my pacific coast muse

Tag: tide pools

worm

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.

Scenic Overlook

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

free ride

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

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.

Cerulean Blues

June and July and nearly August…

As I listed these months, counting the time since my last post, a cover of “Fly Like an Eagle” by Tony Crown started playing in the background. It was a slow ghostly version of the old Steve Miller Band song, never heard this version before. Perfect synchronicity. Time keeps on slipping…

But I haven’t been sleeping by the sea. Gabriel Harrison chose a number of works during a studio visit in early spring, most of them recent, for a solo exhibit at Stanford called Cerulean Blues. He put together a beautiful installation, especially for Copepodilia: 64 images varying in size from 10″ x 8″ to 50″ x 40″. It was up for much of July and just closed yesterday.

One work was unresolvable – the photographs of collisions along the coast. I’ll figure it out eventually, but for now, I pared it down to just one image, same title as the show: Cerulean Blues.

cerulean.jpg
Cerulean Blues   pigment print on Arches Aquarelle   40″ x 60″   2017
Cerulean Installation 1
most of Copepodilia 2017, with Pool 2017 in the foreground
sandbox
Sandbox   sorted sand on birch boxes   33″ x 103″   2017
Blues Sand Pool
Cerulean Blues 2017, Sandbox 2017, and Pool 2017 in the foreground
Wind Pool Cope
Homage to the Wind 2012, Pool 2017, and a bit of Copepodilia 2017

swimmy Pool video

Thanks to David Stroud for shooting this video of Pool at Hosfelt Gallery. It’s the most beautifully sunny gallery in all of San Francisco, so the video is a little pale. There’s a Nam June Paik piece across the room that’s an aquarium in an old wooden CRT television case, critters built out of vacuum tubes, with watery sounds and whale calls. You can see it in the background of the photos in the previous post. Perfect company!

Pool installation at Hosfelt Gallery from Gail Wight on Vimeo taped by David Stroud.

© 2024 Stillwater

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑