Stillwater

my pacific coast muse

Category: books

Hamonshū

October 4, 2018 / / 0 Comments

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Screen Shot 2018-10-04 at 11.55.47 AMThis 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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Bass Biology

August 23, 2018 / / 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 Below is a mock-up and some working photos, already well out-of-date.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-FLATbass-workingIMG_20180724_172857

diatoms

March 2, 2018 / / 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:

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diatom drawing in progress, 24″ x 24″

place

December 7, 2017 / / 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.

 

thrashed about

March 25, 2017 / / 2 Comments

I just ordered this book from a store in Oregon:said-no-book

I ordered it, ostensibly, for the graduate seminar I’ll be teaching this spring on “professional practices” for artists. It’s good to have alternatives. While I wait, I’m indulging in a fantasy about this book: that it will give me great peace of mind, reassurance, and affirmation. It will be humorous, and it will make me believe that capitalism is a weak force in the universe.

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Also while I wait, I continue to shoot video of tide pools for a new work in progress. I shot this footage above yesterday. In case it’s difficult to see what it is, it’s a hermit crab thrashing another hermit crab against a rock, over and over again. Yes, it’s a gif that I made out of about two seconds of footage, but I watched this happen for a good five minutes – all of it recorded – before the thrasher hauled the thrashee away in a huff. I imagine it was a huff. To any hermit crab experts out there, what was this all about? The thrashee is clearly smaller, much too small to donate it’s tiny shell to its abuser. I get stressed out, watching it… which makes me wonder why I made it.

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