Things that move me I

I've been feeling a bit  #~*^>\?^*#~ lately and know some of you have been feeling this way, too. Rather than attempt to explain (as if I/we could?) all that might be contained in  #~*^>\?^*#~ let me suggest it translates to something like COMPOST. I've been burrowing, yes (feeling more like an old crow dressed in mining gear and clasping a torch on a Hopeful Hunt For Things That Glint Or Shimmer In The Dark, than an earthworm luxuriating in its native soil). So saying, I am sloooooowly finding my way into a series of new projects. Part of this process inevitably involves revisiting old notebooks, emptying out drawers and doing a major studio-cleansing blitz. I've unearthed a good many abandoned and forgotten things that are not only proving to be useful digging tools but also becoming the ladder that's bringing me back up to the surface. The journey we're all on sometimes feels like a massive bridge-building process in which we're invited to blend grit with shimmer, steel with mist, lead with glass with gold. 

As of this Thursday, the sun's been eying the studio from a new angle as if tipping its hat at whatever wants to happen next. The day is bright, our patient harbour offering up the softest light. The tuis and bellbirds are all ebullient, harmonious song and I feel gratitude for mud and mirth. Both. 

Here are some of the things I've appreciated digging up - or simply noticing again. . . 

Palindromes

DNA

GromiaDNA 

(In a recent collaborative project with my friend Rupert in Australia, he transcribed the DNA sequence of this tiny unicellular creature into Japanese musical notation then played it on his shakuhachi; one of my silent films provided the backdrop for his performance. I cried when he sent me this musical interpretation of a creature I've been enchanted by ever since I first encountered it in Antarctica in 2005. Gromia are members of a group of protists that form the base of our evolutionary pyramid.)

Alphabets 

(Discarded page from my 2007 poetry collection, Open Book. 2007 seems like a hundred years ago.)

One of those images that just 'appeared' 

(The present making peace with the past? I wonder. Either way, Kotuku is our sacred heron)

Wax & glass - each circle a perfect promise

Edges. Perforations. 

Imperfect. Perfect. 

Blessings, friends. 

_/\_ 

Porcelain pieces by Christina Bryer (SA) 

Tuesday Poem - IT IS ALL ONE WATER*

This time nine months ago, I was working towards an exhibition titled Waters I Have Known. Wanting to share the process and the motivation behind that body of work (a response, initially, to the Deepwater Horizon crisis) I created a companion blog where I could post pics of what was taking shape in the studio along with related texts and web links. Not long before the opening, I felt prompted to open up what had been a more-or-less solo endeavour to you, my wise and generous blog friends.  A magical dialogue ensued: moved by the texts you contributed, I asked permission to incorporate your words in a series of paintings. . . We embarked on an unexpected collaborative journey - a potent and satisfying one. The process did not end there; indeed, our initial exchange (an exploration into our world's oceans and the nature of web communities) illuminated the mysterious nature and multi-fold currents of conversation that pass between us all in the blogosphere and quickly became one of the central themes of the conference paper I presented in Phoenix in May. (*Marylinn Kelly and Penelope Todd agreed to my including their lines in the subtitle and opening paragraph of that presentation. . . ) 

One thing always leads to another and, well. . . the words you contributed to Waters I Have Known have been on another adventure since October 2010 - and since Phoenix.  Some weeks ago The Pachamama Alliance announced a film contest and invited entries from across the globe for their Possible Futures initiative. There are four categories in the competition - Peace and Freedom, Fair Societies, Sustainability and Beyond and Human Fulfillment.  Happily, my 5min film - It Is All One Water - was accepted into the Sustainability and Beyond category. It draws on more of the underwater footage I collected with my friends in Explorers Cove, Antarctica and highlights one of Christina Bryer's exquisitely fragile porcelain forms, one of my humble bamboo boats (right way up, some of the time ; )) and a balletic sea star, Adamussium colbecki.  

Since submitting the movie, I've been caught up in a bunch of other things and have quite forgotten that part of the contest involves entrants notifying their friends on the web (1) that the contest is a-happening and (2) that Voting is open!  In fact, voting closes tomorrow - 19 July - which means willing participants have only a matter of hours in which to rush over to the Possible Futures website and cast their votes. EEK. . . ! (The deadline explains why I'm posting my Tuesday Poem a day early). 

I'm not much good at canvassing and those sorts of things, but am going to be bold for a moment and invite you please to watch It Is All One Water and - if it resonates with you - to follow this link and give it a 'thumbs up'? Thank you. 

http://possiblefuturesfilmcontest.org/film_25651245

*

This is the introductory paragraph I submitted with the vid. . . 

"Painterly and metaphorical in its approach, It Is All One Water addresses the wonder, power & fragility of our world's oceans. 

The ocean is a mighty equalizer – it wraps us around, drawing our continents together. During these times of global disruption, social change and environmental vulnerability, the arts have a key role to play as agents for peace, advocacy and transformation.  This short film carries within it an ethos of 'many as one' and incorporates contributions from a global network of writers, artists, scientists and musicians.'

*

Timothy Cahill recently posted a thoughtful piece about this film on his blog, Art & Document.

And here - posted with huge thanks to you - is our collaborative poem as it features in the vid. -

IT IS ALL ONE WATER

In the wide sound of the sea
the song of a vast adventure

a music that follows 
flight paths of blood 
rushing through veins.

And the roar 
of the sea is the roar
of our planet - salt, 
spray, ice, sand, 
each wave a limb 
of the earth. 

The oceans are hoarders 
of holy mysteries, generous 
to a fault; all heaving movement, 
energy and gorgeousness;
life packed into every inch 
and drop of it; ah, its secrecy! 
The way it carries so much 
of the past, the future 
and present in itself… 

Dream of the sea
and from its edge, gaze 
out to the pencil thin 
line of the horizon 
where sky and water are one 

And the sea? 

How it murmurs. 
How it murmurs. . . 

It is all one water. 
A finger in a tide pool 
brings our shores together.



A collaborative poem by Marylinn Kelly (USA), Therese Clear (USA), Pamela Morrison (NZ), Elisabeth Hanscombe (AUS), Kay McKenzie-Cooke (NZ),  Scott Odom (USA) and Claire Beynon (NZ).

*

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill - 

GromiaDNA - Silent Environment Awaiting Rupert's Shakuhachi

A 9 minute silent film requires patience at the best of times - I understand this, and yet (I'm trying these days to think in terms of 'and yet' rather than 'but'). . . I invite you to enter these waters; drift a while with questions, not answers; cup a small boat; fence with ice shards, capture a bubble; dance with a sea star or pull up your skirts and hitch a ride on one of Christina Bryer's exquisite waterborne porcelain forms - an unexpected, slow-motion 'flying carpet'. 

I'd intended doing my usual, 'double-whammy-film-&-record-Rupert-in-performance' thing in Canberra. . . of course, now that I'm here, not there, we have to hope some kind person will take this on.  It would be wonderful to be able to make a second iteration of this, the next one with the breathy thread of shakuhachi (traditional Japanese wind instrument). . . 

Paul Lisicky's "The White Deer"

Earlier today, in amongst the scritch-scratch of lists, the stacks of corrugated cardboard and various other piles of 'stuff' I had to work through, I popped over to Paul Lisicky's blog to read his latest entry, The White Deer.

My response to this spare, contemplative piece was full, raw, visceral. I felt things align and re-align inside me. I was so moved by his story that I found myself returning to his site several times during the day to re-read it. Two paragraphs in, a priest pronounces - "The closer we get to someone, the more we must stand humbly before his freedom... " and in that moment, Paul's "every molecule" is "turned to him. . . What on earth could such a thing mean?"

The White Deer has something wild and graced and luminous about it. I urge you to read it.

Not a white deer, but a light in the darkness, no less. . .

This exquisite fragile sculpture is one of Christina Bryer's porcelain forams, made for our 2008 season in Explorers Cove. Shawn Harper took this photograph of her shard-like piece lingering on the underbelly of the Explorers Cove sea ice.