“Bark Beings: Visual Voices from the Reservoir” can now be viewed in Portland for the month of September! The location is a new one for the small roastery company, in southeast on williams ave. On the ‘commuter’s corridor,’ the space hails the design of Holst Architecture and is ‘tailored to meet the needs of bicycle commuters, including covered, locked bike storage and shower facilities.’ huzumpf! I will post a pic of the place today after the install. Drink black coffee!
“Bark Beings II: More Visual Voices” Brasserie Four Restaurant July 2010
by L. A. Fairbanks
A continuation of series taken at Walla Walla’s Reservoir, or Bennington Lake. “I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” –Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac.
“There is nothing in nature that can’t be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration. Cascading water equates loss followed by loss, a momentum of things falling in the direction of death, then life. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the river is a redundancy flowing through rain forest, a channel of solitude, a solid thing, a trap. Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River is the opposite: it’s an accepting, restorative place. Water can stand for what is unconscious, instinctive, and sexual in us, for the creative swill in which we fish for ideas. It carries, weightlessly, the imponderable things in our lives: death and creation. We can drown in it or else stay buoyant, quench our thirst, stay alive.”
“Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still. Lovers, farmer, and artists have one thing in common, at least—a fear of ‘dry spells,’ dormant periods in which we do no blooming, internal droughts only the waters of imagination and psychic release can civilize. All such matters are delicate of course. But a good irrigator knows this: too little water brings on the weeds while too much degrades the soil the way too much easy money can trivialize a person’s initiative. In his journal, Thoreau wrote, ‘A man’s life should be as fresh as a river. It should be the same channel but a new water every instant.’” –Gretel Ehrlich, “On Water”
new show upcoming at Brasserie Four during the month of July! check it out! 4 E. Main Street, Walla Walla, WA 99362, (509) 529-2011. www.brasseriefourrestaurant.com/
heart medicine
the press, the palette, the plate
Creating some of my own prints @ Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts near Pendleton, Oregon.
mike baggetta, lake oswego oregon
anthony callaway, seattle washington
annie meyer, portland oregon
mia meyer, portland oregon
owl.willows.moon
so i recently was able to get some raw wool from kj suffolks, sheer from yearling sheep for show. how’s that for a mouth.full. i’ve been curious about the medicinal properties of it in its raw form and thought it would be dreamy to sleep upon/under. this was my first venture, stuffing the raw wool between two layers of bamboo/cotton and ‘quilting’ them together. the visual is hard to make out, but i ended up drawing an owl onto newsprint and sewing it to the fabric. then ripping out the paper. even made a ‘quilting frame’ of sorts like my grandmother’s but i think i missed the boat on that curve. it worked. quick attempts, i think it a good start… next up, adventures in washing raw wool and touring the montiellet sheep/goat farm where they make cheeeeese…..
for other quilting fun, & to see those who really know what they are doing, see the 3rd dvd episode on pbs of ‘craft in america‘… pretty sweet….
one in a series of heart prints i created last weekend….
Bark Beings: Visual Voices from the Reservoir
by L. A. Fairbanks
The essence of Walla Walla’s Reservoir, or Bennington Lake, was captured by walking & listening to the sculptures of my home. Author Barry Lopez calls this, “being tutored by the land.” “You try to make yourself available to the place,” he says, “To be tutored—it’s like making an application. Insofar as you behave well, the place will open to you. Then you have the problem of translating what you got into (a form of) language.”
“(Naturalists) choose places to live and then listen to those places.” “What they hear in the earth are the voices of what Henry Beston called the ‘other nations’ of the planet.” from ‘The Naturalist’s Trance’ by Stephen Trimble
John Madson says “there is alot of animal in us. Maybe a naturalist is simply a little more animal than other people.”
“Voices of ‘other nations’ vibrate deeper in the ripple of their quiet ways. Every contour, every den, every root & fiber weaves its way into being regardless of your consent. Leafing the felled and bent; housing creatures both hideous and divine. Even in death. Sculpted by the elements is the driftwood of heart. A dormant reservoir just waiting for the flood gates to open. Oh to crawl in the dirt, where earth and sky unite. Napping above roots, under canopy of birds. Discovering treasures in the discarded, overlooked and taken advantage. Home. Listen, listen… she is calling— “ ~L
Come see my new show for more! “Bark Beings: Visual Voices From the Reservoir”
March 16th ~ April 30,th 2010, Colville St.Patisserie, 40 S.Colville. Walla Walla WA. T:509.301.7289
