“To think like a forest…is to think in images.” – Amitav Ghosh
The last time I lived on the great granite rock of Cape Ann the earth started to think through me. Thirty years later I can feel that beloved relationship renewing. Of course, I had no idea what was happening back then. No one taught me that my work with clay was all about relationships: a very direct dialogue with clay, water, and fire; a much larger dance between the granite, the vegetation and animals struggling up through the rock exchanging gases, energized by the ocean surrounding us all. A bad relationship with the clay resulted in cracking greenware. A thoughtless relationship with the fire resulted in kilns full of exploded shards. The results of an inattentive relationship with the rest of nature were somewhat more subtle, the creation of less beauty and more ugliness.
The Finnish witch of Plum Cove Beach pointed me towards that relationship. Sue Lukegord came into Center and Main Gallery, the feminist co-op art gallery my friends and I ran in downtown Gloucester in early ‘80’s. After looking at a wall relief I called ‘The Icon of the Trees” she told me that I might as well be a witch. When I asked her what she meant, Sue said that the earth was speaking through me and I was showing what I heard. Since then, I have learned that many people from indigenous cultures all over the world would agree that human beings can create forms that express the thoughts of the rest of natural world.
Recently I attended webinar “Call to Artists: Climate Change and the Arts in our Community." Climate Arts – Cape Ann Climate Coalition It featured a video about the late artist Elaine MacGray Starrett who painted large canvases of wildflowers dwarfing strips of collages showing recent building sites destroying local ecologies. Following was a stimulating conversation between her daughter Dr. Amy Bowers an oceanographer at Woods Hole, public artist Mags Harries, and environmental 3-D artist Sinikka Nogelo. Amy showed charts of ocean currents moving around the world, Mags showed a composite table made of many - each with one leg - that together formed a large table around which she gathered people to talk about the environment. Sinikka showed work that was a response to the overwhelming presence of plastic overtaking our surroundings. They all called us to pay attention to what is happening to our environment. I would like to think that they were inviting us through images to a more mutual, just, and loving relationship with the rest of nature.
No one spoke of their work as capturing in form and image the earth speaking through them, but I wonder if the wildflowers, the ocean, and the human animals were speaking through artists and scientist alike, allowing us to see what they heard. Do you have relationships with the rest of nature? What is the state of those relationship? How do you communicate with each other? How do you share what you sense with your other friends?