Dear Reader: This week I resume with the sixteenth entry from my Window Weather series as the artist in residence at Skaftfell Art Center. One year ago I was busy in the studio making electro-etched intaglio prints of my word-form transcriptions, and letter pressing handmade paper with an idiom on the theme explored herein: Wind-O-Weather, Window-O-Weather, Window Weather—a metaphor for my experience as an artist-mother.
If you are new to my newsletter, please continue reading for context. If not, scroll down below the subscribe button to read entry fifteen from Window Weather. 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.
Friday, September 22
Seyðisfjörður, Iceland