Last days at the Field Station–cool quiet weather, printing late season weeds and plants, working on archive issues for the Field Press journal

Noni sent some images from the Summer Ink group’s ink prints in the Field Guide notebook from midsummer…

Boneset

ampitheater meadow

oriental bittersweet

finally happened!

Cherrie and I led a small group across the park inquiring about plants, their stories, histories, uses, and futures:
jewelweed and poison ivy partners
jack in the pulpit fruits found
catawpa pods
Boneset
ampitheater meadow
oriental bittersweet
sweet pepperbush pods
fractals in nature
baby hawk screams
spiders in hearts

see more from Cherrie’s blog

Some last days of foraging for objects to print in the deCordova terrain–weeds, tree leaves, tree fruits, a few flowers…  I’ll be deinstalling in a couple of weeks, taking the Field Station down, putting the flatpack built elements into the studio to begin the long work of reconfiguring the Station into a Press, archiving the many threads of the project, and imagining the form/function/production of the monthly journals of the Field Press.

One very interesting thought today:talking with Libby Elwood about how difficult, really impossible, it has been to get people to talk at all about climate change, tho they will talk about any bit of nature at length and with passion.  How I consider this to be a real central failure of the primary mission of the project (tho it definately had too many missions, as usual for my work) …

Berry inks:

Pokeberry (Concord roadside)

Elderberry (Sudbury backyard)

Beet (Gaining Ground)

Wednesday 4pm meet at the Field Station, walk with Cherrie Corey and I as we observe and learn about the ecosystem of the park.  What is witnessing?  What is observation?  How does seeing connect to us, to stories, to engagement, to change?

Here is a beautiful sound piece created by Brack Morrow and the EAR1 remote station at the Field Station last month.  It is primarily engaging with the Norway Spruce trees (known to be a good tonewood)…

http://www.fieldstation.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Picea-Abies-Tonewood.mp3

Last weekend, the Field Station marched with about a hundred people through the neighborhoods of Barnstable and down the strip mall byways of Hyannis to call on Mr. Koch to take his dirty money out of the resistance to Cape Wind.  See Energy Exodus

Today Elspeth and I spent a bit of time at the Field Station.  Elspeth drew a picture of the Field Station–note the difference in the Hemlock and Norway Spruce trees!  Someone left us a little gift of big spruce ball…

guests at the Field Station today

Research is winding down at the Field Station this next month.  I will only be present one morning a week: Wednesday or Friday mornings.  If you want to find me, email ahead of time…

I’ll begin posting about the conjoined twin project that has been brewing for quite some time, now known as Field Press, an open field of dialog, production, and analogizing of the work of Field Station and the work of related thinkers, producers, studios, labs, and desks.

Pokeberries and the purple ink.  Legend has it that civil war soldiers used Pokeberries to make ink to write their letters.  I wonder what they used for pens out in the fields?  Did the ink fade to brown while being read by their loved ones?

today three little girls, their Mom, and I watched a cicada emerge from her shell and hang for a while on the Hemlock trunk bark.  The change in color, movement, and shape of this little creature emerging after its 17 year hibernation deep underground was really incredible to watch.  So amazing to imagine it just stuck in that stiff shell for so long–does it have any cognition, sensation at all?  Of course, how does it know how 17 years are up?  But even more amazing what is this world like after 17 years of frozen darkness?

a day of conversations with moms and kids.  so many.  how do you talk to under 6 year olds about nature, climate change, etc?  You don’t.  You just be with them in their curiosities, follow them, ask questions, resonate.

a few gifts left in the Field Station this weekend: a little bundle of lawn flowers, wrapped so sweetly in a blade of grass…  another cicada shell.

the binoculars, which seemed to have been taken (stolen?) a few weeks ago, have returned.  Now there are two pairs.  Which is really better.  There are always at least two people who visit.  And they all, all love the binocs.

Judith Leemann came and read aloud for two and a half hours at the Field Station this late afternoon.  A few visitors wandered by and a few stayed to listen and work alongside Judith and I.  She read the first of two parts.  The second will occur in late September.  What happens when two artists with overlapping interests in ideas, language, making, meaning, and apophenia ally their practices?  What happens when two artists make side by side?  How is their work ampilfied, dislocated, or encumbered?  I will post the prints I made while Judith read shortly…

Brack Morrow brought his EAR1 Remote Unit to the Field Station yesterday and captured some beautiful sounds from the Norway Spruce trees hosting the Field Station.  He’s making a sound piece…  keep your ears out.

bark/tree pigments

berry pigments

flower/earth pigments

gathered plants to print

new pigment charts grouped by type: bark/tree, berry, flower/earth

todo: inks from pokeberry, Walden Pond mud, celandine poppy, sycamore fruits

observations broadside 0808week

conversation drawing today

observations of protest, desire, cognitive behavior, future projects, adjacent trees, and more

Walking Ecologies was rained out today, but we have rescheduled for Thursday September 11 at 4pm, only to be cancelled in the case of an extreme storm event…

Look at the sculpture park’s ecology through they eyes of Cherrie Corey’s to get a taste…

readings for a blind bird
Thursday August 15 4-6:30
A moment of intersection between two complementary practices, each its own kind of inquiry into how we as artists and citizens come to know our own ecologies.

Since 2009, Judith Leemann has been producing reading aloud at the intersection of her studio, research, and teaching practices. Passages of text are stripped of citational armor and fitted one into the next to generate recursive loops of almost-story. Over the course of fourteen weeks, a new twenty-minute episode is recorded and posted weekly.

As a guest to Jane Marsching’s Field Station Concordia, Leemann will read aloud from the most recent season of reading aloud, hairy about the heel: fables for the present. Of interest to both is the possibility of surfacing new understandings of ecology (and new ecologies of understanding) by allowing their practices to briefly collide.

Guests …