It rains almost every day in the Burren. Average temperature: 62 degrees. It’s been raining non-stop for the past 18 days and today’s high was a blustery 57 degrees or 13.8 Celcius. The weather has had a profound impact upon my work. I am the type of person who suffers through the snowy Philadelphia winters, chilly springs and falls, to bask in the summer sunshine of June through September. Giving up a month of warm sunshine, family and bike riding was quite a sacrifice for me.
Though there are parts of the Burren that I love, like the cows, horses and hikes, the weather isn’t one of them. My work was very physical this month. I worked large and took my anger and frustrations out on the paper by hurling rocks and stomping on it. The drawings reflect my internal landscape, how I felt my body and spirit was abused during my time here. My mind, however tortured, continued to grow.
I had already been preoccupied with the BP oil spill before we came. I was absolutely horrified by the destruction it was causing and took hundreds of screen shots every day from the website video of the oil gushing. A tour with Tim Jones enlightened me about the Burren’s own traumatic history. The Burren was once covered by hazel trees, they were cleared by farmers over 3000 years ago so cattle could graze. This clearing caused the erosion of the soil, exposing the barren landscape that has been sculpted by glacial movement and time. The shapes of these rocks are fascinating to me and in response, I did an installation of shapes that float on the surface of the water like iceburgs, glistening like oil.
Most floors in the Burren are covered by slate tiles that contain fossilized sea worms. There were billions of these worms, as thick and long as snakes, in the area when it was covered in water. My first drawing is inspired by these worms. I did a rubbing the length of the castle floor and brought the worms to life in an imaginary space that resembles earth, roots or coral. I began to reflect on the correlations between the fossils and the oil spill in Louisiana. Both sites are considered ecological disasters caused by human interference and greed. It is interesting to me that the oil that has killed thousands of organisms already will turn their bodies into a fossilized layer on the sea floor that will act as both a time capsule and future fuel.
Jim Adams’ mentor, Clarence Morgan, told him, “If it’s worth doing once, it’s worth doing 15 times.” I began a series of fossil rubbings and they evolved into rock and rain drawings. The large scale drawings are process oriented, emotionally driven and feel raw. The scale engulfs the viewer in the experience. I plan to produce a series of 15-20 of these large scale drawings (15’ x 5’) using a gesso ground, oil, charcoal, rock, water and ink. I will also explore different types of oil in my work.
Aerial views appear frequently in my work and I collected numerous images of the BP oil spill from the air. Particularly interesting was the boom drawn by boats to collect the oil. I incorporated these views, along with drawings of the Burren landscape, in my dot drawings. The dots are significant to me because they evolved through a series of works that began with a small series of pear drawings into a series in which I deconstructed images of myself and reduced them to large shapes filled with masses of “dots”. In my work, the dots have appeared as pixels, nails, tiles, silver marker strokes, light bright pegs and confetti. Guest artist, Charlotte Van Poehl was very interested in the dots and suggested I make a very large one. Although I made my own mixture using black india ink and glue and experimented with ink washes, I had been making some drawings at home on a much smaller scale using red on clean white paper, and that worked best for the larger drawing. While Charlotte helped me understand conceptual art more deeply, a conversation with Scot Kaylor opened my eyes to the possibilities of pushing one idea bigger. We discussed turning the dots into led lights that illuminate a lawn at night. I can now see how these dots transformed into the rocks in the larger drawings.
Julian Stocks recommended artists simplify their work. “Set rules and start taking things out”, he said. I realized that I already had unconsciously limited my palette to black and white. The 20 oil tube colors I brought got dusty, or maybe moldy, this month. Color finally entered my work through photography towards the end of the month, when I began to accept the never ending “soft days” and focused on the joy and fear I found in the cows. Terrifying bulls, or rather maiden heifers, showed up in the fields we need to walk through to get home blocking our path. All cows in Ireland are slaughtered by the age of 30 months to prevent an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, which develops after that age. The cattle wear earrings announcing their expiration date.
My photographs are like notes, documenting my experience. They also represent this fascination with cows, and the strokes, adopted from Gerhard Richter, speak to both the rain and my tears. I experimented with rocks and spray paint, exposing and concealing the images. The Burren, now exposed, is slowly being concealed by hazel, and is trying to return to its natural state. The laws designed to protect the unusual beauty found in the landscape of the Burren that promotes so much tourism, is actually “destroying” it. It will, over time, become just another green countryside in Ireland. After 86 days, the leak was finally capped in Louisiana on July 16th; that area will also return to its natural state, eventually.
“To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different.” -John O Donohue, Benedictus (21)
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