Here’s an update for you on this “in progress” panel from “Buy Back The Land,” a concertina work, 12 x162 inches (1x18.5 feet). Each panel, on a double spread, is 12x18 inches. Mixed media, my own photographs and images of the site and a previous painting series, Working the River.
Tiptoed into this piece as a story took shape and held my breath to sense for monsters waiting in the darkness of unaware.
In an effort to understand how to translate to myself what the work I make is trying to tell me, I found sketchbooks an effective Rosetta Stone between the subconscious and the face staring vacantly back from the mirror. For decades, my art has been screaming to get my attention while I continued oblivious to messages from my soul. Understanding appears to begin when we allow ourselves to know what we know.
Fascinated by the concept of concertinas, I connected into Karen Stamper’s class to learn more about these long, folded format sketchbooks. The applications she teaches are invaluable to this art form. Karen mentioned “themes” early in the process and my subconscious went into overdrive, incorporating my own photographs and images of paintings from a previous show, as well as desiccated flora photos and drawings.
I have an obsession for the process of decay. A tree cone dries and transforms into a “rose” or an avocado pit dehydrates into layers of paper like leaves. The second stage of a growing thing is possibly far more interesting than the, esteemed as more beautiful, original growth. Symbolic of the cycle of nature as well as our own lives.
The images of the defunct paper mill continued to appear, rearrange and place themselves, until I resonated to the tones of aging, abandonment, betrayal, ecocide, nods to religion in the church of commerce, a systematic stripping of identity. Imprisonment. A rich internal, ancestral and environmental awareness. The layering of paper and paint, recycled envelopes and images translated the troubles rolling around in my soul. The griefs of a land, a life, of a river.
The mill is located on the Willamette, sacred ground to Indigenous Peoples. Home of sea lions bigger than the puny boats of fishing folk attempting to pull a catch from a depleted channel. Reduced population of salmon, shore birds and animals. Colonizers blew out the banks of the river, constructed a mill, dammed the water. As an aging woman in the business world, deemed no longer useful for profit, power or sexual favor, the crumbling buildings are being offloaded. What I find most galling, is Confederate Tribes had to buy back land their ancestors were evicted from and they’ve stewarded since time was known.
Buy Back The Land is a theme for many of us. Return to our heritage to nourish our soul, and by recounting our personal stories recognize the seeds of our identity buried with our ancestors. Reframe our meta narrative.
Our work is always speaking. Yet, I missed all of this the first time. Or perhaps I wasn’t ready. The process becomes a question of how we listen and invite the words to help us discern meaning in our life. We buy back our own land.
What is your creative impulse guiding you toward? If you listened, would you hear your story speaking to you?