Beyond the Picture

The heart-wrending photo I posted yesterday of an Alabaman wave polluted by the Gulf oil spill prompted me to share some work by artists who evidently love nature, and whose work, I find, deepens my own love for nature and beauty.

Sakiyama Takayuchi is a Japanese ceramic artist who makes clay look like water and stone at the same time. Joan Mirviss says of his work, “Some vessels appear as if made from sand on the beach, the surface simply decorated by the current of the receding water. Others appear to undulate and twist in space as if in perpetual motion.”

"Listening to Waves", 2004, S. Takayuki. Sand-glazed stoneware.

This undulating, double-walled piece, entitled, Listening to Waves

“…gives material expression to the sensation of sound and the movement of water…. Waves swirl across the exterior, sweeping over the rim into the interior to create a fully integrated, organic form. Moss-colored glaze fills the ebblike grooves, leaving traces of sand on the surface of the vessel. This effect recalls the raked sand-waves of Zen kare sansui gardens, such as the sixteenth-century Ryoanji in Kyoto, which convey the expanse of the oceans, and ultimately the entire universe.” (From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History on the Met’s site)

I  love the idea that a humble lump of clay – skillfully-formed – can convey someone’s inner sense of the “expanse of the universe”.

S. Takayuchi, 2008. Vessel with diagonally-incised cascading folds. Glazed stoneware.

Next up, Jim Denevan is an American “earth artist” who, like Takayuchi, evokes the grandeur of nature. He makes temporary drawings on sand, earth and ice that are eventually erased by waves and weather.

I'm so partial to this image I don't know what to do with myself.

He claims to have made the world’s largest free-hand drawing. Is it bigger than the Uffington White Horse drawing etched in chalk in the English countryside? Possibly. I don’t really care. His drawings are sublime, and I love the fact that they are ephemeral. They fade away according to nature’s whim and schedule, covered by the tide, blown away by the wind.

Stunning, meditative, freehand labor of love. Look at the scale!

Finally, there’s Colleen Plumb, an American photographer whose eccentric and surprising series of photographs, Animals Are Outside Today, examines the intersections between humans and animals.

Horseback Mountain

This image is so arresting, it gives me the shivers. I can *hear* it. Plumb explains that she likes to study “how animals are woven through the fabric of culture. I began this project looking at fake nature, considering how substitutions for nature might satisfy people. Looking deeper I began photographing real animals, investigating how they provide intangible links to a deeper world of instinct and rawness.”

Elephant. Colleen Plumb, "Animals are Outside Today".

Now, I am not claiming that these three artists have some sort of pure, unambivalent “love for nature”. Love for nature can look like many things – sometimes the over-the-top awe and joy we feel for the natural world can be mixed with revulsion, fear or callousness.

We domesticate wild animals and keep them indoors. We adore the beauty of creatures, but one way of engaging with that beauty has been to conquer them and decorate our interiors with their hides and horns. We yearn to walk in an ancient forest, but we won’t directly miss it if it’s gone, thousands of miles away, and if it yields beautiful furniture and houses for us. Plumb says,

Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history–evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them in countless ways.

Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; we absorb them into our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. I am interested in moving within these contradictions, always wondering if the notion of sacred will survive alongside our evolution.

Plumb reflects on our relationships with animals, and underscores in her photographs the many contradictions and ambivalences that characterise those relationships. My starting point, the photograph of the oily wave, seems similar somehow. Although the image is not a traditional “nature” shot depicting a pristine ocean, I don’t doubt that the photographer loves nature and wants, through his work, to draw attention to its destruction. Denevan’s work is fleeting; it dies and fades away, underscoring the fragility of nature and a fascination with its manipulation. Even Takayuchi sets forth ideas with a sort of irony: he thinks about the expanse of the universe – in the form of a pot, made of mud.

Denevan

What artwork have you seen that inspires your love for nature, contradictions and all? And don’t worry – there will certainly be ample discussion of Andy Goldsworthy in Part 3, coming soon.

I first saw this photograph (by David Martin of the AP) in June: spilt oil forms a delicate pattern in waves hurtling toward the Alabama coastline:

Blobs of oil hurtling toward the sand of an Alabama beach. Photo: David Martin/AP

I have seen a number of photographs, all terrifying, of oil-covered pelicans and brown waterscapes in the Gulf region. More than others, however, this photo spoke volumes for me. For those of us who do not live in a Gulf state and don’t see the damage in front of our faces, it is perhaps difficult to comprehend the devastation the spill has caused to wildlife, livelihoods, ways of life. I think about the Exxon Valdes disaster, its attendant photos of oil-soaked birds, and the vague (if erroneous) perception that in time, it was cleaned up, bird populations have bounced back, etc. That may not have happened, and I fear it has not, but as the disaster faded from memory and from the consciousness of those of us living far away, that was the assumption.

The photo by Martin bears witness and gets my attention in quite powerful but understated way – it looks beautiful at first glance, before one is able to process it. Is that – seeweed floating in the water? No, it’s thick blobs of brown, iridescent oil that choke and cloud the water. As the wave crashes to shore, it will seep inches deep into the sand on the shore.

Never mind the more fundamental questions about greed, irresponsibility, prevention and the causes of this environmental disaster. Everyone is wondering: Will it ever be cleaned, in water or on land? How? How long will it take? What will the pervasive oil do to people’s and creatures’ physical health? What obvious, and what hidden effects will there be, and how long will it take for these impacts to emerge?

The image sticks in my head. Soon I’ll be sharing some other images as a counterbalance to the feeling of pessimism that accompanies this one. I’ll feature works by artists who have been inspired by nature. Their work, although it carries contradictions and ambivalence, is infused with their love of the earth, and their work intensifies my love for the earth.

“‘The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established,’ Bahá’u'lláh wrote. ‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.’  The major issues facing the environmental movement today hinge on this point. The problems of ocean pollution, the extinction of species, acid rain and deforestation – not to mention the ultimate scourge of nuclear war – respect no boundaries. All require a transnational approach.

This dichotomy between spirituality and materialism is a key to understanding the plight of humankind today. In the Bahá’í view, the major threats to our world environment … are manifestations of a world-encompassing sickness of the human spirit, a sickness that is marked by an overemphasis on material things and a self-centeredness that inhibits our ability to work together as a global community.”

(From the Statement on Nature, Bahá’í International Community)

I think a lot about the concept of placeness, and what differentiates one location on the planet from another, beyond what you can see. Isn’t it interesting that in certain places you can sense stories humming in undertones? And that the spaces in which we move, physically, effect our activities and emotions and aspirations in radically different ways, via so many variables: geographical location, physical and natural features, human culture, history and migration, climate, pollution, design … and many more?

Some physical places look mundane, but have witnessed horrors and can make you shiver just to enter them. Some places make you feel elated and free.

moss-covered wall
Originally uploaded by .Leili.

Some crowded, whirring places simultaneously press on your soul, and awaken creativity. If there is no personal space for you in the crowd, in order to survive, you might have to make psychic space and distance around you.

Kampala Old Taxi Park (Matatu Park)
Originally uploaded by Kattaka.

In addition to these physical features, it seems that each place could also be said to have a spiritual history – a history of human relationships, advancement, interactions, choices, conflicts, innovations, struggles and love.

I went the other day to Boston Symphony Hall. We saw Fidelio with the amazing Christine Brewer in the Leonore/Fidelio role. Symphony Hall really has placeness. I grew up hearing stories about music heard in that place, towering musical figures encountered in that place. The building even had a role in my parents’ marriage.

So what constitutes “placeness” for you? What locations stay with you, and why? Do these places look unassuming, or might the uninitiated be able to tell that there is something special about that place from just a glance? Are your thoughts about placeness connected to ideas about home?

Originally uploaded by ardour.

I find this picture by Yoav very beautiful. It reminds me of something that has bothered me for some time, and for which no one has yet supplied an answer that makes sense:

Although we see and hear many birds each day, why do we almost never see dead birds? I have seen hundreds of thousands of birds in my life. I am even one of those nerds who seeks them out. Yet I have only seen a tiny number of dead birds in my life. In Haifa, yes: I understand that there are ravening feral cats everywhere, and “being eaten” has got to explain the phenomenon, at least partially. But what about all the other places? How could street animals and/or wildlife possibly get to all the millions of birds who die each day without me seeing any evidence? It’s not like I don’t look around, either.

What’s your theory?

Roses in the heart of New York City.
Originally uploaded by .Leili.

In a related question, I am wondering what happens to all the flowers that are grown and cut and shipped and bunched and displayed in a streetside stand for myriad purposes — apologies, love, restitution, thanks — and go unclaimed? Do all those potential emotions wind up wilted and unexpressed in the dumpster at the back alley?

Morningside Park.

On Friday, I had to get from the upper west side of Manhattan down to the UN, over to Brooklyn, and back, and happened to pick a miserable, urban ice storm in which to do it. In addition to subways, that’s about 40 blocks of outdoor walking. I had not come to the City with the right gear, either (dramatically incorrect footwear, no hat, flimsy umbrella). I felt, as I often do these days, culturally ill-equipped for my re-entry into US society — Martian, even — as though I have never had to be out in snow before and could think only of the 78 varieties of coconut that grow in my fictitious backyard.

As I walked down 42nd Street, I couldn’t help but notice that my face was being bombarded with tiny stinging ice pellets (Mum helpfully pointed out that said pellets are called “rime,” but the fact that they have a name that appears in 19th-century poetry does not excuse their behavior).

As we stepped gingerly through the gunmetal slush, trying to find a bus – any bus – to catch, a recent transplant from Canadia confessed to me that she had dismissed that morning’s severe weather warning as the paranoia of wimpy Americans. Then she got to work, and started noticing colleagues arriving at the office covered in, well – rime. With wet feet. And then she realized her only shoes were buttery-soft leather flats. I should add that the addition of ziploc bags used as socks did not help (is that some sort of Canadian trick?). The one who fared best among us was, interestingly, from Perth, and had never been in such weather in her life. She was wise enough to have invested in granny boots at the first signs of winter.

… We stopped to chat for a while. He was lolling about by the incoming tide. Because he didn’t seem to be making his way back into the water, and because there were no other seals lolling about in the vicinity, we thought he might be ill and waited while a man called the New England Aquarium for help. Apparently seals “look abandoned” while their mothers leave to seek food for them. No, I don’t know how to tell the difference between seals that look abandoned owing to the lunch issue, and those that really are abandoned.

Later, I was asked what there is to discuss with a seal. It went something like this:

Me: What are you doing here? I’m cold. Are you?
Furry Creature: (flappity flap)
Me: I see your family also makes you go out in the tundric wind in the middle of winter.
F.C.: (disarming seal-grin)
Me: You have a coat on, but still. Is your mother getting you lunch? Are you lost?
F.C.: (flap flap flap)

Am I wrong, or is it kind’ve unusal to come across a seal during a mundane walk?