Troubling Times and Blackberry Marsh

Geez, these last couple weeks have been hard. Emotionally, I’m fried. I have had to work really hard to keep myself from losing my temper and to remain focused.

I’ve been working hard to maintain a thread of consistency, but what with how the world has been burning down around me I find it incredibly hard to concentrate.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I’ve had conversations with artist friends who are feeling the same way—the state of our world is literally affecting their capacity to be creative and make new things. It’s hard to rise above the fray. I’ve had to remind myself several times—well, no, actually *every hour*—that art-making is necessary to counteract the hate that’s manifesting itself in our country today. It’s challenging to “distract” myself without feeling deep guilt that I’m somehow burying my head in the sand. And I have to work hard to navigate around that guilt. It’s paralyzing sometimes.

And the only way out is to make and create. To try be happy. Fascism can only exist when people are scared of something. It’s ultimately quite brittle. But it’s not thin. It’s quite thick sometimes. But it can crack, and ultimately won’t be able to support itself under its own weight.

Can you infer the analogy I’m making? I hope.

Regardless, I wanted to share with you some of the work I’ve been developing lately.

On Sunday, Jan 25th, my husband and I went to the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, where we took  walk on one of their trails and had a delightful time. I took a lot of pictures.

And I’ve been using them to develop a new piece that I’m calling “Blackberry Marsh in Winter”.

I was surprised by the amount of Blackberry vines and bushes that seemed to be flourishing in the area amongst the pools of water. Their light tracery of vines that delicately ascended upwards that lilted downwards in a gentle curve reminded me to much of Art Nouveau that I had to do a piece that hearkened to what I was seeing. I took SO many pictures!!

And for a while, I was able to forget what’s happening, and turn myself off from the pain of so many people that I see on my social media feeds. As far as distractions go, it was both heartening and constructive. I left with a lot of visual reference photos!

And the work in progress here is what I’m developing. Again, it’s an Art Nouveau-inspired piece, but I’ve done a bit of adjusting and I’m trying out some new things. It’s not complete by any means, but I’m really happy with how it’s progressing. I’ve been leaning into whatever process I’ve developed over time, and things are going very quickly.

But I’m trying new things, too, and stepping back into some of my landscaping processes, too. It’s a weird combination of drawing upon my past pieces and the steps I took to make them, then putting them in new contexts. It’s both strangely new and comforting at the same time.

But It sucks me into the mode of making and helps restore a bit of clarity and sanity.

I think this piece will make a lovely large-scale print. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. I’ll let you all know when it’s available!

In the  meantime, here are links to the three livestream recordings of the proceess that  I've made so far. 

Pt 1: https://makertube.net/w/2U8Dwsv97wL6VmB9Q6oeiQ
Pt 2: https://makertube.net/w/3kGFQUX229RaLJsikm4hvA
Pt 3: https://makertube.net/w/eymbt3cHumjRXx32mLRqcT