The past couple of mornings this week Margot and I have collected litter from a park we frequent where we live in Marfa, Texas. From a toddler’s perspective, the act of picking up someone else’s trash (and I would say most everyone’s) is not a task that sounds like fun. So, we made a game of it–point it out and I’ll pick it up!
I pushed M in the stroller as we walked the park, and stretch of road in front of its entrance. The activity even welcomed some unexpected excitement in spotting the next piece of garbage for me to bend down and add to the bag. The action felt necessary in keeping the park clean and safe for M, and all of the children who come to enjoy the grounds.
I do my best to live by the eternal wisdom from Mahatma Gandhi: be the change that you wish to see in the world. I hope to impart this simple philosophy on my daughter–our small part makes a big difference. Especially in the context of caring for our planet, and how we can show small acts a kindness in our community that make a significant difference to someone else–it all matters.
During my time with Team In Training in San Francisco, running marathons and raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, my coach–Coach Al–used to frequently say: if you don’t mind, it don’t matter. I love his sage advice that can be applied to everything in life, and I’ve carried it with me for over twenty years now.
When Margot and I lived in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland this past September from where I wrote Window Weather, our relationship to the natural world introduced an entirely different approach to engaging in the outdoors. The weather had a lot to do with it, and also the nature of living in a tiny village with few inhabitants. Seldom did we ever see a piece of trash as we walked the handful of streets, or in the lagoon. Our environmental surroundings exemplified the sublime, which I reflect upon as we approach Earth Day next week.
Our home today in the Chihuahua Desert could not be more different than the northeast coast of Iceland. However, my reverence for both places is equal and deepens daily. I grow fonder precisely because of the difference in the geographic extremes, and the surprising similarities that I immediately felt connect the two places for me as a constellation of my being.
As I transcribe my daily log of our time in Iceland (while living in Far West Texas), the through line is a consistent reflection on the natural world interwoven in my art practice. One has always informed the other in my process-based work.
It is exactly the profound geophysical characteristics that drew me to Iceland in the first place, and will forever draw me back with wide-eyed wonder. Finding meaning in the liminal space between land and sky here in the desert, sea and sky on an island across the Atlantic–the inverse of the vastness is mutual.
And now, the fifth entry from my series, Window Weather–reflections from our dining room window in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland this past September. If you are new to my newsletter please continue reading for context. If not, scroll down a bit and jump back in under the subscribe button where I left off.
This past September I spent the entire month in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland with my two-year-old daughter as the artist in residence at Skaftfell Art Center. My project proposal, Thin Blue Line, aimed to explore identity within the context of motherhood upon retuning to a place where I had previously spent years evolving my art practice as a graduate student at Listáhaskóli Íslands before I became a mother.
Aside from creating new work based on my proposal theme, I kept a log of impressions that I recorded everyday from the same vantage point in the historic house where we lived for the duration of our stay. The 1907 timber and tin frame home at Austurvegur 36 was given the Icelandic name Einsdæmi, meaning a unique incident, which perfectly describes our cherished time spent inside the warmth of its modest walls.
A window view framed the narrow fjord in the foreground and dramatic Fjarðarheiði mountains in the background. The ever-changing perspective (Icelandic weather events, the Norröna Ferry sailing in weekly from Denmark, and occasional cruise ships) lent itself to a surprising diversity of anthropological and environmental observation. As a result, the interconnectedness of my art practice in the context of motherhood is woven together in this comprehensive narrative that is part memoir, and also a momentary account of a remote village in the Eastern Region of the country.
Over the next months I will share excerpts from my daily log and images of work I made during my residency at Skaftfell. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you would like to support my work, and glimpse into the daily rhythms of my experience as an artist-mother. Yearly and founding member subscribers will receive an electro-etched intaglio print, or a handmade paper letter pressed artwork that I created during my residency in Iceland.
