July 18:
At least once a day it is brought up that time doesn't mean anything here. With the sun only now beginning to set (sort of, my app is saying that the sun rises at 3:16, but the first light is at 1:27... mainly it just gets a little dusky out and then gets light again) it really doesn't matter when you go to bed because its always day time. You will never lose day light. I have discovered that my schedule, if light and duties were no object, I tend to wake up around 10-10:30 and go to bed somewhere between 12-2:00 (much different than my San Diego schedule of rigidly 6:00 am to 10:00 pm).
Interestingly enough, since time really is nothing, I have noticed with myself and the other residents that when we have one non-creative item on the agenda (i.e. coffee + cakes, art movie in the fish freezer, festival in the next town over...) we all nervously joke, "But when will I get work done?" "What about lunch?" It's like our old selves, over worked and over scheduled, seep though our lips trying to find normalcy. We laugh afterward about how silly it is that we were even thinking it. Time is just a word here.
July 20:
A lot of my works these days have included "stars" and/or geometrics that look like constellations.
Our human need for connection is just astonishing and lovely. We, these vulnerable creatures, pull the universe around ourselves like a blanket. We see our faces in houses and our pets in the clouds. We look to the stars and tie them to each other, even though they are trillions of miles away from one another, and then tether that chain of cosmos to ourselves. We are a resolute, reaching and lonely tribe.
Native Icelandic bouquet
July 21:
Experiments:
I have been so inspired being here by all of the other artists I share a workspace with. One of the artists here, and at the textile residency (about a 30 minute bus ride away) have been working with the native plants here for dying and crushing. Totally in awe, I began collecting flowers to crush (with a rock I found) into little pieces of watercolor paper. As if that wasn't satisfying enough I have begun to stitch minimal ghost buds and stems onto the marked papers.
This stitching with white is intended to pull the color out where it is placed. It is a new medium of practicing the same themes I am thinking about in my current collection: adding material (in this case thread) in order to take away.
