Skip to main content

Ramparts: Centrum Artist Residency, Part 2

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. 
Maybe the visions of performing in this unique place lead us to attend an improv dance class at the Fort’s Madrona MindBody. The instructor, Ashley Friend, facilitates a combination of guided modern dance, ballet, full-body self-expression, gesture, and motion, in a welcoming atmosphere of discovery. What happens if we travel in a straight line while pushing, pulling, or reaching, and happen to meet another dancer? Turn 90 degrees to change direction and continue on. It’s been decades since I danced like this. It's exciting, full of possibilities. Class ends and we don’t want it to be over. Ashley, and two local dancers, Angela and Camille, and Paul and I stay sprawled on the smooth floor to talk until it grows dark. We share about opportunities that life handed us in the past when we chose to turn away, often due to a lack of confidence or mature judgment at the time, and which made us take another path.
iron door, layers of peeling paint and rust
After the first week of drawing, and taking breaks to bike the wooded trails and Victorian-era streets downtown, I transition to part two: working digitally, overlaying the drawings with my photos shot in the forest and the batteries, discovering how the pencil lines can look as if drawn directly on the surfaces of the bulwarks, reinforcing sharp angles, deep orifices, shadows, and variegated textures, and enhancing the already strangely enigmatic atmosphere. 

Making this work feels like unearthing a secret, mute world.

Check out my Centrum image gallery. In addition to the digital photo collages, I created a video to accompany a new song by Paul and Miguel Noya (Dogon) for our ongoing project inspired by the Portuguese writer, Pessoa and The Book of Disquiet, called Child of the Incoming Fog. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RIPE AREA: Renewing Relationships with Water Through Art

RIPE AREA is a play on the term "riparia", the land adjacent to and influenced by water. The waters of the South Fork of American River tumble downstream in the crush of ice melt, rushing in currents, propelled by dam releases, and slowing along sandy flatlands. Wet, fluid fingers fan out among cattails, quietly seeping into sodden ground.  Over time, h umans have changed the river, eroded its banks, mined its tributaries, drained its meadows, and farmed its floodplains. The waters of the South Fork of the American River , for example, are contained by t hree major reservoirs and other smaller man-made reservoirs  El Dorado County. The major dams are  at  Slab Creek Reservoir built in 1967, Chili Bar Reservoir built in 1964 and Folsom Lake Reservoir built in 1955 .  Headwaters of the South Fork of the American River collect in high-altitude Lake Audrain, captured in the image I created, above, for the music and underwater sound art installation, Music for 33 Dr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life After Smoke and Char

A recent classroom-based workshop on Prescribed Burning was my first immersion into learning about fire behavior and concepts rooted in science, law, and practice on the ground. Beneficial Disturbance. Heat Management. F.R.I. for Fire Return Interval. Learning about burning and its connections to culture and biodiversity was a first step toward overcoming my own negative perceptions about fire.  The course was led by experts Chris Paulus and Cordi Craig of Placer County, and coordinated by Kestrel Grevatt and the American River Conservancy, and emphasized the benefits of careful, legal burning. We were introduced to fuels and forest types, fire and wind behavior, state statutes and personal liabilities, Indigenous cultural burning and native plant adaptation. The experience was surprisingly rich.   “The forest has memory,” announced Chris, a well-spoken and commanding retired CAL FIRE Battalion Captain. “The forest has to be allowed to remember itself.” I’m going to borr...
1 comment
Read more