.

*(Hilty and Brown, “Birds of Columbia” ).

Avenue of the Volcanoes, Ecuador

2007-10-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

The descent into Quito was brief, since the city sits 2 miles in the air. The plane approached the airport from the north, slipping past the line of volcanoes that stretch the length of the Andean plateau. Upon landing I hopped into the hotel van. At the first red light, a man popped in front of the van, drank deeply from a glass bottle filled with clear liquid, and with a flick of a lighter, blew a 6 foot flame. The next day a talented pair of jugglers tried a similar but less spectacular ploy for getting cash from drivers who were waiting for the light to change.

Quito is a city of two million people, who have cast a net of irregular roads over a mountain valley. The spaghetti bowl of streets is jammed with cars, trucks and buses. The clouds of exhaust and the low regard of drivers for pedestrians makes walking through town an unappealing option.

But I didn’t know the disadvantages of walking until I had committed to seeing the town on foot. There are a number of grand churches, and graceful plazas in Quito, but it is the light that is the most striking. Because of the altitude, the sunlight is blue-white like the blinding light of a welder’s arc.

At the edge of the Plaza Grande, under an enormous stone cross, is the entrance to an Andy Warhol exhibition. Armed guards are posted at the entrance. Since militia have been present at most every museum and store I have entered, I asked an Ecuadorian friend what this was all about. He said that armed gangs of Columbians have entered the country and will rob any place with cash on the premises. I asked an American who lives here the same question, and he said that it is armed gangs of Ecuadorians who are the thieves. In this version the Columbians have become a convenient scapegoat for home grown problems resulting from extreme educational and economic inequities. The truth most likely lies between the two accounts.

I passed on the Andy Warhol, but I had a wonderful visit to the Banco Central Del Ecuador Museo Nacional, which houses a collection of Ecuadorian art from the Pre-Columbian to the present. The collection of pre-colonial Ecuadorian sculpture is thrilling. There is a clay plaque of a family -- Mom, Dad and the kids, with arms thrown around each other, looking like a snapshot from a happy holiday. Nearby there is a long-necked vessel, whose base is a full-size, human foot, with fat, wiggling toes. And there is this wonderful being above (La Tolita Region), with snakes and gnarly teeth, whose faceted face supports the notion that representation of multiple times and spaces is not unique to the cubists. Since I know nothing about these cultures, I can’t say more than that I admire the intelligent and inventive representation of human passion.

The modern representation of passion is less convincing.

But fortunately, there is love in the streets of Ecuador. So skip the modern art collections.

David handles the communications and bookings for Cabanas that is my ultimate destination and he kindly offered to show me around the Andean Plateau which has…

lovely lakes and llamas by fertile fields and cloud capped volcanoes.
We drove to the market in Otavalo to look around.

David pointed out a chess set of Incas and Conquistadors.

The collection of turtle shells and human skulls was eye catching as was…

the array of cooking spoons and …

the people who know things I can’t imagine.

We drove to Ibarra for lunch, and ate in a mall. The mall could have been anywhere in the world, except that the fast food restaurant served ceviche. Ibarra is known for it’s annual fox hunt, which was happening as we arrived. The event is modeled on the English sport, but in this version the fox is replaced by a masked bandit and the riders’ pinks are exchanged for South American cowboy gear. The event is popular with young people who turn out for massive tailgate parties that extend into a night of dancing.

On the return to Quito, I stood on the equator, one foot in the North and the other in the South.

It was a miraculous day.

Arctic Paintings, Done.

2007-09-20T18:22:00.001-07:00

I've been home in Hoosick, New York for the month of September and have had a chance to look at the Arctic paintings in the luxury of a well-lit, spacious studio instead of a dim, small bedroom. The improved circumstances have led to small changes in the pictures posted below. The title of each painting includes the date that the work was begun, the temperature of the moment, the latitude and longitude of the place, and a verbal description of the subject that motivated the painting. The paintings are in oil on 24" x 30" aluminum panels, except for two smaller works which are noted.

New posts from Jatun Sacha Reserve in the equatorial forest of Ecuador will begin in October.

"June 27, 2007, 48º,N66°13 W65°75, Rock Slide". 12" x 16"

"June 29, 2007, 49°F, N66°13 W65°75, River Ice"

"July 9, 2007, 45°, N66°13 W65°75, Pink Granite"

"July 11, 2007, 50°F, N66°13 W65°75, Waterfall"

"July 12, 2007, 47°F, N66°13 W65°75, Lichen"

Detail of "July 12, 2007, 47°F, N66°13 W65°75, Lichen "

"July 18, 2007, 48°F, N66°13 W65°75, Red Moss"

"July 21, 2007, 40°F, N66°13 W65°75, Fog"

Detail of "July 21, 2007, 40°F, N66°13 W65°75, Fog "

"July 25, 2007, 41°F, N66°13 W65°75, Pangnirtung Fiord "

"July 28, 2007, 48°, N66°13 W65°75, Clouds and Moss"

"August 9, 2007, 48°, N66°13 W65°75, River Rocks"

"August 10, 2007, 47°, N66°13 W65°75, Mount Duval"

Detail, "August 10, 2007, 47°, N66°13 W65°75, Mount Duval"

"August 11, 2007, 48°, N66°13 W65°75, High Tundra"

"August 12, 2007, 48°, N66°13 W65°75, Hill, Stream and Fiord"

"August 16, 2007, 45º, N66°13 W65°75, Evening". 12" x 16"

Mount Duval

2007-08-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

In the body of Pavarotti, I opened my eyes. The bedroom was two-storied, made of stone and sparsely furnished with substantial, Baroque furniture. I rose from bed and walked up the steps to the balcony which overlooked a piazza where a crowd had gathered. I opened my mouth and sang with the perfection that comes when technical control and emotional abandon merge into one thing. With sound I expressed every feeling that any person has ever had and with my voice I transformed the crowd into a single, ecstatic being. Then I woke up a second time, as me, alone in a double bed with flannel sheets and I was happy.

Carrying the fantasy that virtuosity can unite humanity as well as satisfy the ego, I hiked up the guardian of Pangnirtung, Mount Duval, to end my Arctic adventure.

At the foot of the mountain I stopped many times to admire the Arctic Cotton, and other late blooming plants.

As I moved up the slope, the footing changed and I stepped from jumbles of bruising rocks onto planes of dry lichens that crunched like fried noodles.

With other steps I sank into brilliant, green tubs of sodden moss that filled with water at the pressure of my foot only to spring back into shape as I moved past.

Boulders, unlatched from the mountain, pressed into the ground to demonstrate their weight or perched on promontories to express their potential.

Black-bottomed water courses, large and small, streamed over the surface reflecting a deep shade of sapphire too blue to be the sky.

Over the course of hours the sun lowered to describe the land with great volumes of shadow. In all this glory, I thought, “I’m sure glad I’m not trying to paint realistically”.

At this unguarded moment painting “realistically” meant the ambition to faithfully record detail, and to minimize interpretation so that the thing being observed is captured fresh and whole. Of course it is impossible to package the complexity of an experience like hiking Mt. Duval and deliver it fresh and whole, but I’m often troubled by the thought that I’m a fraud unless I can deliver no less. This fear is real and it often dictates that I paint in secluded spots to avoid exposure as a faker. With dread I imagine the moment that a stranger approaches, looks at a half-finished picture and asks, “What is that supposed to be?” If hell is self-imagined, then “What is that supposed to be?” will crown the gates. In this fantasy, the question is not really a question but a judgment. The stranger has asserted that the art is Poorly Observed. Badly Recorded. Self-indulgent. Uncommunicative. In other words the artist, formerly known as Pavarotti, has failed.

Continuing to the summit of Mount Duval, I rested and enjoyed a small bag of cookies and cashews.

The summit is dotted with Inuksuit, stone messengers “which act in the capacity of a human”. Although I suspect that the majority of Inuksuit on Mount Duval are modern, there are many ancient ones across Baffin Island which served and continue to serve native hunters. *

On the way home I flirted with the sheer, western edge of Mount Duval, which drops 2200 feet to the fiord below. A spectacular drop from which one could fly, briefly, is always an occasion for a quick assessment. With the deep space spectacle of Pangnirtung Fiord before me and the inscriptions of time on the rocks around me, I took stock of what I had learned by painting in the Baffin Island landscape. First, I can’t begin to tell the whole story. Second, that being true, I can tell a good story by reducing color, light and form to their essentials. As for color, there is not much red here, but a lot of orange, which ranges from flaming, to rusty, to pale salmon. In the early spring the land is tan, but as the weather warms, it shifts to olive and gold. The blue of the sky is often cool and pale and is best described by adding a little thalo green (a very cold and powerful color) to the usual recipe for sky. Contrasts of light and dark are strong in the Arctic and there are countless shades of black and white to employ. Although Arctic Poppies, a cheerful and ubiquitous yellow flower, were painted into several scenes, they were in the end erased, because they detracted from the essential soberness and grandness of the open, treeless space. Besides the occasional boulder and caribou, few things are middle sized. Instead a vast, living carpet of infinite detail and texture clings to massive convexities and concavities. Ovals and hemispheres are common forms and angular lines are as abundant as long curves. The circulation of water from air to land to sea is a constant subject and the transformations of water into fog, drizzle, torrent, tide, and ice are always interesting. Time seems long here, since it is marked by glacial scrapings and ancient ice caps, but the pace is becoming more modern as the glaciers melt and the sea ice retreats.

These observations are a part of the inventory of thoughts from which the Arctic paintings were made. This same inventory included comic dreams of artistic prowess and comic visions of artistic humiliation, but these two items were selected infrequently since the inventory was stuffed with more fascinating things like

fancy boulders

and Arctic mushrooms on Mount Duval.

*"Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic", by Norman Hallendy, published by Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 2000, is an excellent source of images and information on the stone structures of Baffin Island.

Walking Past the Summer Solstice

2007-08-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

Every thirteen days darkness takes an hour of light from Pangnirtung. The slide toward the arctic night has started and the change is quick since 24 hours of daylight must be shed before the winter solstice. I’m subtly bothered by the change, like I’ve left the house and forgotten something, but can’t remember what.

Although the light is changing quickly, the days have a routine. Once a week I walk into town to pick up mail and buy groceries.

On the way I see a few handsome sled dogs.

But mostly I see short-legged, hard-working mutts.

Kids don't seem to frequent the school grounds during the summer.

Instead, the young ones play in the empty spaces between the houses. Private yard space defined by sidewalks, lawn edges and fences does not exist; kids play under any window and adults cut through any yard to make the shortest path to their destinations.

Older girls and boys run in separate groups. The girls do not look at me or speak to me, but the boys are a different story. A pack of boys shot a hole in my living room window with a BB gun. When I spoke to them, they seemed surprised that aiming a gun at a house could have a consequence. Another pack thought it would fun to throw stones at me while I was working at the bottom of a rock slide. They did not realize that throwing stones from a 150 feet above the target significantly improves the velocity. The stones hit like bullets near my head! I stormed up the cliff and scared the crap out of them. They apologized and sped off on small bikes. Later, I saw them in town, where they cheerfully said, "hello" and politely introduced themselves. (The boys in the photograph above where not involved in the BB gun or rock throwing incidents. They are just nice friendly kids who let me take their picture.)

During the weekday, downtown is noisy with four wheelers outside the post office.

And the store, where I bought a sweet potato for $8.00.

But after the store closes, downtown is very quiet.

Very quiet.

But there are a few diversions, like the remains of the Hudson Bay Company, “Old Blubber Station”, where whales were rendered for oil at the turn of the 20th century.

Or watching the large tides rise and fall twice a day.

And seeing the harbor turn into the beach.

It’s also fun to watch the Sea Lift, which visits only once a year, unload food, gas, plywood, sinks, cars, carpets and clothes.

But the best thing to see on a walk through Pangnirtung is the view from the north end of town, where the mountains suggest an enormous circle like the sun balanced on the horizon just about to set.

38° and Foggy for 48

2007-07-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

For two days the temperature and the sky dropped in Pangnirtung. At first the fog sat on the ground, thick and full of drizzle. Then it lifted a hundred feet and made a line along the mountainsides like the edge of a square-dancer's skirt. Later, the wind picked up and the fog began to swallow hillsides whole. During the swallowing phase, I went out to paint and settled on a rocky outcropping, near a small stream half way up the hills, high enough to stay within the fog. A rock, elaborately dressed in gray lichens, brown fungus and a large ruff of flowers and moss, was the subject for the day. Nearby the recent moisture helped to bring along new blooms including drifts of fantastic pink and cream spires. Transported by the moment, I suddenly realized that the fog which obscured the hillsides to such romantic effect, could also hide a polar bear. I shouldn’t be too worried about polar bears, since they tend to stay near the coast, but Canadian Wildlife TV and a book I am reading about surviving Greenland in 1900 have brought them to life in my mind. Suddenly the Fog was less pretty, and I planned emergency responses to polar bear attack. First, I would offer my sandwich to the bear, and hope that the zip lock bag would cause confusion and delay the attack so that I could roll into a ball as recommended, or run. During an attack I thought it unlikely that I would roll into a ball, even though it is recommended, so I decided to grab the pot of paint thinner to use as a weapon as I dashed away, tossing it toward the face of the bear during the chase over the tundra. Reassured by the effectiveness of the pot of paint thinner as a weapon, I went back to work. Sure enough, I was attacked later that day, but by mosquitoes, who are attracted to the colors of paint and die in quantity on the palette and the pictures. Since they struggle and muck up the paintings, I remove them with tweezers. Worries of bear attacks aside, I’m still the predator at the top of the food chain.
Late that night, the fog was sent off by clear weather and lots of wind.

On the Land

2007-07-16T18:34:00.001-07:00

In the morning after a sandwich, a chocolate bar, bug spray and 45 pounds of painting gear are packed, I walk up the river gorge behind Pangnirtung looking for something to paint. A shelf of ice, the fold of hills, a cascade of boulders, a gush of water, the color of lichens and the carpet of plants have all stopped me in my tracks. Usually the thing of interest is off the trail and I carefully climb up or down the sides of the gorge, adjusting to a new center of gravity as the backpack shifts. Once arrived, I look for a flat spot with a duo of rocks to serve as chair and table on which I happily drop the pack. Preparing to paint outside takes countless small actions, which were time consuming until they became routine. Wind, uneven land and broken equipment have created challenges to setting up, but bungee cords have proven to be an all-purpose solution. Filling the emptied back pack with rocks and suspending it from the bottom of the easel with a bungee, for example, is a good way to prevent the constant wind from upending everything. Setting up takes half an hour, which gives the mosquitoes time to smell blood and track me. They are very large and travel in packs, but so far, they have been deterred by applying a 50% solution of DEET to exposed skin every 4 hours.

The sky varies from “mostly cloudy” to “partly sunny”, so the light is most often soft and cool. As the weather has warmed to 50° F, the color of the distant hillsides has made a modest shift from tan to olive. Not all the colors, however, are quiet. The ice sheets, for example, are a brilliant aqua when suffused with daylight and the granite boulders which cover the landscape like nuts on a sundae are modeled with contrasting spots of orange, chartreuse and charcoal. More dramatically, the color of Pangnirtung Fiord shifts from black to teal as the light changes during the day. Like the desert and the prairie, the arctic landscape has no middle scale. Things are either enormous like the mountains, or miniaturized like the plants. Only the occasional boulder is of a middle size, and as a result, the experience of seeing is pushed to extremes. On the land I am either standing in a humbling panorama, or down on hand and knee studying the complexity of the ground cover. The openness of the land is both awesome and unsettling; on Baffin Island a human-scale rock can feel like reassuring companionship. The shape of the rocks has become a favorite motif for painting, as has falling water, ice, moss and lichens.

Virgin Mary Land

2007-07-06T14:40:00.001-07:00

I was out on the tundra painting, and marveling at the surface of the land, when a young Inuit man, wearing baggy fatigues and a patterned ‘hoody” appeared behind me and said, “Pangnirtung is Virgin Mary Land”. I jumped. Whether he was reporting a private vision or providing the English translation of Pangnirtung, I never learned. Virgin Mary Land, however, seems an apt description for the miraculous and tender cloak that blooms here.

Arctic Pancakes

2007-07-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

There is not a metal spatula to be bought in Pangnirtung, which is a problem since I like pancakes. So I am using a rubber spatula, which is inadequate because it is straight, narrow and flexible in order to scrape batter from concavities. A metal spatula, the kind I am missing, is hard and flat with a sharp leading edge. The correct spatula also has a bend so that the handle is parallel to the slope of the pan side, while the blade remains parallel to the pancake. This angle, I have discovered, is essential for the safe transport of wet loads.
When using a rubber spatula, the pancake must be carefully structured. First, make small cakes. Second, cook the pancake on low heat until it bubbles, and continue cooking until the bubbles begin to dry, and the bottom is crisp and rigid. Normally, one would not cook a side of a pancake to this degree, but a pancake that is moist in the center will gather into pleats when the rubber spatula is slid beneath. Of course, adding fruit is a concern, since it weakens the cake. With a fork, nudge the fruit-filled cake onto the rubber spatula, pause for balance, lift five inches, and flip decisively.

Although the Arctic is generally well stocked, the mainstream of commodities is far away and the connections to it are tenuous. But Scarcity in the form of a missing metal spatula has shown itself, and it is enough to trigger cunning.

House 524

2007-07-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

Like convicts, the houses in Pangnirtung have numbers. Addresses are not necessary since the streets are unmarked. House 524 is in uptown Pangnirtung, which is separated from downtown Pangnirtung by the landing strip. The house is very near the main road that runs along the fiord and not far from the edge of town, which makes it a good base for hikes into the countryside. Like all of the others, House 524 is built on pilings and sits several feet up in the air. It is strapped to the ground with steel cables to prevent the Arctic wind, which is compressed and excited by the steep walls of Pangnirtung Fiord, from carrying it off to Kansas. I awoke one night from the roar and bang of the gale outside. Things were flying in the night and hitting the house. For hours the bed shook, and I imagined the house flipping and myself landing under the bed, with an impression of the popcorn ceiling on my face.

The house is very comfortable, recently renovated and minimally furnished. The water is delivered by truck every two days, and the sewage is pumped and the garbage is removed on a similar schedule. Electricity is made by an oil-fired generator in town. The garbage is hauled a mile away, and burned, poorly, every other day, sending up brown smoke which rises a few hundred feet before it is stopped by a thermal barrier and spread laterally over the town. The noise, odors and dust created by these activities keep the fundamental responsibilities of the municipality in plain sight.

The views from House 524 are striking. From the bedroom I can see Pangnirtung Fiord and the entrance to Auyuittuc National Park. It’s a treat to watch the weather and the light move over the mountains. At the moment, the sun makes a continuous ellipse overhead, dipping to, but not under, the horizon. If the top of the world were a bald head, the course of the sun would describe the brim of a hat set at an angle. By 3 AM the morning sun rises high enough to flood the bedroom window with morning light, confounding my internal clock. From the living room I can see the “golf course”. Dozens of kids play late into the night batting balls over the rocky lot. No landscape is more inhospitable to golf than this, but the kids are persistent. From the kitchen I can see the street and my neighbor’s yard. Last week the oil truck delivered a load, but my neighbor was in the process of installing a new oil tank and had unhooked the old one. As a result, six hundred liters of fuel oil spilled into the space between our houses. This is the third oil spill this year in Pangnirtung. Thousands of liters of aviation fuel went directly into the bay because of a valve that was left open. Another large spill was contained by a retaining wall before making it to sea. Pangnirtung is entirely dependent on oil. Heat and power are from oil. Everything, including food, clothing, building materials, and medical supplies, comes by plane or sea lift. Local forms of transportation, trucks, four wheelers and boats all use oil. The remoteness and harshness of the Arctic exposes dependency. An oil shortage would end this settlement very quickly.

With the help of cardboard, plastic and tape, the master suite of House 524 has become a studio, a little dim, but functional. The challenge of establishing living and working spaces has inspired practical ingenuity, an enjoyable frame of mind

Night Walking in Pangnirtung

2007-06-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

During the first week in Pangnirtung, my daughter, Lili, and I walked each night in the endless light of the Arctic summer. Photo credit for "Night Walking in Pangnirtung": Lili Holzer-Glier

First Stop, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

2007-06-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

Iqaluit can best be described as adolescent. It is energetic but without a plan and cocky and desperate all at once. The guests of the B and B include a Parisian businesswoman, an English architect and a financial consultant from Ireland, who is providing a “strategic growth plan” for a wealthy Inuit family. The Pub is patrolled by a task force of bouncers dressed in black shirts with “Security” printed on the chest. The town is growing quickly and the suburban model of living has reached the Arctic. Dirt “avenues” extend from the airport to homes arranged on dead-end “courts” and “lanes” spread out over bare rock and tundra. Since much of the shallow top soil has been blown away by construction, there is no yard culture in Arctic suburbia. Commercial shipping containers serve as practical replacements for garages and garden sheds. Litter is everywhere. The constant wind picks up everything that is not anchored and spreads plastic wrappers and aluminum siding across the town and tundra.

When I ignore the garbage, the land is remarkable. It's in the high 30's, the sea ice is still in Frobisher Bay, but much of the land is exposed. Pools of spring rain have collected on top of the sea ice and reflect aqua light which is weirdly like the blue of a shallow Caribbean sea. The plant life hugs the rugged topography, forming an extravagantly plush carpet underfoot. Bleak and brown at a distance, the vegetation is richly textured and subtly colored; sea green lichens, flowering purple saxifrage, tiny blue berries, white heath, red ground cover and asphalt-black patches of organic matter drowned and burned by water and wind are spread across thousands of miles. The familiar fuzzy catkins of the pussy willow are blooming , but unlike the southern version which reaches up and out, the Arctic Willow submits to the wind and shapes itself to the curves of rock. Sometimes deference is a good choice!

Photo credit for "First Stop, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada" : Lili Holzer-Glier