6. Studio Wall

(click for larger view)

“A Hike in Hell”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/embed

Keeping with our Icelandic (and food-related) theme of late, I think you will marvel at this piece from today's Guardian: a video of a drive and then a hike on Eyjafjallajökull volcano: 'Where Satan goes backpacking.' I want to do this…(Thanks to J. for pointing this out to me!) Be sure to watch through to the end.)

 

Lichens, Moss, Lava

I know I've been a bit scarce around here, and the reason is that I've been busy for the past couple of months on a new body of work (both writing and art) about place and identity, inspired in part by Iceland. Where that project will end up is not clear, but I'm steadily working on it and will, from time to time, share some bits here. Meanwhile, regular blogging will continue!

Here is the latest piece. I'm putting it aside for now but plan to make some changes on the right-hand central side. These charcoal drawings are fairly large, about 30" x 22", and they look quite different in person; reducing them changes the feeling and impact a lot — the actual drawing is approximately lifesize. Originally I thought I'd be doing drawings as preparations for prints, but I like these on their own, too, and the process of working on them, in silence and solitude, gives rise to thoughts and insights that I don't think would happen without going through the practice of drawing.

Lichens, Moss, Lava. Charcoal on acrylic-prepared paper. 30 x 22". 12/08/2011. Click for larger view

If you'd like to see a slideshow of the drawing as it progressed, here's a link on Flickr.

And here's something I wrote, during the drawing process:

—–

I’ve been working on a new charcoal drawing. Lichens, moss, lava. And a succulent plant something like sedum, with stiff pod-like leaves tightly clustered around flexible stalks. The drawing is large, like the first one, but this time I’m working on a painted ground of loosely applied, thin acrylic, toned with Hooker’s green, Naples yellow, and a bit of quinachridone red to a slightly greenish cream.

It’s the same problem I’ve returned to again and again in art: the representation of multiple, complex botanical forms. Here they are scrambling over yet another complicated shape — the deeply pitted lava. The advantage of working in black and white is that the forms take precedence, which is what I want. The disadvantage is the sheer complexity of the scene, but without the differentiation nature gives through color. In real life, the sedum is a brilliant viridian against the steely grey rocks, while the late-season moss encompasses every shade from olive-green to white. Color aids our eyes and brain: this is plant, this is rock, this is lichen – the latter of which appears, not entirely inaccurately, to be a life-form somewhat in-between the two.

Since my childhood I’ve been fascinated by the beauty of small, intricate groups of cohabiting plants one sometimes comes upon in the wild, created around a tree trunk, a fallen log, or an outcrop of rock not by any hand but nature’s. I tried, back then, to make my own, bringing child-size mosses, lichens, small wildflowers and seedling evergreens to the deep hollows formed between the roots of the beech trees on the side of our yard. I tended these miniature secret gardens year after year, populating them at times with a small doll or two and enjoying the unplanned visits by beetles and other insects, but never quite believing in elves or fairies. When, long afterward, as an adult wandering in the woods, I would come upon a verdant growth of moss covering a rounded tree stump like a velvet bustier, delicately adorned by clusters of tiny spores waving on thin stalks,  the darker leaves of wintergreen, and, perhaps, the tiny crimson hats of British-soldier lichen, I would be suddenly reminded of those childhood gardens and at the same time inspired by a silent, awestruck wonder at such perfection, wrought so effortlessly by nature and imitated with such painstaking care not only by imaginative children but by master gardeners. For it’s not only the grand scenes — the fiord and river, the mountain peaks, the endless waves approaching from a distant horizon — that bring me to that sense of wonder and stillness, but also the microcosm, the world at our feet.

I thought of that while drawing today, this sense of zooming out and zooming in. The lichens lay pure and white against the rocks, the largest barely bigger than two hands, a blankness in the center of much greater visual complexity. But such is a glacier, too: a strange expanse of whiteness that seems, in its very silence, to call out to the stillness within us and find an echo.

“Rain, Darkness, Wind, Difficult food” — Eating in Iceland

This is my contribution to the "Food" edition of the Language/Place Blog Carnival.

We already had an idea, before going to Iceland this fall, that the cuisine might present some challenges. "Rain, darkness, more or less constant wind, difficult food": that's how our friend had described his homeland. We knew, from living next door to these Icelandic neighbors for six years, that the staples of their diet were fish and potatoes, with chocolate and other sweets close behind, and vegetables and fruits bringing up the rear.

Shallow soil, sheep, and sulphurous hot springs behind the hill.

As we became closer, they introduced us to some of their traditional foods, such as "hung lamb:" aged lamb that had been free-ranging on Icelandic mountainsides, and then herded in the fall round-up. Once roasted, it was a dark color, and very delicious, but gamier than the spring lamb we were used to. (The traditional Christmas dish is wild ptarmigan, which we still haven't tasted, but by all accounts it's also delicious.) Icelanders eat all parts of the sheep, including two delicacies we've so far been spared: sheep's face, and pickled sheep testicles.

The Icelandic rite of culinary passage is, of course, Hákarl or fermented shark. It's made from Greenland or Basking shark, which are poisonous when eaten fresh because they contain a great deal of urea and trimethlylamine oxide. In order to render the meat edible, the Icelanders behead and gut the shark, and then bury it in a shallow grave in sand and gravel; stones are placed on top to weight the carcass and gradually remove its water content. In some cases, men urinate on the carcass before burying it. Then it's left to ferment for 6-12 weeks, after which it is dug up, the brown skin removed, and the whitish flesh cut into small cubes.

Our friends served us Hákarl one evening in Vermont, a number of years ago. Elsa was pregnant; she had just been back home to visit her mother and had brought back several jars of the delicacy.  We ate it the traditional way: in small cubes on toothpicks, washed down with generous shots of Icelandic aquavit. Someone has decribed the taste as "a strong chewy cheese smothered in ammonia." Most people gag on their first taste; we managed two pieces each, and were immensely grateful for the gulps of liquor; our friends polished off at least half of the jar and I've always wondered if this ritual was part of making their unborn daughter a true Icelander! As for us, we woke in the middle of that night, and were horrified to smell the same strong ammonia on each other's breath, and even coming from our pores. Even now I can't look at the picture of bagged Hákarl without a shudder.

During this trip, we saw Hákarl in the stores, but didn't consume any. Instead we were treated to more kinds of fish than we knew existed, all excellent and fresh from the cold sea.

A surprise, and new favorite, was salt cod mashed with boiled potatoes, the traditional Monday night dinner for many Icelandic children. At one of Reykjavik's finest fish restaurants, this beloved dish was presented in a fancier preparation. That evening we also ate grilled seabird (guillemot - a type of auk):

cod cheeks:

smoked herring with lemon and a wasabi sauce:

and smoked puffin:

Half of the world's puffins gather and breed in Iceland – a total of 8-10 million birds. I learned later that the Icelandic children on the volcanic island of Heimay have a tradition of saving the baby puffins which are born on the steep cliffs and then leave their burrows at night, to navigate by the moon – but are sometimes confused by the town's streetlights. Wayward young puffins are taken home and then released. The same area, however, also has a tradition of harvesting adult puffins; the flesh is usually smoked before they're consumed. It's a bizarre circle, since adorable plush puffin dolls are a kind of Icelandic mascot, available in all the tourist and airport shops.

Except for potatoes, which are available in many colors and varieties, vegetables are few and far between. Very little can be cultivated on the island, with its extremely short growing season and shallow soils — in the few places where there is arable soil, rather than just lava. There are geothermally-heated greenhouses which supply tomatoes and strawberries, and one that even produces bananas, but most of the fruits and vegetables are flown in at high cost. While there we ate carrots, peas, apples, local wild berries (which were wonderful), local strawberries and tomatoes; mangoes, and orange juice; salad greens are hard to come by except at the height of summer.

Icelanders consume huge quantities of sugar and coffee. Dessert at the fancy restaurant was an Icelandic twist on creme brulee: this is skyr brulee, made from a type of yogurt cheese called skyr, similar to middle eastern Labneh or Greek yogurt, and often served with fresh arctic berries. It was fabulous.

There is excellent traditional dark flat bread, served for breakfast with skyr or slathered with thick fresh butter, and some bakeries still make a leavened dark bread that was one of my favorite foods while on the island. There are delicious tall muffins, baked in paper, filled with berries or apples, and innumerable cookies and cakes, but perhaps the best treats are extremely thin Scandinavian pancakes cooked in butter, served rolled either with a filling of granulated sugar, or of whipped cream and berries. When we lived next door, and he knew we were working very hard, our neighbor would sometimes arrive unannounced in the middle of the morning and silently, smilingly, hand us a plate piled with these wonderful pancakes, still warm from the pan, and just as quickly depart.

I'm currently reading a book called "Fight the Wild Island" by Ted Edwards, an account of a solo journey on foot across the interior — glaciers, lava fields, and black sand deserts –  in 1984, the first such recorded journey in modern times. Edwards is extremely deprecating about the Icelandic food and its cost, though he praises the lamb. Haldor Laxness's books about the grim lives of peasants certainly don't encourage a visit for gastronomic reasons, but for fish lovers like me, there is endless variety. When we go back, we'll explore the markets more closely; I'm sure there are frozen vegetables and root crops besides potatoes. Meanwhile, the islanders know the value of cod liver oil, and take it regularly!

November Elegy

Early November. We’ve had a late fall, and the weather remains warm. The trees whose branches touch to form a golden tunnel each year over Ave. de Lorimier have dropped their leaves, but in the interior of Parc Lafontaine the autumn colors are still at their peak. Last Thursday evening I left my house at 5 pm and walked through the park, where the late afternoon light filtered through the yellow and red leaves as if through a silky, patterned umbrella. How can I describe the tenderness of this northern autumn light, as the day gently gives way to evening? Like a melancholy song heard from afar, it is blue, diffuse, and soft, but multiplies the intensity of all colors before gradually dying away.

In Iceland this light began much earlier in the afternoon. One day, when J. and I had taken off on bikes, we noticed the sun beginning to go down around 3 pm, and decided we should start thinking about heading back home. But we had judged the signs wrongly. There, so much closer to the Arctic Circle, sunset takes forever. We rode home, and several hours later, still in daylight, Elsa and Hörður suggested a walk to the top of the hill in back of their house, where we stood together, looking over Reykjavik toward the ocean. Even at seven pm the kind of low, glancing light we recognize here as day’s final signal still illuminated our faces, and turned the eroded slopes of Mt. Esja, in the distance, into folds of gold and blue.

Last night it was raining lightly, and the wet pavement reflected the sky and branches in the spaces between its pasted mosaic of leaves. I walked down the park’s long formal <em>allée</em> of trees toward the fountain, which was turned off for the winter a week or two ago, and then went left along the path above the first of the park’s two serpentine lakes, both drained now to reveal pebbled basins coated with green algae.

Just a few weeks ago, the park would have been full of people, on benches and blankets, catching the last warmth of summer, and the sounds of guitars and African drums would have mingled with children’s voices shrieking with pleasure as they threw bread to obligingly-eager flocks of ducks and gulls. Today, the paths were nearly empty, and the birds gone. I passed a handsome man with tousled grey hair and a brown leather jacket, riding home on his bicycle, and, at the northern end of the drained lake, a much younger man walked a small dog clad in a dog-coat so brilliantly yellow it mocked the trees.

I passed in front of the park’s new cafe-resto, shut tight, its oversize terracotta planters empty now, and stepped onto the path above the lower lake. Here, at last, were the ducks and gulls, splashing in the remaining pool of shallow water. A larger shape stood poised at the top of this pool, and, squinting now in the low light, I saw that it was a great blue heron, an opportunist no doubt drawn here by easy fishing for trapped minnows, or maybe goldfish. One night, returning home in the opposite direction, I’d seen a school of them in the light cast by a streetlamp, shimmering beneath the dark surface like shreds of copper foil. Now the heron presided over his domain: the lord of the manor calmly watching the squabbling peasants, his slate-blue coat turned up at the collar against a north wind.

At the end of the park, I waited for the stoplight and then crossed, keeping out of the way of the cyclists coming off the bike path on rue Cherrier. A young woman waited there for her bus. Tall and slender, with her black hair piled in an elegant knot atop her head, she wore a long black trenchcoat with a cinched waist, and black high-heeled boots. She held an oversized umbrella, the kind golfers use, with an outer border of black and an inner circle of alternating trapezoids of black, and a brown that matched the color of the face that it framed. Calmly, she waited, every now and then raising a cigarette that trailed across this background of black, like a lecturer’s piece of chalk.

I had been on my way to the Sherbrooke metro station to catch a train for a 6 pm choir rehearsal at the cathedral. But, after checking my watch, I walked on, mesmerized by the falling light, all the way to the center of the city.

Delight…

…is discovering that Luisa Igloria wrote a poem partly inspired by my artwork. It's over at Via Negativa, today.

Thank you so much, Luisa.

 

Reykjavik Rocks: a drawing in progress

Day 1

Day 2, first

Day 2, second. The rocks about 2/3 finished; tomorrow I hope to finish the rocks on the right and the turf above the rocks, and figure out what to do in the foreground. The charcoal drawing is fairly large, about 26 x 23".

Here's a somewhat closer view. I should show you what my fingers look like after an afternoon of this!

Here's the drawing at the end of Day 3:

And the final drawing, Day 4.

(Please click on the image for a larger version.)

 

 

 

Back in the Studio

In spite of feeling tremendously excited by the landscape in Iceland, I've been having a hard time getting going on any artwork. I think I've needed to think about it, but I've also been setting my internal bar too high rather than just plunging in. I did this drawing (above) last week but it wasn't what I was aiming for at all — this is a view of the same beach I posted about a few days ago. I kept the sketchbook open and studied the drawing everyday, and today I started over.

Until I start drawing, and thinking about what's emerging, I sometimes don't know what it is that I want to emphasize: what for me is the aspect of the subject that I find the most powerful or compelling. It may end up being a surprise, though I'm sure that my subconscious "eye" registered the information already — the process of drawing becomes a process of simplification, of shedding layers of extraneous information, including the distracting or inaccurate story my mind has made up about the subject, until the most important kernel emerges. It can be quite a surprise.

I chose a different angle, and began drawing, and quickly this time realized what was important: predominantly the forms of the cracks in the rocks and the angles those cracks creat; secondarily, the interplay between the large skull-like white areas and the large shadows. The latter doesn't show very well in either of the following drawings – the size of all the black lines is too similar, but it will, I hope, when I'm done.

The final print will probably include more of the scene on the right. The large black shape at upper right will be broken up – that's turf on top of the rocks. But this is progress, and that feels good!

Near Reykjavik

These pictures were taken at an unmarked beach to the west of Reykjavik; we rode there, along the sea, on our bicycles just as the sun came out and a light rain ended. Reykjavik weather, we both heard and experienced, tends to be windy and drizzly; we saw a rainbow almost every day we were there. When we returned from this little trip, our friends told us the name of this place is "Castration Beach." We asked why, of course, and they ventured that it was where horses had been taken to be castrated. I think it's because all the rocks look like balls. Some definitely looked like they had come from the moon.

The long mountain across the harbor is Mt. Esja, which Reykjavik locals call their city mountain. In just five days we saw Mt. Esja in many moods; I agree that it's very beautiful.

“Tiptoe to the Portals of Geothermal Hell”

Watching Strokkur erupt — photo by J.

That was the apt subject line of a letter from my friend G, after reading my "Fire and Brimstone" account of the hot springs and geysers in Iceland. In his letter, he described a trip to Yellowstone National Park, and how different his experience of similar phenomenon had been. I've revised my previous post to include his comments, and have also added two photographs from J. showing Elsa and me watching Strokkur erupt (above)– and an eruption itself. And I'm submitting the whole revised post for this month's anniversary issue of the Language/Place Blog Carnival, hosted by the incomparable Dorothee Lang,  whose subject is "Streets, Signs, Directions." Please take a look, and visit the blog carnival when this issue is published at the end of the month — I think it's one of the most interesting projects of its kind right now.