The River Reveals Two Words

As I work on pieces for my next solo show this September '10 at the Rider University Art Gallery in Lawrenceville, NJ, I'm thinking more and more about the river.  I've been out photographing the river, painting the river, making ceramic sections of river, and, crocheting the river.  I've lived near the Delaware River for decades, but it's really only recently that I've felt it's grip.  I've actually been thinking that I couldn't possibly ever move away from this river.  I am increasingly under its spell.  There is a word I've recently learned,  "solastalgia". 

                          
Solastalgia is defined as "the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault...a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home'".  In my case, the pain may be from learning about the  immediate assault on our river's essential beauty and the utility of its water due to gas drilling operations.   An artist friend who creates beautiful nature-inspired sculpture (www.naomiteppich.com) and lives in Northeaster Pa  when she's not in Manhattan, started to send me information on the threats to river water from gas drilling.  Our beautiful Delaware river is just one of the many national water treasures slated for, or already being ravaged by the hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" process that entails from gas drilling.  A  group of "concerned citizens", www.DamascusCitizens.org , is desperately trying to enlighten people about the environmental and health facts of the gas drilling process. Liz Bucar's blog written from an upstate New York perspective, "Breathing is Political", http://lizjbucar.wordpress.com/ is chock full of readable information.  As a  Pennsylvania homeowner who got involved when gas drilling arrived at his doorstep, Josh Fox has documented the dangers in film, and the Damascus Citizens' website has links to his award-winning work.  The imminent loss of our river as the beautiful ecosystem that we know would be devastating in SO MANY ways!  The Damascus Citizens are certainly feeling and being motivated by "solastalgia".

pic:  site of Washington's Crossing
The historical importance of the area of the river just a few minutes drive from my house resonates loudly every year when dedicated history buffs re-enact it's Christmas morning crossing by General George Washington and his troops, dressed in period costumes. One year when the river was too low to row a boat across they accomplished "the crossing" on motorcycles over the bridge! Now the sad state of the economy is threatening this hugely significant state park. With only three employees to maintain it, the park is really struggling.

At Canal Frame-Crafts Gallery in Washington Crossing, Pa, 

 

www.CanalFrame.com

owner Deborah Crow, C.P.A. (Certified Picture Framer) is 

heavily involved in the history of the region.  She is
actively trying to save the Pennsylvania side of the park
from closure, and currently has up a benefit show,
"Rally the Troops".  

10a.m.-5pm Tues. through Sat. until March 6, '10,  

(hurry up!) one can see this exhibit which showcases works 

by many local artists that are related to the area's history.  

Go to 1093 General Greene Rd., Washington Crossing, Pa.

(Below L: paintingby James Feehan)                                            

                 

   (Above: Giclee print by Gail Bracegirdle)

People like Deborah Crow, the Damascus Citizens,  and all artists who have been inspired by the Delaware River region understand the second word I recently learned, "solophilia".  Solophilia is "the love of and responsibillity for a place, bioregion, planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it.  I think I am definitely developing a version of this affliction as I walk beside and cross the river I know best, The Delaware.  I hope my work will express the unity of interrelated art media as well as the unity of interrelated interests along The Delaware, as I create and consider the river in my newest work.

Tree-stamped Life

Dad bought and
added onto
the tiny house
where I grew up.
Front yard was
edged with
maples.
Side yard held
a big, bold
box elder. That
tree had eight
EIGHT trunks!
Bugs came in,
freely covered
our walls
in their frequent season.

Others may have checked
for bedbugs at night; we
checked for box elders
between sheets.
One year Dad
and Mom, perhaps,
had had enough.
Eight glorious trunks,
cut to the ground.

Dad built a house and planted trees
by the door.
After Mother died
he grew weary  of them.
"They drop so many leaves",
he complained.
One day the magnificent magnolias
were exterminated
for their messy ways.

Dad moved into a house enhanced
by tall, tall pines.  Grandfather pines!
He immediately cut some down,
explaining to distraught neighbors,
"They were too close
to the house, and could fall."  Then, "Oh,
I didn't know they were 'protected'".  And,
"What's done is done."

Next, Hurricane Katrina's wrath.
Everyone's tall, tall pines came down,
including more of Dad's,
smashing new roof, new railing and garage.
"You wouldn't recognize the neighborhood,"
he said, "the trees are all
just gone".

Dad moved into a house shaded by old oaks.
The house is "up for sale" now, as they say.
The mowing, the leaf-raking, the yard
is too much for him...
"I'm 88 years old now", he repeats, amazed.
"The plan is to move to an apartment",
this gardener, this grim-tree-reaper and steady tree-planter says now.
"Someone else
can take care of the trees."

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Water

My last post was about the rain barrel project I participated in with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.  Here is a photo of my finished rainbarrel, which will be auctioned off after touring the state with those by other artists, in a PR blitz sometime this spring:

 

Since completing that project I have been scheduled for a solo exhibition in September '10, at the Rider University Art Gallery in Lawrenceville, NJ.  Because it is the largest space I've ever been able to show in, it is an opportunity for me to expand the scale of my work in spite of difficult studio size limitations.  Water seems to be the dominant theme in my mind lately, and I am working on a mixed media wall relief of a river.  I say "a river" to be more geographically inclusive, but the only river I really know is the beautiful Delaware.  I'm crocheting parts of a river, painting parts, photographing parts, and making ceramic tiles for parts of this watery line that cuts between New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  

This week we were on the receiving end of the worst storm the area has seen in many decades, or so our long-time neighbors say.  A foot of snow came down on the several inches that were already there, but it was a heavy, heavy snow.  The 30 ft. tall bamboo folded down to the ground under it's weight, and then froze there.  Snow = water all dressed up in bridal whites.

It was immensely beautiful as twilight settled in.

Then we began to hear noises.  "Wasn't that just the bamboo brushing against the house as it lays down, laden with snow?  Shhhh!  Was that a branch falling on the roof - no, it wasn't that loud...probably more bamboo moving".  Soon the power went out.  Nothing new there, it does this almost every time there is a rainstorm.  It stayed off.  I found and lit candles, remnant ghosts from Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners past.  I'd never seen anything like this though:  in what should have been the darkness of night, long flashes of light illuminated everything brighter than any July dead noon glare.  Pink/white/green/purple light outside as if indeed, the whole world WAS a stage.  Was that lightning?   Was that some arching electric current?  Funny how the mind retrieves phrases stuffed away though not understood.  I didn't really know what an "arching electric current" was, but in grasping for explanations for what I was seeing, the phrase came to mind.  My daughter recalled the phrase, "thunder snow", which I'd never even heard of before, and I grew up near Chicago, Illinois, where people know their snow!

Hours later, the power came back on, feebly at first, and then for real.  We went to sleep amidst the silence that only snow can surround you with.  The next morning all of that wet snow's destructive powers were evident. For us, a tree hung alongside our driveway, branches lay everywhere, and another tree fell across and smashed a section of fence.  Down the street it looked like a tornado had gone through.  Branches and trees were down across the road, making it impassable for several hours.  One of the giant, tall pines that edge the street at the southern end and make our street so special, uprooted and fell, just the tips of some branches hitting the brick house it had stood in front of.  Yet all of this happened with so little noise!  In a summer storm we would have heard great loud crashing and thrashing.  In this wet snow-wrapped fury we only heard, "...shhh...was that... something_____?"  

Today as I was getting dressed I heard the tiniest "drip...drip...drip..."  Of course I looked up.  "Funny, I don't see anything".  Still, that unmistakable "drip...drip...drip".  I opened the shade, hoping to see dripping icicles magically throwing their sound inside the house, but the windows were all wet.  I took down the curtains and blinds, and water was dripping from the inside of the window mouldings.  UGH.  Nothing localized, where a bucket could catch it.

Well the past does haunt:  two years ago our handyman was up on the roof and said we needed some extension on the flashing, because the roofer hadn't done it right.  He added some sheets of aluminum.  Later, the neighborhood yard guy (who nobody likes to call because he is so unreliable and overpriced, but who everyone ends up calling in the inevitable pinch,) was on our roof for something I've forgotten.  He wrested the metal sheets off, thinking they were a roof job done wrong.  Afterwards, he insisted that we didn't need them.  Welcome the big bad snow of '10. Those metal bandaides would probably have saved the bedroom wall.  Now nothing can be done with the "situation" until all the snow melts.  I could be wringing out wet towels for weeks...

Ahhh, water, with your many faces!  So good, so bad, and now so ugly!