Stillwater

to bob

April 28, 2022 / gailwight / 0 Comments

I grew up on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. I thought of the water as an ocean, and swam in it at every opportunity. I traveled up and down the eastern seaboard up through my twenties, and experienced the Atlantic Ocean unbuffered by Long Island. However, nothing prepared me for the fierce and incessant energy of the Pacific Ocean.

I naively moved west thinking that I would regularly swimming along northern California’s coast. Happily, I received plenty of warning before diving in: the undercurrents, the rip tides, the sneaker waves, and the occasional sharks. And of course the icy temperatures, which mean a stiff and heavy and expensive rubber swimsuit from head to toe. This latter part really put me off. Part of the allure of swimming in the ocean is being naked or at least near naked and getting completely wet! Also, swimming is not really a thing here. There are no small islands or reefs to swim to, no boats moored offshore, no rafts or spots to pull out.

For the past six years or so, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time down at the shore, mostly peering into tide pools. I’ve photographed the coast during winter storms, and spent hours watching harbor seals weave through the kelp. But this past summer, after more than twenty years since moving to this coast, I finally went in. Once a week, at 9:30 am, a small group meets at a cove in a state park, and goes out “bobbing.” Just hanging out in the Pacific, wearing wetsuits and snorkel gear. Twelve months of the year. The chief instigator of this group is a naturalist, an interpreter for the state park system, and has a good idea of what’s happening around us, no matter the season. It’s mesmerizing, in the best sense of that word. Harbor seals come to say hi, and herons look even more spectacular from out in the water. It feels so great to be IN the ocean, even in a giant thick layer of neoprene.

worm

April 1, 2019 / gailwight / 1 Comment

Sabellidae?

I’m reading up on worms, and while I haven’t checked with anyone yet, I think this is a type of tube worm in the family Sabellidae, commonly called a feather duster worm. Which if you think about it, is an odd way to refer to its gorgeous feather-like anatomy.

Why not call it a feather worm? Or a bird worm? Or wing worm? (okay, that last one sounds like ring worm with a lisp) Feather duster? As in, we pluck birds and use their beautiful plumage to wipe the cocktail of dust mites and car exhaust off of our tawdry trinkets?

Or is it a sly reference to “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” knowing that worms might eat our bones? This feather duster will make short work of our dusty remains. But that just can’t be. This isn’t the worm of our morbid funerary fantasies. This little beauty lives underwater. I doubt that the likes of Ahab are at the top of its preferred dining list.

There is one aspect of this common name that I appreciate, and that is its common-ness. It’s a workaday name for something extravagantly beautiful, an ode to all of those in the cleaning industry, to everyone who has ever done the hard work of trying to keep a shine on life, an ode to every woman and man who has ever been relegated to cleaning up the mess of others.

alien planet

January 4, 2019 / gailwight / 2 Comments

The tides have been perfect during this first week of the year: perigee lows during the afternoon’s oblique sun, warmish down by the water, not too windy. The water is COLD though, and I’ve managed to get thoroughly soaked every day. Worth it. So amazing.

Here is a stunning creature from January 1, 2019. I think it’s a wormsnail called Serpulorbis squamigerus, from searching SeaNet.

The next day I returned to look at it again, and an anemone had crept into the frame:

The California Academy of Science just sent out a newsletter saying that its researchers had discovered 229 new plant and animal species this past year, and among those are 34 new sea slugs. These are just from Cal Academy researchers! They also wrote that biodiversity scientists estimate that less than 10% of the earth’s species have been discovered. I wonder, of that 10%, how many are commonly known, and of those, how many are commonly appreciated? I know that my own understanding of the life forms around me is severely limited. “Severly limited” is a euphemism for impoverished and ignorant.

These two images are just to the left and right of the wormsnail above, all within about twenty-five square centimeters. So much life!

individual corals and sea squirts… i think

Of the many amazing things about life in the tide pools are the common strategies that are so (visibly) foreign to life on land. GOO. Goo is big. Sticky goo. Gooey tentacles, a single viscous “foot,” gluey suction, watery sacks. And stacking. Species stuck on species glued to species getting a free ride on yet another species.

Today is the last perfect day of shooting for a while, before the rain begins again, before the lows inch their way back to higher levels and happen after sunset.

Hamonshū

October 4, 2018 / gailwight / 0 Comments

Screen Shot 2018-10-04 at 12.06.40 PM
Screen Shot 2018-10-04 at 11.55.47 AM This book was published in 1903 as a resource guide for water designs that could be used by craftsmen. The artist, Mori Yuzan, worked in the Nihonga style, which emphasized the beauty of traditional Japanese aesthetics during a period of infatuation with the west. I am infatuated with Hamonshū! I’ve shot thousands of photographs of waves along the Pacific coast over the past few years – 2485 on one day alone for Pacific Falls – and then poured over them for hours, weaving water together. I’m amazed by the accuracy in these stylized drawings of specific water formations. I would love to revisit this book, maybe recreate it in a new form. I think I shall…

There are three volumes, all published by the Smithsonian Libraries via the Internet Archive. Free libraries: the best use of the internet! Thank you for publishing this, Smithsonian!!!!

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Scenic Overlook

October 4, 2018 / gailwight / 0 Comments

copepodilia-fix — The Fix and Copepodilia in Scenic Overlook at Patricia Sweetow Gallery

Back in May, I had an exhibit at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco. A few of the projects already discussed here were part of the exhibit: The Fix, Copepodilia, Pacific Falls, and Collision. I also showed three new selections from a series of videos called “In the Time of…” which were inspired by Pool. The works were all about the small yet essential creatures easily overlooked in a vast landscape.

These little videos are about the experience of gazing into a tide pool, and the timelessness of that experience. Maybe timelessness isn’t the right word… Anyhow, In the Time of… led to another video work called Eclipse and that has led to a new idea for a larger video installation. More on all of this later, but in the meantime:

In the time of Anemones

I wonder, sometimes, if this obsession with tide pools is foolish. Has everyone done this as a kid, laid on their bellies and stared into a rocky little pool filled with strange life forms? This past weekend I was talking with two adults in their 70s. One was an architect and designer, the other a french scholar, both professors for many years in Montreal. My granddaughter came over to talk with us, and I mentioned that I was taking her to the tide pools later that day. They asked, “What’s a tide pool?” I stuttered. How to describe these universal worlds…? My granddaughter offered that there are lots of starfish in tide pools and they said that they’d never seen a living star fish, only photos – not even video!

In the time of Stars (hermits scuttle over baby starfish)

Our oceans are vast and take up most of the planet, but we’re small in comparison, and need to make our way to the edges to experience the saltwater shoreline. With privatization, industry, ports, pollution, highways, etc. it’s not easy to experience the shore even when one lives close to an ocean. And many shorelines have marshes and other intertidal ecosystems, but no tide pools to speak of. So I guess there’s relevance in attempting to share this experience. It’s a big part of what art does, right? It takes us to places (both physical and not) and give us experiences that we will otherwise never have? And then, hopefully, tap into our capacity for empathy? Cause us to stop, slow down, muse, maybe have a revelation?

In the time of Hermits

Bass Biology

August 23, 2018 / gailwight / 6 Comments

I lost sight of this blog, buried in a big project and a flurry of exhibits. More later on “Scenic Overlook” and other exhibits, but this summer has been completely turned over to a large commission for the new Bass Biology Building at Stanford.

High resolution photographs of ocean waves – color reversed and knitted together – have grown into a large mural-sized image covering both glass and solid walls in the building’s main lobby, as well as the windows of a small adjacent conference room. Below is a mock-up and some working photos, already well out-of-date. Deadlines coming up! My favorite part of this project is that the small conference room image will fog and clear in syncopation with the tides: opaque at high tide, clear at low.

I’m reading Moby Dick, finally, as an accompaniment, after reading In the Heart of the Sea, a history of the true story that inspired Moby Dick, beautifully written by Nathaniel Philbrick. So great. Plus reminiscing about and missing those east coast chowders. 20180308-Outside - Looking at Main Lobby-FLAT bass-working IMG_20180724_172857

diatoms

March 2, 2018 / gailwight / 4 Comments

I recently finished reading The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in the past few years, along with Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction. Both of these books are about the big picture, about deep time and the interrelatedness of all things, living and non-living. The Invention of Nature is primarily about the life of Alexander von Humboldt and his impact on contemporary science and environmentalism, about his understanding of our impact on climate, and many other things, including his influence on people: Haeckel, Thoreau, Muir, and others. I hadn’t expected to find Haeckel in this book – or Thoreau or Muir for that matter – but it was a delightfully serendipitous encounter, as I’d been drawing diatoms based on Haeckel’s drawings. Haeckel’s depictions of these tiny creatures are so beautiful, so filled with flourish and fantastically obsessive intricacy. My own drawings are so slow to construct, built up from hundreds of tiny elements. Here is a photo of the first one in progress, far from finished:

diatom drawing in progress, 24″ x 24″

free ride

December 19, 2017 / gailwight / 0 Comments

Here are two more nudibranchs from Salt Point. The video shows (I think) a Cockerell’s Dorid. It’s right at the water line, and is hitching a free ride on a limpet. Or maybe trying to eat it? By the end of the video, you can see its foot and the rhinophores, yellow-tipped and feathery, in the lower left. The photo is of a tiny white-spotted Dorid (I think), about 2cm long, inside a mussel shell.

tinyDorid

nudibranchs

December 18, 2017 / gailwight / 10 Comments

I’ve started a new work that has me, happily, back to shooting video in the tide pools at Salt Point. It means catching the tides and the weather at the right hour, on days when I’m in the area – a rare mix. Friday was a perfect day, and I was trying out a new borrowed camera, an Olympus TG-5. Day One: two nudibranch sitings! A good omen.

place

December 7, 2017 / gailwight / 0 Comments

The very opening of Tacita Dean & Jeremy Millar’s book Place:

“The question, what is place? presents many difficulties. An examination of all the relevant facts seems to lead to different conclusions. Moreover, we have inherited nothing from previous thinkers, whether in the way of a statement of difficulties or of a solution.” – Aristotle, Book IV, The Physics

My place has changed. Since August, Steve and I have experienced three memorials. Ted, Chloe, Pam. Pockets of unwanted silence. We’re planning a memorial for the memorials, the two of us, a windy day at Salt Point. Just to let the wind do its thing. Fill us with howl.