The best sentence yet to be written in association with printmaking: “am doing a dermatologist’s office these days, and thought about your prints. Do you still make them?”
My students at Parsons made a great booklet about several buried streams in Manhattan. They lead tours of the streams too. Check out the booklet here and see photos from our tour on the class blog.
I am giving a presentation with my friend Nim Lee at a great little conference on Friday, April 8. Grid + Flow will be hosted by Temple University in Philadelphi and will consist of a day of presentations by artists, historians, writers and designers on the topic of humanities’ relationship with the environment and cities over time. We will be presenting our Rising Currents project and thoughts on how Philadelphia could use similar strategies to imagine new flood zone infrastructures in anticipation of the increased impact from urban runoff. See the symposium website here.
My class at Parsons has started a blog to track their research on abandoned streams and urban infrastructure. They update it about once a week. Go here to have a look. Also, at the end of March we will be participating in Water Week at the New School by giving tours of three buried waterways in lower Manhattan. Check the blog in a few weeks for more information.
I just received a copy of Topos magazine with a wee little article written by yours truly. See Notes on Railroad Park in the currents section at the beginning of the magazine. I’ll post a copy here too.
Every summer through out my childhood we drove from Idaho Falls to Denver. My favorite part of the trip was a spot in Wyoming where the horizon filled with a field of stark white objects. They were windmills and as we drove past I strained to see how many blades were turning. Over the last century the windmill played an important roll in our cultivation of the western landscape. Today its place is being renewed.
We’ve all seen the photograph of a windmill silhouetted against the horizon, green fields spilling out around its base. Beginning in the 1850’s the windmill was the most visible mark of our presence in this landscape. Miles from the nearest town or homestead windmills were used to pump water for cattle herds. When horses were the only mode of transportation the task of transporting water between rivers and roaming herds was insurmountable. These simple machines, scattered across the landscape, easily pumped the hundreds of gallons of water needed to satisfy ranging cattle herds.
Windmills made ranching in the west viable. As the land filled with farmers and ranchers, grain silos and water towers sprang up. In the early 1900’s the first power lines went up, drawing great lines through the landscape as they strung together communities and power plants. Modernization of the west began to fill the horizon with humanity’s presence.
Today the old windmills are still there, some in disrepair others still spinning, but they are no longer the dominant object on the horizon. Though the land is still expansive, the vertical evidence of civilization continues to proliferate.
The immensity that drew ranchers here in the 1800’s has attracted a new pioneer. The windmill is back, but instead of pumping water, they spin for power. Here and there on the horizon vast fields of them emerge, three bladed, shockingly white against afternoon thunderclouds, spinning oh-so-slowly in the breeze.
One hundred years ago, homesteaders used the wind to provide the necessary ingredients for their success in this new landscape. What were once an icon of the wild west are now remade into icons of environmental progress. Many of the things that made this landscape perfect for ranching—open spaces, few people, constant gentle winds—are equally important for wind farms.
We change our landscapes to suite our needs. The western landscape of our ancestors is not the same landscape that we see today. Some will pine for the lonely iconic windmill while we further crowd the horizon. But the fields of white windmills have existed as long as I can remember and I have always found them transfixing. We are part of the first generation for whom these are new icons of the American West.
A few weeks ago I found out a class I’d proposed to teach at Parsons was full and going to run. I’m extra excited about this class because it is going to allow me to pursue my interest in the intersection between printmaking and design. This is also one of the wonderful things about Parsons- they love cross-disciplinary classes.
The class will focus on investigating the intersection of historic water ways and urban form. We will use printmaking to explore processes related to water and then use what we’ve learned to develop projects that begin engage remnant waterway. We’ll be taking trips to the New York Public Library’s amazing map room, walking around the city tracing old streams and then finally developing projects that use ecology and installations in public space to rethink the relationship between water and urban landscapes.
We’ll be keeping a blog so I’ll link to that once it’s set up. For now here is a little movie I made to advertise the class to students.
There are days that seem to conspire to make you remember how lucky you are. Today I got a letter from my health insurance. I’ve got Cobra and until this month the government had been subsidizing my payments. Today I found out that the subsidy has ended and my bill’s gone from $160 to $445. I am trying to swing it as a freelance landscape architect/artist/writer and don’t have a steady income.
When I got off the phone with the company I had my standard stressed out neck ache. I spent the next few hours googling alternatives with no luck. Health insurance is just expensive.
I took a break from the computer to work on some Christmas projects and had just started silk screening when the door bell rang. There was a man on the porch asking for work. he had no front teeth and a scruffy look but he was willing to do anything- clean the gutters, rake leaves- to get a few bucks. It is cold in Nashville tonight, near freezing. He had on a light jacket. I’ve never had someone show up on my porch asking for work and my landlord pays someone to do all that work. As I was telling him this my heart was breaking but I was in slightly panicked and on auto pilot. No we don’t need help, no I’m sure about that. He gave me a plaintive look as he asked one last time “Are you sure?? I am just trying to do this the honest way.” Again I said no and turned to go back into my warm house where my fancy laptop was playing country music and my silk screen project awaited me.
Immediately I was sorry I hadn’t come up with some small job for him. Just a little raking so that I could pay him $5 and we could both have felt like we’d done something to help. Instead I roamed around the house staring at all our stuff and feeling horrible. We see poverty every day in the city. Homeless people selling papers, bums on the street with a cup of change but it is profoundly different when someone is standing on your porch asking for help. I am sorry that I didn’t think faster.
Two months ago I found myself zooming down the highway in a car (recently bought and driven across the country) full of plants, thirty miles outside Nashville, TN. I couldn’t quite believe it. It was one of those instances when time creeps up on you and suddenly you are doing something you’ve been thinking about for a LONG time. Here came my new life rushing at me. There were no longer going to be gritty rainy walks through post-industrial neighborhoods on the way to the art studio, no more jamming myself into a crowed subway to ride into the city, no more bike rides (because that was the easiest way to get around) across Brooklyn.
Part of me was relieved to leave New York. I knew from the beginning that my time there was temporary, that I wouldn’t last. I never expected to conquer the city, only make my best attempt at surviving there. My friend Andrew always said ‘ People only leave New York City when they get over themselves.’ I laughed at him the first time he said it, but the more I lived there the more I began to think he was right.
There is something about New York City, maybe it’s the girt, maybe it’s swarms of ambitious people, that makes you want to beat the city at it’s own game. If only in some small personal way, I think most New Yorkers want to prove something to themselves and the city. For me it started out with simply surviving the subway ride when surrounded by tall men and their giant fury hooded coats that got in my face and made me claustrophobic. Over time it evolved to getting to work without being overwhelmed by the noise on the streets. Then it expanded. I moved to the city single. It is a not place for single gals. I wanted a boyfriend and I wanted to find him in New York. Just because it was supposed to be hard, nigh impossible. Time passed, I decided to leave the city and on my way out I met a fellow. We corresponded during my 6 month hiatus and on my return it seemed I’d done it. Beat the city at it’s game. Here I was in New York with a boyfriend.
A year later we decided to leave. This time for real (maybe). I was there in August to pick up my plants and the few things we didn’t want to ship. Driving roads made familiar by bike I wondered at the ownership I felt. The city can be an enormously unpleasant place to live, but once you develop enough strategies for living there you start to feel like a bit of a super hero. I did it! I lived in New York and maybe even thrived there! You start to own little bits of the city. Here and there a block, a subway stop, a funny sign spray painted on a building. It gets in and starts to nest in your heart. Call it getting over yourself, call it conquering the metropolis, call it just living your life.
I moved to New York reluctantly, in fact I was decidedly NOT going to live there. At the end the city had become my friend and in my last week there I drove around wearing rose colored glasses getting teary eyed at my favorite corners. Now I am in Nashville where everyone is nice, learning about life in not-New York. Welcome to my new life. I will do my best to keep you updated.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
