Arriving at Fort Worden sent me on a hunt about fortification history and architecture. Following trails through the woods to the top of Artillery Hill, Paul and I encounter the ramparts, solidly built gun emplacements known here as “batteries.” “Bulwark” is another term that feels related to the work from my first week at Centrum: large pencil drawings of entangled old growth cedar and spruce branches and roots. The “bul-” part of bulwark is related to bole, “tree trunk,” while -wark is related to English work, wrought, and wright. The last of the guns at the fort were removed in 1945, and the defunct battery enclosures, tunnels, stairwells, rusting doors and pipes, lichen-stained concrete, a stately sign with the name, Cornelius Tolles, a captain who died from his wounds in a Civil War battle—comprise these eerie tombs. We start to hymn and sing into the dark reverberating chambers. “What a performance venue!”, our eyes circling in their sockets as we imagine the possibilities. May
I begin with pencil and paper. Simple. Meditative, airy gestures make marks and smudges . Alternating light and heavy pressure. My eyes try to study forms and shadow. Squinting and relaxing my gaze. Playing with seeing and not seeing. Drawing involves continuous choosing, extracting and generalizing, while trying to dance across the paper. The inspirations are coming from walking in a very small fraction of the vast temperate rain forests on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington. I'm choosing to notice the stability of old growth spruce and cedar in Quinault, the twisted movement captured inside roots, bark, veins, and eroded paths along the Sol Duc. Man-made entanglements formed into artificial log jams fortify the banks of the Hoh. Artistic partner and spouse, Paul Godwin and I are on a trek, each day taking a bike ride into the bracing wind, and or a hike as light fog settles between the trees. We spend a night in a lodge next to a very still lake. My bathing suit fills with fin