Indeterminacy




Am loving the John Cage Indeterminacy random excerpt generator. A wonderful appropriation of Cages' ideas around chance and spontaneity  in art and music making. Cage defined Indeterminacy as 'the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways', and with the random arrangement of the stories, each telling, each performance is unique.

I like the simplicity:
I tell one story a minute, and, when it’s a short one, I have to spread it out. Later on when I come to a long one, I have to speak as rapidly as I can.”

I am looking to explore ideas of indeterminacy through installation, where objects become like characters, works have the ability to be displayed in substantially different ways, and display takes on aspects of performance. 

And I will continue to write down stories, sans time-frame. 

generate your own Cageian lecture HERE

On the Seine







Tourist boats on the Seine, scanned and distorted. Attempts to create a surrealistic sensation reminiscent of the boat trip in the 1971 psychedelic masterpiece that was 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'.
The poor quality of the images give the tourists trigger-happily photographing the banks of the river, cameras raised high, the impression of hands help up in terror or exhilaration. Rollercoaster of the Seine.

Att plugga

             




                                   







A portrait taken by Jane where I am slightly obscured by the ongoing, never-ending, cascading knitted fishing line project which has now taken on so many possible exhibiting forms I can't remember them all. It is like a security blanket in some ways, something to work on as a way to just to keep working. It is filled up with scores of ideas both related to the work itself and of other works, as I sit and think and knit, plugging away at it. 

In swedish 'att plugga' means to study. I like that. 

All these ideas have accumulated within this knitted mass, and have lost their original form - instead morphing into the texture of the knit, becoming transparent, a tangled mess of lines of thought and streams of consciousness. Sort of how I am writing about it now. 
Sometimes the futility of the whole thing gets me down. I don't even what it is meant to be anymore! I jokingly (not so jokingly) cry to anyone within earshot. First it was to be stretched between the floor and ceiling, then laid out like a wobbly rug on the ground, anchored by some small island like objects. Then it was a wave, a waterfall, a galaxy - a hammock, a camp bed, a curtain. Just now I think of it as a sort of wrap - like the suitcases you see at the baggage claim swaddled in Gladwrap. 

As a thing in itself it is aesthetically pleasing, and tempting to touch. And it's malleability is it's strongest asset. The longer I work at it, more manifestations will emerge. This is as much about the process as the end result. 
I fret too much about the end result. 

"To be installed in a manner which expresses the amount of ideas that were thought of during the making of this large knitted beast."
        A working title.
Or

"All of my ideas from the past 2 years are tangled up in here somewhere."

A prop. I feel an artists book in the works. The various forms of the knitted fishing line project in a long accordion book. Apropos Ed Ruscha or some such. Black and white. 

I should just let it grow as long as it needs to. The practice is being maintained, and it provides me with time to wonder about what is going on, what I want to be doing. It is relaxing. Right now it feels like I am finally admitting all I want to do is knit a seemingly endless train of fishing line, without really knowing why. 
I am constantly reminded of the Mainland Cheese ads from New Zealand - (not the one where they replace musicians with cheese, "Chubby Chedder! The Brie Gees!" but the "Good things take time" one. As in cheese.) 

I wonder why I always try to be so serious in my art practice, when in general I am really quite silly. (re: cheese ad. I spend a lot of time knitting and thinking of more cheese musicians.) A recurring thought as I knit, and one I believe more firmly in with each stitch, is that Art is too serious. 

It will be finished at some point - and the best thing will be deciding it is finished due to some occurrence in my life: an outside influence will decide its conclusion. And then, holding all my ideas, I will decide how it will be. At least in it's first incarnation. 

It is my 27th birthday on Sunday.






Paris through the blinds with furniture - a series




Paris on film - inside Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photographing the Tuileries through the sheer blinds, creating the effect of an interior projection of outside. Ash peers through the blinds to capture an unobstructed shot. Art Nouveau furniture quietly fills the foreground. 
The framing, narrative and diffused light have such a cinematic quality. 
Images to be converted into slide film and projected somewhere which isn't Paris. Because even though this is Paris, it doesn't really feel like it. 

This is a spotlight that can be fixed to any appropriate surface, even the user's forehead.





Small things - clever, perfectly formed. Simple ideas, functional.
I want to simplify everything. I use so many words, smother works with a deluge of different ideas, theories, concepts each trying to justify the other while at the same time elbowing to the front of the queue.
I want to employ a new simplicity in my work - pare things backs, no over-involved plotlines; but to remember important phrases: a wild sheep chase; the macguffin; tangled threads of crime.

Just make statements. Of intent. I feel like I have been drifting aimlessly along for the past while (I don't even know when this feeling set in).
I found these lights in a book I was processing at the library. Great idea, suction cups! Beautiful and useful.
I am particularly partial to the light suction cupped to the forehead.

I want to put caster wheels on all my pieces of furniture so things can be easily moved around. I used to call these wheels 'coasters' because that is what they did, coast around.
Lights/Bookshelves/Cabinets not just tables and chairs. The ability to reassemble your living spaces. Living in movement.
Inspired by book trolleys at the library and a lamp suction cupped onto a dude's forehead.

I would describe my title like this

I don't appear to have many words in me these days, but then I have always considered myself a bit of a rambler. I would like to be able to explain my ideas and feelings in a few well chosen concise sentences. As yet I am unable to do this.

A drawing of mine currently hangs in one of the corridors at my work. It reads:

OM NATTEN ÄR ALLA KATTER GRÅ

in capitals.

I thought about why I chose this phrase for this drawing. Why any phrase? And then I realised I could have chosen any phrase, in any language. But in my head, whenever I read any sort of statement, film/book/article title, tag line, slogan, my voice takes on a grandiose tone. The phrase is read as a actress making a melodramatic climax accompanied by the sweeping gestures of her arms. 
The thing is, in your head, it always sounds different.

It has become important.
Perhaps it's the Capitals.

The Gallery at the library has a standard template of questions the exhibiting students are required to fill in. The one I am always frustrated by (perhaps due to the fact I am an artist/library assistant, not a student, and this template is not really catered towards me) is:
Mina verk skulle jag beskriva så här: (I would describe my work like this:)

I didn't want to describe my work. That was too difficult. I wanted to title it. So I looked at it, and thought how would I describe what this phrase 'OM NATTEN ÄR ALLA KATTER GRÅ' is. The title would simply describe what the work is, as titles used to. Do they still? Don't know.

SAGE ADVICE FROM A HARD-BOILED DETECTIVE.

this is to be my method for titling from now on. "I would describe my work like this..."




inadequate photo documentation courtesy of instagram





4 things




 

4 images that I have been really drawn to of late. Firstly a lovely colour page from my excellent book 'The Lore of Ships' -  the flags make me want to write out mantras to live by in a sort of drape-y semaphore as a hanging soft sculpture. A wonderful knotted sponge-like form, created by Jens Risch, twisting and contorting upon itself in painful confusion. TV series 'Psych' parody Twin Peaks, and include many of the original cast. Here Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs), Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer) and Lenny Von Dohlen (Harold Smith) discover the body of 'Paula Merrel' "wrapped in plastic". And fourthly, a very large palette with (in hindsight) a rather Audrey-ish looking girl) found in the wonderful image archive that is Old Chum.

As yet untitled



Florence Wild
Untitled as yet, 2012, 500mm x 400mm, fishing line 

An almost square of knitted fishing line. Strung up in front of my living room window. In it's simplified form, displayed in a way I had not intended it, it rather captivates me. The process of making the work sometimes challenges my original intentions.

patterns within everyday life


Patterns are present in every facet of our daily life, tangible ones and abstract. Patterns can be chaotic or reassuring - a hectic psychedelic kaftan or the simple routine of repeated motions.  I have always held an interest in patterns - how can one not when the are the very building blocks of our lives so to speak. Patterns are like clues - to a life/style, in a detective story. One is always looking out for patterns in a hope of building up the larger picture.

I have long thought about creating patterns myself, patterns that can be multiplied and replicated and printed on material, a thought that has wandered in and out of my consciousness intermittently throughout my teenage and adult years, and something I have tried to integrate into my art practice both conceptually and in more literal forms.
Above is a sculpture I made as part of my graduating installation at Elam. Apart from the sculpture papier machéd in fake marbled Formica, on the floor lies a piece of paper - a pattern I made stamping a letter W across the page, first right way up, then the wrong, creating a sort of diamond/chicken wire pattern, though one that was shaky, riddled with errors, obviously executed by hand. The result (virtually indistinguishable in the poor photo above) was a little similar to Latvian artist Viktor Timofeev's 'WWW', which I stumbled upon by chance on the website PATTERNITY.

It was from seeing the designs of Sonia Delaunay as part of an exhibition at Louisiana about Avant-gard in the early Twentieth Century. The designs we simple and intriguing, her involvement with the Orphism movement clearly influencing her use of colour and circular motifs, as well as using rectangles, forming patterns like parquet floors. And while seeing these patterns manifest themselves as clothing and fabric was beautiful, I was drawn to her original drawing and sketches, watercolour and gauche on paper, the illustration of the first hint of the idea. It all seemed so casually executed, yet with great finesse.

"I have done fifty designs, relationships of colour using pure geometrical forms with rhythm. They were, and remain, colour scales - really a purified version of our concept of painting. (...) The rhythm is based on numbers, for colour can be measured by the number of vibrations. This is a completely new concept, one which opens infinite horizons for painting and may be used by everyone who can feel and understand it."
- Sonia Delaunay

In a time where I feel I am surrounded by art that is grandiose and powerful, large-scaled, minimalist and monochromatic and technical, it is a wonderful feeling when such small, old, basic illustrations of ideas can capture so much of my imagination. And with the hectic pace of the fashion world, and the types of prints fabric and textile designers are creating: digital, luridly coloured, computer generated, to look back on the prints of Delaunay is not such a bad idea.

And maybe this will be something I will continue with, interesting fabric patterns for and from everyday life. My first one (apart from the W netting) is a pattern of boots and noses.

an idea and something to accompany it


Leonor Antunes at Marc Foxx via Contemporary Art Daily.

"assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously"

(excerpt from press release:)
In this exhibition, Antunes considers Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi in “lina” 2012, a delicate brass and silver constructed curtain which is a reflection of the parquet floor design in the immanent modernist house she designed, known as the “Glass House” built Sao Paolo in 1951. Bo Bardiʼs influence can also be seen in the soft red leather floor work, “discrepancies with L.B.” which takes its form from the hard gridded window treatment of Bo Bardiʼs building “Sesc Pompeii”, also in Sao Paulo.

“lina” is installed upon “assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously”, 2012, the exhibitionsʼ title and largest sculpture. The 9.5 x 9.5 foot walnut wooden pavilion is also the venue for “chão”, 2011, a 12 part hand- knotted and incrementally increasing, gridded series of delicate black nets. The canopy itself delineates the room, asserting an almost domestic feeling and providing an exhibited arrangement of grid upon grid within the show.

Hanging from the rafters and breaking her gridded constructions is the organic work “random intersections #7”, a sculpture made from handmade black leather straps, similar to horse bridals and referencing Carlo Mollinoʼs equestrian school in Turin “Società Ippica Torinese”, built in 1937 but destroyed in 1960. Antunes, like Mollino, has a great appreciation for the movement of material and this work brings her materiality back to a more corporeal connection.

The marriage of the fine black netting, the metallic glimmering curtain and the robust and darkly slick wooden structure upon which the works adorn, makes for an interesting and pleasing relationship. It reflects various thoughts I have myself had recently, revolving around an abandoned metal spring-bed base (which has since disappeared, and whose disappearance I may not fully get over for weeks or months) and a large pile of flaccid overstretched rubber bands.

I think it is only recently that tactility has taken on such importance in my work. The overwhelming feeling of wanting to touch something is luring me into the photographs of Antunes' work.

Knotting, linking, twisting; connecting ideas and materials is a common motif represented in my practice, building up textures and surfaces, images from small marks or gestures - stitches, knitting, creating patterns, repetition of shapes, reshaping the line - whether it is a length of embroidery thread or a pencil mark on paper.

(some notes from my journal)
"an interesting object (the bed base), black and silver and brown, stripped bare of any embellishments. skeletal. the bare bones. structural, architectural. the inner workings, masculine. Uncovered, exposed.
a single bed, only room for one.
standing upright, no room for anyone.
removed from it's original function/identity.

the coils and springs have a hypnotic quality, round & round.
rubber bands - the opposite of the coiled spring: soft, flaccid, stretchy.
mirroring the circular motif of the springs but out of shape, wobbly, chaotic, disorganised.

spring : springa sprang har sprungit (run, ran, have run)
spring is run in swedish.

a netting of rubber bands, covering the upright bed base. draped over the frame like a caress, an arm across the shoulders. a shroud/net encompassing it.
the bands are like thoughts, ideas, anxieties, unanswerable questions, dreams.
what fills the mind and what weighs one down.
tangled threads - made even worse with no beginning or end, circles connected to more circles, no straight lines here.
rubber bands with the ability to be stretched and reached through but can they ever be escaped from?"


just some thoughts to be thought about.
first item of business, sourcing another perfect spring single bed base, and ruing the missed opportunity of the one I thought was languishing casually waiting for me to get home from work to be rescued.


I am a rock, I am an island


Part of a sculpture - knitted fishing line gathered into a type of bindle, in which lies collected rocks and stones from various Swedish Islands - Gotland, Fårö, Venn; limestone from the quarry on the outskirts of Malmö; coloured pieces of glass that have washed ashore at Matakatia Bay in New Zealand.

This is the first 'bindle' I have made, knitted with the finest fishing line I could find - perhaps it was too fine, I was forced to knit it using wooden kebab skewers instead of knitting needles. The line shimmers and flickers in the early morning sunlight, while it hangs in my bedroom window due to a lack of studio space.

More are being made, and using the thickest fishing line I could find, I will encase a large limestone rock and use it with a pulley system, which reminds me of sailing and boats, to be a counter weight to the smaller, more delicate bindles of stones and pebbles, which will hang in the air and slowly rotate, as hanging things are wont to do.

I vaguely rambled to my friend Claire about it:

                       Florence:
but now i think i might suspend them with pulleysreminds me of boats                        Claire:I'm not sure they gave me an associationI was just struck by the mesh...and strange silkiness of the rock  Florence: to me they relate to islands
  like the islands that were thoght to exist but were actually mirages
hence the shimmery fishing line
  and the rocks within and i wanted them to be like baskets or specimen collections
  and they deal with loneliness too
like how i think of islands and boats being self contained entities
  alone in the sea
  and i like the idea of suspension
  how it relates to balance
  and also the word
  suspence
  tension
  waiting
  Claire:Its poetic
  I saw something more akin to strange fisherman like practices
 Which May seem unnecessary but which one doesn't question since
Fishermen and the practice of fishing as generally free of the unnecessary and all about purpose...

There are always more things to think about. And one does start to feel like a fisherman repairing his nets in the winter, and it gives you time to think about how the work will look, and how it will function, and what it means. The ideas about it and around grow as the work does.

Attention to detail

two works by Daan Van Golden at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, and two views of Martin Creed's installation at sketch, London.

Daan van Golden
His relatively small but diverse body of work is characterized by an acute attention to detail. References to important works from art history, as well as to less exalted images from commerce, pop-music and daily life are important components of his work. Van Golden has never been too concerned about prevailing artistic trends and has always carved a path of his own. His art does not consist of large brushstrokes, but of a much more modest gesture: his paintings are the result of a labour-intensive process, whereby a visual motive is explored in a very careful and precise manner.


Martin Creed at sketch:
Work No. 1347 consists of 96 different types of marble, in a formation of zigzagging lines across the floor, while Work No. 1343 is a new work specially made for the restaurant in which every single piece of cutlery, glassware, lamp, chair and table is different.

Attention to detail is an important thing. Something I seriously consider and take pride in with my work. While I appreciate the grand gesture, the found object, and the impersonal minimalism, there is something about labour intensive finely detailed craft which resonates with  me. Details are what give things credibility and authenticity apparently - at least this is what people praise and/or complain of in any televised period drama. The measure of something.

I like to think of details slowly building themselves up, accumulating numbers until their presence is inescapable. I strive to create a sort of push/pull effect - where the audience must step back from the work to take in the full picture, but afterwards are pulled close to see how the image is made.

It is in the details that one finds the clues in a murder mystery ("The Murder Mystery" could pretty much be a concept by which I question the meaning of life through my art practice). Red herrings too. It could just be the way a person phrases a sentence that gives the game away. I like to try and watch out for it, pick up the clues en route, and form an educated guess as to whom the perpetrator could be. It rarely, if ever happens like that however.

At this point it feels apt to admit that every single school report card given to me used the word 'diligent' in some capacity. It is a word that follows me around, and during my final year of art school, finally infiltrated my studio.

Before I used to sit on an idea, shape it like a bit of clay in my head, bolstering it with various concepts, cultural references and the like. My idea process changed while my work changed, and it took on a more insular, patient, labour-orientated facet, and all this time spent working, was also spent thinking, and both started to influence and build upon each other, and also from the music playing while this working and thinking process is going on. Hmm, sounds pretty wishy-washy. Bit new-age, 'organic'.

I guess what I am trying to with my writing these days is a similar method to working and thinking simultaneously. Trying to reach some level of clarity just by typing sentences around some of the thoughts in my head. Different ways of saying the same thing.  These days I just start writing things down/typing things out, seeing where they will lead me and how often I repeat myself.

And by-the-by, I am convinced that Van Golden's work of the young girl cartwheeling is out of sequence. Surely the 3rd and the 4th images should be switched around to give a complete cartwheel? But maybe, that is the whole point of it - that the details don't add up.

A blue island in a red desert









































"Once there was a girl on an island. She was bored with grown ups, who scared her. She didn't like boys, all pretending to be grown ups. So, she was always alone. Among the cormorants, the seagulls, and wild rabbits. She had found a little isolated beach where the sea was transparent and the sand pink. She loved that spot. Nature's colours were so lovely and there was no sound. She left when the sun went down.
One morning, a boat appeared. Not one of the usual boats, a real sailing ship, one of those that braved the seas and the storms of this world. And, who knows... of other worlds. From afar, it looked splendid. As it approached, it became mysterious. She saw no one aboard. It stopped a while, then veered and sailed away. She was used to peoples' strange ways and was not surprised. But no sooner back on shore ... there! (sound of singing). All right for one mystery, but not two!
- who was singing?
The beach was deserted. But the voice was there, now near, now far. Then it seemed to come from the sea, an inlet among the rocks, many rocks that she had never realised looked like flesh. And the voice at that point was so sweet."
- who was singing?
"Everybody. Everything."

Story from Michelangelo Antonioni's sumptuous 1964 colour film 'Il Deserto Rosso'.
I wrote this passage down in my journal after watching Il Deserto Rosso last year, the use of the vignette in the narrative, it's contents, imagery and tone all reflected similar thoughts I had about a series I am working on at present. I enjoy taking the time to take down something in my own hand, to go back and reread.
Also, I think the people's handwriting will be completely illegible in twenty years.

Off Vantage Point


Felice Varini
Zigzag entre le cercle at la tour (Niigata, Japan), 2009
Castillon du Gard n.1, 1981
2006 Huit carres (Versailles, France), 2006


Felice Varini was one of the first artist models I chose for myself, (back in the days where artist models were the way ideas came about) in my sixth form sculpture class. I was drawn to his disregard for reality, treating the three dimensional landscape as a blank canvas, and the masterful illusions he created. The tangible illustration of this fictional plane place on top of the world as I knew it impressed me. I was always more interested in the ways the work changed once one abandons the 'vantage point'. The spot where Varini pulls the strings, and seemingly halts movement, slows time and flattens space. (for some reason, probably due to photographs, I always imagine viewing the works as being a solitary endeavour - only one person can be at the precise vantage point at one time, and the view is never hindered by the presence of living things.) And instantly, one is shown The 'ANSWER'. There, laid out bare and perfectly formed, waiting to be accepted, when you are in 'the right place at the right time'. In that respect, apart from their unfailing apparant solidity, the works are similar to mirages.

The works 'off vantage point' seem so much more dynamic, full of diagonal lines of motion and distortion. Perhaps this reflects my natural view of the world as a whole, a place full of clues, hints, red herrings and false trails, smaller pieces of information amassing to create something larger than the individual scraps themselves, continuously linked together. One cannot be directed to a static spot, providing the end and not the means, offering only the solution.

I like to reside within the fiction and the reality, so then it becomes up to me, and my existing within the space his works occupy, as to whether I join the illusion. Instead of standing still, I would walk around the works in a semi-circle, crossing the 'vantage point' somewhere in the middle.

I think of one of my favourite quotes when looking at Varini's work, from Dennis Potter's 1987 masterpiece The Singing Detective:

"All solutions and no clues, that's what the dumb heads want. That's what the bloody novel 'he said, she said, descriptions of the sky..., I'd rather it was the other way round, all clues no solutions, that's the way things really are. Plenty of clues, no solutions."

Detail



































Detail of an ongoing embroidery work, based on a map of the mirage island 'Crocker Land'.
Done while listening to Neil Young, Paul Butterfield, Lee Hazlewood and James Carr.

Small things slowly accumulate to create larger things - stitches, letters. Built up to reveal an image, narrative, something in which all the tiny stitches are used to link together and form a new idea.
There is a sort of tension within the work: pulling one in to recognise the details which make up the work, and being pushed back to see how each stitch is linked together creating the bigger picture.

Items of Interest












































































Isamu Noguchi / My Name Florence Tee / Buoy Rope Bag / Ngaio Marsh / Lady Michael Balcon as Minerva by Madame Yevonde / Danger Man

Some recent items of interest and things that have caught my eye: portrait of Isamu Noguchi in one of his elegant chairs - one thing I would like to do with my life is make chairs; recently I bought this tee shirt from the Swedish shop weekday - ironically (or fatally) it was named the 'My Name Florence Tee', and after that there was no looking back; have started another art project knitting fishing line whilst probably diminishing my already failing eye sight, the main inspiration for this stems from various rope covers for buoys; I also recently completed reading Ngaio Marsh's autobiography, she will always stand as one of my favourite authors alongside Raymond Chandler, Haruki Murakami, Joseph Heller and Herge; Lady Michael Balcon as Minerva looking rather similar to a cover of a Chandler/James Bond novel, with shades of Twin Peaks thrown in for good measure; Danger Man, perhaps the precursor to 'The Prisoner' - I swoon every time John Drake says his token catchphrase 'I'm obliged' and wish I could incorporate this into my everyday parlance except no one else would understand what I meant by it. I also appreciate Danger Man's relatively realistic fight scenes, at least compared to other spy programmes of the time.

Wayward Land



































Chart of Segment of the Western Arctic North and Northwest of Grant Land by Edwin Swift Balch, 1912, showing the unexplored 'Crocker Land', sighted by Robert Peary in 1906. This fabled land lead to an ill-fated expedition to explore the nature and possible inhabitants of Crocker Land, however they discovered the land in fact, did not exist, and was actually a type of mirage known as a Fata Morgana.

The day was exceptionally clear, not a cloud or trace of mist; if land could be seen, now was our time . Yes, there it was! It could even be seen without a glass, extending from southwest true to northeast. Our powerful glasses, however.. brought out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the white) the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow-capped peaks to such a degree that, had we not been out on the frozen sea for 150 miles, we would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our judgment then as now, is that this was a mirage or loom of the sea ice.

 This imaginary land mass, created by a trick of the light, and the subsequent effort of the Crocker Land Expedition, is the basis for a new work I have begun in my new studio space. A hand embroidered rendering of this map on a white shower curtain, stitched in white thread and fishing line, blurring outlines with surroundings, incorporating materials which will shimmer in the light, reflecting upon ideas of mirages and mistaken realities, and the feeling of being small and inconsequential in a vast, cold landscape.

This is the first work of a series I am working on involving ideas about loneliness, solitude, islands, ships and the sea.

"...the Crocker Land mirage could symbolise the loneliness of the sea in another way. It is almost like a delusion instead of an illusion, something Donald Crowhurst may have imagined seeing, to convince himself of his sanity (or lack thereof). The sense of false hope a mirage can cause, just like how a weary traveller in the desert believes the mirage he is seeing is an oasis, it is uncanny how it appears to take the form of the thing one most desires, and the opposite of what is actually there - in the desert one believes he is seeing water, whereas at sea, one thinks he has sighted land."
- notes from my art journal about Crocker Land and mirages.

Robert Peary in the Arctic



































 Robert Peary in Arctic furs.

"In June 1906, Commander Peary, from the summit of Cape Thomas Hubbard, at about latitude 83 degrees N, longitude 100 degrees W, reported seeing land glimmering in the northwest, approximately 130 miles (210 km) away across the Polar Sea. He did not go there, but he gave it a name in honor of the late George Crocker of the Peary Arctic Club. That is Crocker Land. Its boundaries and extent can only be guessed at, but I am certain that strange animals will be found there, and I hope to discover a new race of men."

- Donald Baxter MacMillan

FATA MORGANA [part I]


[click image to enlarge]

An example of a Fata Morgana mirage, a rare and complex type of superior mirage. Here, an illusion of a large 'wall' of land is created, upon what is actually just open water.
The name of the mirage stems from the Italian for Morgan le Fay, the sorceress of Arthurian legend. In Italy, she was believed to be associated with the sirens, who lured unwary sailors to their death in the waters around Sicily.

At Sea



Clinton Watkins
Cont Ship #1
2005



Joseph Cornell
Jack's Dream
c. late 1930's




























The abandoned Teignmouth Electron is discovered: Donald Crowhurst's trimaran in which he attempted the Golden Globe Race, that would result in his eventual insanity and suicide.

via, via, via

The image from Jack's Dream by Joseph Cornell comes from a fascinating blog by the name of the art of memory, in particular a collection of atmospheric imagery of the ocean, film stills featuring the sea, illustrations of ships, fog lights and horns, misty rigging and alongside paintings and photographic works of waves. I stumbled across it looking for film stills from L'avventura (Antonioni, 1960).

My interest in islands and the sea grows continuously. Ships are, in a way, similar to moving islands. So much mystery surrounds both, and both can maintain an almost continuous isolation as long as one is deprived of the other.