Is this trash? Does it mar the landscape?
After having each served a nine month stint as a cover for the Peace Fire during the six years from 2002 till 2008 these ten galvanized, circular lids now lay with their backs to the ground for a final sleep until their slow dissolve back into the earth.
Rust — a reddish iron oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture and helped along at Windgrove by a sprinkle of sea salt.
Lovely patina. Rather “rustic”.
The fire pit that these lids both protected from rain and wind as well slowing down the combustion rate of the burning logs now sits empty. However, there is something in the remnant fiery afterglow of today’s dormant lids that never fails to rekindle in my mind the many months of daily tending to the Peace Fire and nurturing it along with some 60 tons of firewood.
Instruction from Bly
…….I consider
The Smirnoff bottle on the coffee table; a fly
Lands on it. And then it all happens: the life
Of that bottle flashes before me. Little by little.
Or quickly, it is used up; empty, as clear as it was
Full, it journeys to the dump: it rests upon the mounds of
Beautiful excess where what we are –
Sunflowers, grass, sand –
Is joined to what we make –
Cans, tires and it itself in every form of bottle.
I put on my s.s. coveralls, a saffron robe, knowing I have found
What I was sent to find. The sky speaks to me; the sound
Of the cars on Highway 2 is a song. Soon I will see the pumps.
Those curved rectangles shaped like the U.S. and smell the gas.
Our incense. O country, O moon, O stars,
O american rhyme is yours is mine is ours.
(author unknown)
Notwithstanding the reference to America, I like the notion that the world is one interconnected, chaotic, jumble of material objects. What’s the difference between a vodka bottle and a fly? A rusting lid or decaying log? Does location make a difference? Is one object inherently more beautiful/ugly than the other?
A tree discards a leaf or two. Is this litter? A human discards a can or two. Is this litter? Considering that the origin of “litter” comes from “bed”, the tree is literally littering.
Not that I’m in favour of trashing the landscape, but trash found in the landscape just might offer us an insight into what “ephemeral” might mean in a “natural” setting. My Shakespeare Bench certainly did.
More than anything, though, the rusting lids offer us a chance to reflect upon our own ultimate return to dust.
Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as an artist and not so well known as a scientist. He was equally both. And what informed both his art and science was a keen observation of nature and its many interconnections. One could even say that Leonardo was an early advocate of a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world around him.
Because I will be co-teaching a course on Leonardo this coming May with physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra — where I take the role of Leonardo the artist and Fritjof that of Leonardo the scientist — I have been preparing myself by trying to be as deeply observant of nature as Leonardo would have been in his daily walks around Florence, Milan or elsewhere in Italy. Not that I haven’t been doing this regularly in my life here at Windgrove, but the focus is a bit sharper; a bit more curious as to the physics and creativity behind the events.
Last week I had a problem. There was mosquito larvae in the large Balinese water bowl. So, like a scientist, I scratched my head and remembered that a custom in outback farms in Australia was to put kerosene into water tanks to stop the mosquito larvae from growing. It wasn’t because the kero acted as a poison, rather, because oil floats on water, the larvae couldn’t break through it to get a breath of air.
Like Leonardo, who was always improving on previous past solutions, I reasoned that since it was the “oil” aspect that killed the larva a better solution would be to use something not petroleum based and bad for the environment. Therefore, I chose olive oil.
I poured a bit into the water bowl and lo, and behold, my artist self was amazed at the wonderous light show that bubbled up as the oil separated into little droplets and floated to the surface.
My scientist self was intrigued at how the sun’s rays were being dispersed as they passed through each individual drop of oil and focused to a point behind the drop. Would oils of different viscosities give different results? And how did the length of the cone relate to the diameter of the droplet?
“Too beautiful!” stated the artist. “Like little trumpets”.
“Add some more oil.” pleaded the scientist.
“Hark, the herald angels sing.” blurted the artist as I conjured up a whole host of heavenly angels trumpeting the praises of the beauty of this earth.
“Did you kill the little buggers?” asked the morally neutral scientist waiting for a positive response to the experiment.
“Awesome. Just fucking awesome.” they both said.
Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential.
For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer life, the bench would need to be taken away from its outdoor position along the Peace Path, refurbished and placed indoors.
Although my seemingly good intentions were stymied by a host of delaying factors, the underlying theme was “I’ll do it tomorrow”.
Well, tomorrow is now not likely to come, not after a neighbour and I sat on the bench and it collapsed to the ground under our combined weight because the bench’s interior wood had rotted away leaving just a thin outer shell of little strength.
I could go on and write about how the bench was “returning back to nature” and only following a “natural cycle of life”.
But while true that it was aging nicely and taking on a wonderful patina of grey and lichen, with a modicum of care it could have remained in service many, many more years.
And this is the point I want to make: Even as an ardent environmentalist/artist, I was caught napping, so to speak, and let a very important sculpture fall into disrepair basically through laziness.
It doesn’t matter if this “laziness” was culturally, hormonally, politically, relationally or circumstantially induced. The bottom line is that the talk I talk: “that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones”, wasn’t honoured by a willingness on my part to be an engaged steward of this message.
So, I’ll take on this “healthy” shame, learn from it, and do what I can to be a better active reciprocator of all the goodness given me by the trees and stones of this earth.
The broken bench has been taken away. Not to be placed on the trash heap, but to be brought to my studio as there just might be a “new” sculpture in the making. One that carries several messages of deep ecology, stewardship and reciprocity and the dangers of not living the words.
Jerry Michalski has been coming to Windgrove off and on for a month doing sketches, preparatory small paintings and now, today, a larger, final oil painting of Roaring Beach. Generally, his routine is to awake at 6AM, observe the light on the beach, take notes and then meet me for morning coffee and toast around 8. He then ventures back to his easel until later in the day when we meet up for dinner, a glass of wine and wandering discussions on art and life with a bit of good gossip thrown in to keep us centered in the mundane realities of everyday living.
It would be an understatement to think that I don’t get immense satisfaction from his presence here at Windgrove. Not only does it give me pleasure to have his company and artistic energy on this land, I also welcome again the opportunity to have Jerry painting here as an artist-in-residence.
The last official resident artist at Windgrove was when Sally Horne arrived in December of 2005 to begin a three month stay. This, as many past readers would know, blossomed into a loving partnership that necessitated the stopping of the “much too public” residency program. With Sally now living elsewhere, the closing of one door allows the opening of another and I am using Jerry to kick start the next phase of Windgrove’s artist-in-residency.
Like before, Windgrove will welcome those artists — painters, sculptors, writers — whose work deals with healing the human relationship to the more than human world. Here, art and ecology and spirit come together with a seriousness to the task at hand and more than a pinch of fun thrown in to leaven things up a bit.
But this time there will be more boundaries in place so that my private life is not so impacted when other artists are staying here. In the past, the biggest impediment in having a private life was that the main house was the center of eating and socializing. This was okay and doable when I was single, but not so okay when in relationship.
I might be an old dog, but I’m still capable of learning.
Therefore, what I want to build next is a self contained two or three bedroom artist-in-residency house complete with kitchen and sitting area where the artists themselves will provide for and look after their daily needs. This way, I (or, I and my partner) can visit or not visit depending on what’s happening in my/our lives. Having three artists living together instead of a solo resident should make for a more vibrant while less intrusive program.
Fingers crossed.
I’m open to any suggestions as to how to make the Windgrove artist-in-resident program a user friendly operation for all concerned.
My replication of Goldsworthy’s “sticks-in-the-air” is in celebration of finally having some 500 plastic bags and 2000 bamboo sticks removed from trees near the Peace Garden Pond. Trees that formed the bottom portion of a gigantic keyhole symbol (if viewed from the air).
To do this required the generous international cooperation of people born in Canada (Lorne), Holland (Nel), South Africa (Terry), America (Kate, pictured) and Thailand (Chalerm and Tanwa). Talk about a welcomed Christmas gift.
About the time that I first saw a photo of Andy Goldsworthy throwing sticks into the air I was planting out the 2,000 or more trees that created the outline of the keyhole that stretched from the Peace Garden pond to the top edge of Windgrove’s boundary line; a perimeter distance of around a kilometer or 3/4 of a mile. This was eleven years ago.
I don’t know what Andy had in mind when he threw his sticks in the air, but my sticks represent “a job well done”, not only by the friendly humans that gathered them up over the Christmas holiday, but to the sticks themselves that served all those years as guardians of the young trees as they matured into the tall trees of today.
“Three cheers”, I say.
Post Script: After posting this blog entry I took some newly arrived friends and their kids down to the Drop Stone bench to watch the sunset. The beauty of the setting red sun is always special. Coming up opposite to the sun was a near full moon. More special.
Then we saw a seal playing around in the water below us. We got excited watching where it might surface next. Even more special.
Then little Oscar says, “Look! Dolphins!” And, sure enough, four separate pods of dolphins were swimming between the two headlands of Roaring Beach. So, very, very special.
“A hundred cheers”, I say.
Just in time for summer solstice ablutions my neighbour Steve and I moved a 600 pound carved Balinese water bowl into position in the far corner of the bath area and then spent the rest of the day hauling in top soil and pine bark and planting out 18 prostrate juniper bushes. Even though these bushes are slow growing and will require several years before maturing, already the area feels very much the contemplative meditation zzzzz zone. Not that it wasn’t before, but the Zen quality has just jumped up a notch or two.
I could have planted out Australian natives, but besides the spiritual component to the bath garden, the practical aspect is that the juniper bushes will act as more of a fire retardant than the more fire prone Australian bushes.
Being on the south side of the house and susceptible to cold winds, this area probably won’t get much daily “sitting” use (see bench on left), but already, just walking past it is enough to calm the heart. Best time for “viewing” will be in the evening when bubbles pour over the lip of the bath as one slowly immerses their grateful body into the steaming waters. Life certainly has its sweeter moments.
Off the older, grey weathered deck can be seen a new walk way that goes to the back side of the house and my bedroom, thus providing me with more opportunities to greet the Buddha and engage with the garden and surrounding trees.
As an artist I am always looking for emergent qualities. When the cistern was filled with water and I dropped some kangaroo paw petals into it, the tiny waves created a wonderful mosiac of patterns. Almost Christmas like.
May everyone enjoy this time of the year with friends and loved ones; human or otherwise.
