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

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) …

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

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.

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.

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 …

Kaila and Julie making prints

newly made Sumac and Weld inks

some prints from today

conversation drawing today

some things going on today at the Field Station:
Kaila and Julie made prints of leaves, roots, and cones
tested out the newly made Weld and Sumac inks
made quite a few new prints mostly of things left in the Field Station by visitors
talked to a lot of people (free Wednesdays brings tons of young kids and moms) and added a few things to the conversation drawing

Field Talk this past week:  Erin Poor, Curatorial Associate at the deCordova and docent at the Gropius House took me on a tour of the house and grounds.  Puzzling to think about how the Bauhaus considered nature.  Some interesting thoughts here:

Through Gropius’s lectures and publications on the education of architects from this period, Anker brings to light his latent interest in the knowledge of biology, as a way for architects to resolve social, urban, and ecological issues that have emerged from the “miraculous potentialities of the machine” (p. 38). It was Gropius’s belief that because of capitalism, “our human greed has interfered with the biological cycle of human companionship which keeps the life of a community healthy” (p. 38). Paraphrasing Gropius, Anker explains his belief that an architect armed with the knowledge of biology should be capable of “evolving the …

Brayton Point Protest sign

Mill Brook earth mineral ink

Norway Spruce borer beetle and bark ink

08.01 additions to conversation drawing

The chalkboard as a conversation drawing is really working.  I start with a basic structure that outlines place and a few key elements, and then from there I add objects by drawing them during or after conversations with visitors.  Here is the drawing for the Hemlock Grove, just started.

this week I did a project with 41 kids and 5 teachers in the deCordova summer program, the Hive.  We made a herbarium comprised of prints of all kinds of found objects (leaves, seeds, bottle caps, etc.) from 3 different microhabitats at the deCordova and printed them with Walnut ink I made for the group.  Later in the week we organized the 259 prints into categories and hung them around the Field Station to show everyone the collected portrait…

some of the categories:

Leaves that look like leaves
explosions
Ferns
things from Alice’s garden
Same
looks like Fireworks
scattered and light

check out the events page for more pics

a story left in the latest Field Guide to Change, some collected objects in line to print, and a super hot week

collection

super hot

a story left