Yukon - Large in your own life

Total expansiveness -- Tombstone Range, Yukon Territory

A dear friend wrote me the following words before I left for my artist residencies in northern Canada this summer, and I have carried them like a souvenir seashell in my pocket for months:
  

"So much movement -so much change- so much magic

You are living in the middle of the best magic and we all can tell 

because the world is giving you everything you need 
not many people can travel this path with you 
and not many ever travel this way at all.

  

Be large in your own life - the universe says so."

Small home, big world -- mixed media on paper by Rebecca Barfoot

It is mid-November and I am back in southwest Colorado, savoring old friendships while also longing for the north-land and the slow earth pace of life there. This morning I woke thinking yet again, be large in your own life.  Me, you, are we doing this? 

I know that now is the time and it's all about leaping and bounding instead of walking with measured constraint across the open vistas of our lives.    

Large as life / bull caribou, Big Alex Ridge, Olgilvie Mountains - Yukon

Least Weasel - smallest carnivore in North America! - from a backpacking trip to Fold Lake, Blackstone Uplands - Yukon

I remind myself that a leap like this is what delivered me to the northern latitudes this summer, and what allowed richly cross-pollinated opportunities in art, ecology, and education to present themselves so that my original 5 week engagement flowed quickly into 5 months!!!  Back in the States, a similar trajectory continues and I've just been riding the waves, letting life spill over while landing softly and solidly and bound by gratitude. 

Rooted and Rising -- mixed media with Yukon blueberry dye on paper -- by Rebecca Barfoot

One of the things I noticed immediately in the Yukon was the striking juxtaposition of an impossibly vast macro-landscape with the equally luminous world of the pixie-sized microcosm - and how each biome informs the other.  The tangle of sphagnum moss, bog cranberry and reindeer lichen at my feet describes the endless arc of unbroken wilderness spinning to the horizon even as they seem to exist separately and as opposites.  I know this relationship is important to explore in the work to come, and that the intimate as a gateway to the infinite mirrors the idea of small lives lived large.
  

Dall sheep - ewes and young - dwarfed in the immensity  -- Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon

Bearberry foliage, high tundra -- Blackstone Uplands, Yukon

Autumn highlights and color swoon -- Discovery Ridge -- Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon

A fairy forest of wintergreen called 'Single Delight' - late summer near Dawson City, Yukon

Be large in your own life and the work you choose to do, I think, because the world needs this from all of us right now. 

Nurse log comes to life with sphagnum moss, pixie cup lichen, bearberry and more - Klondike River Valley, Yukon

Hang on, Yukon -- mixed media on canvas by Rebecca Barfoot

Saxifrage -- brilliant, adaptable survivors of the north  -- Angelcomb Peak, Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon

Writes Sally Kempton, Buddhist scholar and Dharma teacher, in her recent book Awakening Shakti:  "Our awareness is not only connected to the power of awareness in other creatures, but it is also a miniature version of the great awareness that is the source of all that is. The subtle worlds that lie between the transcendent vastness and the physical universe are also inside our own subtle bodies, ready to be experienced by anyone who has the stamina and grace to enter into the inner world of the heart."

And the heart of the world, I would add. The microcosm coursing through our ancient aliveness, firing the pulse of our being.  We share this and yet we have forgotten it.  It is time to remember. 

Swallowtail at rest on caribou moss --  Olgilvie Mountains, Yukon

Yukon!! -- Boreal Forest Art and Ecology

Local art adorns the hardwood forest of birch and poplar outside Dawson City, Yukon Territory.

 Greetings from the land of the midnight sun!!  I've traveled North again and this time I'm writing from an artist's residency at the Klondike Institute of Art in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, CANADA.  I'm thrilled to be here.

My initial draw to the Yukon was to continue investigating the tally on wild lands in the North as our planet continues to warm up and get crowded.  I also want to know what "big wild" really feels like, and to (re)consider the notion of Last Places that I began with in Arctic Greenland.  Does undeveloped, non-industrialized land exist in any meaningful context in this world now and what does it look like beyond a remnant of a romantic ideal? 

I'm happy to say that from my ground level post here in the northwest corner of Canada, the land appears to be doing well.  My immediate sense is this: earth as utterly staggering in scope and impossibly vast.  I'm aware there's much more to the story than this, but for now I think, take it and run with it.

"Thaw" -- Mixed media on tree-free paper by Rebecca Barfoot.

There's also a secondary and more personal magnetism that drew me to northern Canada: I've been obsessed with trees since I traveled to Greenland.  They've worked their way into my paintings, sculpture, and into my earth-bound, starlit  imagination. There are no trees in Greenland - and it occurs to me that perhaps I've fallen in love with absence.   

"Mother/Bear Boreal" -- Cyanotype with mixed media by Rebecca Barfoot.

The Yukon is dominated by boreal forest, the largest terrestrial biome on Earth.  Known at taiga across Russia, it's the green halo of northern woodland that girdles our globe just south of the Arctic tundra, serving as Earth's "cooler" and regulating temperatures worldwide. 

Here around Dawson, the boreal consists largely of paper birch, black and white spruce, balsam poplar and aspen.  A walk in the woods for me, on a more intimate level, is to feel cradled, sheltered, and supported.  One of the more subtle and nuanced interests I have as an artist concerns the internal  landscape - both personal and collective - and how it reflects the state of our natural environment.  I am beginning to explore the mirroring of inner/outer landscapes in my work.

Deep Forest -- Mixed media on tree-free paper by Rebecca Barfoot.

Beyond the poetry of trees in form/metaphor is my growing awareness of the biological imperative of the forest in function. Large volumes of boreal woodland are logged for paper pulp (cardboard boxes, magazines, catalogs, paper towels etc), oil and gas extraction (Alberta tar sands...), mining and general money-making.  But destroy the forest and you eliminate the planet's most effective method of uptaking (via photosynthesis) and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide (in both living and dead plant matter).

One of the byproducts of our shifting climate is the phenomenon of  "drunken" trees in the boreal, tilted and falling as the permafrost thaws beneath them.  Earlier this month I noticed stretches of lurching stumbling tumbling black spruce (picea mariana) on the 330 mile stretch of road between Whitehorse and Dawson.  It's terribly wrong - and oddly beautiful.

New pond-scape created from melting permafrost, Alaska Range -- Photo Credit: Michael S Quinton

"Drunken" Black Spruce, Yukon.

"Tilt", Yukon Territory, Canada.  Mixed media on cyanotype by Rebecca Barfoot. 

More soon, with love from the North,  Rebecca @ www.rebeccabarfoot.com
...like action rising out of stillness, all wings and quiet thunder.  -R.Barfoot, May 2014

Wings of Winter

Snow Bunting/Plectrophenax nivalis.  India ink and acrylic on paper.

Birds are in my heart these days, flapping mightily into metaphor and song with the deepening of winter. The more I tune into them - and the more they flutter around inside me - the more astonishing/magical I find them.  I've been watching raptors and juncos here in the canyon country of southern Utah, but also thinking about the birds of the far north and far south.  And I've been painting them. 
 

Arctic Tern/Sterna paradisaea.  India ink and acrylic on tree-free paper.

Arctic Tern.  Notorious for their epic migrations, these fleet birds breed in the Arctic and fly south every year to winter in Antarctica.  That's an annual round trip of over 40,000 miles!! I filmed them off the coast of Greenland and slept on an island where they were nesting.  They lay a clutch of eggs directly on the ground, and daddy bird helps incubate.

Albatross, EXALTED!!  India ink and acrylic on tree-free paper.

Albatross. At home on the Southern Ocean as far south as Antarctica, they've made headlines in recent years for turning up dead, en masse, their stomachs filled with the ubiquitous plastic waste that fills our seas. Nineteen of the 21 species of Albatross are endangered.  More inspired details: they can live for over 60 years, have the largest wingspan of any bird (up to 12 feet!) and can soar for hours - even days - without having to land.  Good news:  A banded Laysan Albatross of Midway Island in the North Pacific became a mom again at age 62!!

Snow Bunting, India ink and acrylic on tree-free paper. 

Snow Bunting.  Possibly the cutest of tiny Arctic songbirds, they are also known colloquially as "Snowflakes".  (And of course a group of them is called a drift.)  They brave a non-stop, 500 mile flight from mainland Europe to get to their high Arctic breeding grounds on the Svalbard archipelago.  Their voices were some of the first I heard when I arrived in Greenland. 

Raven, Canyonlands National Park.  India ink and acrylic on tree-free paper.

Raven.  I didn't see ravens while in Greenland, although this is actually part of their range.  Famously adaptable, intelligent and endearingly inquisitive!  Their cries fill the still desert air here in winter. They can be aggressive, but I've also watched them nuzzling and grooming each other in the ragged sunshine of December.  Iconic emblem of the Southwest, and perhaps the reason I'm now at work on a much larger commission featuring corvus corax.


The small miracle of flight: mesmerizing, poetic. How fragile we are, these birds/we humans - and how resilient. The struggle to survive and thrive is universal. 

Arctic Tern, India ink and acrylic on tree-free paper. 

"Descension. Ascension. The velocity of wings creates the whisper to awaken," writes Terry Tempest Williams. "Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy."

I am a woman with wings. 







  


All works by Rebecca Barfoot.
www.rebeccabarfoot.com

Greenland: A Love Letter

"Somewhere out there in the ice fragments, I thought I glimpsed my own desire..."  acrylic, text transfer, india ink on canvas.

My Greenland journey is far from over.  Here are a few of the paintings I created in response to my travels in the Northwest of that great cold island. The Arctic lives in me now, and I can't stop thinking about it.  My work continues. 

"The Longspun Story of Earth", acrylic, image transfer, india ink on canvas.

"This story is partly about a kind of heartbreak for a world that remains so vitally unaware of how imperiled it is.  The more I sense the miracle, the more intense appears the tragedy.  The only way to feel better, then, is to appreciate less, which would of course feel worse.  Let's put a positive spin on it and say that for now the miracle is winning."  

- Carl Safina, The View From Lazy Point

"In Greenland I found the bones of myself..."  acrylic and india ink on canvas.

"Melting Greenland/Ice Corral",  acrylic, text transfer, india ink on canvas.

 ~

Also, "For Greenland.  A Love Letter." 

~

"Little Red House at the End of the World", acrylic on canvas with india ink.

Little red house... This painting is inspired by the historical 19th century building (an old Danish cooper's shop) that I lived and worked at in Upernavik, Greenland.  It sits on a spit of land jutting into the sea, wracked by wind and time. Massive icebergs rise and fall to the rhythm of the tides - sometimes serene, sometimes violent - creating a different seascape with each new day.  The light is spectacular.  And it really does feel like being at the farthest edge of the world. ~

Arctic Art, Winter Light

"Looking for the Ice", cyanotype print with mixed media.

Gray December days.  We're closing in on the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year - the very darkest of days in Greenland. Would I see the Aurora if I was still there, spinning through low slung stars overhead, the snow creaking with cold like old bones and the patchy sea ice signaling danger?

Thinking of the Arctic and how, whatever our measure of darkness this time of year, we are all waiting for the light. It unites us.  

"Galaxy - Part 2", cyanotype on paper.  Like the winter night sky.  Full of hope.

          In the meantime, I'm working and making art as if my life depended on it. 

 

Luminous/Adrift, Baffin Bay. Acrylic on paper.

Bones of Greenland, porcelain paperclay.

One of my favorite projects right now is the series of porcelain skeleton ships I've been sculpting. They'll be installed in a gallery from the ceiling, resting on... nothing.  Kayaks inspired by my own powerful Arctic water voyage but also by dying seas and rising tides and temperatures - hanging in delicate balance just as we are.

 

 Semi-frozen porcelain paperclay with ice crystals.  An uncanny resemblance to an icescape.  

"Ice Fishing: Catch and Release", original cyanotype print on paper.

In recent weeks I've mailed off a few dozen original cyanotype prints to my Kickstarter supporters (all the fans that helped get me to Greenland!) and been delighted by the rave reviews.  How do I say thank you?? It means so much to have someone jot me a message that exclaims, "I love the piece you sent. I can't wait to frame it!"  All the uncharted, undeclared hours of toiling alone in the studio suddenly seem worth it.  After all.

I'm also spending countless hours video editing right now, peering over the edge of the Arctic expedition and allowing myself to tumble down into its depths.  Feeling and remembering.  Slicing and dicing the clips to create something someone else would want to become absorbed in.   Hoping I can do it justice.  I have moments of thinking, "Well, there's no adrenaline here.  Only the slow subtle drama of the Ice.  Some humor and thought provoking dialogue. A lot of beauty shot with a mediocre camera.  I'm not a film maker."  Or am I?  

It must be enough. I understand that this intimate and quiet work about the Arctic is bringing me closer to that which is bigger and bolder.  I'm lining up shows for all of it, along with speaking venues about the Arctic, art and global warming.  I've been invited to present at Regenerate, a conference in New Mexico about the ways that art can fuel progressive change.  I feel as if I to have pockets full of answers - and instead I have fistfuls of questions.

Today is December 20th.  Soon I'll begin teaching a semester at New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe. In addition to engendering creativity in young hearts and minds, I long to be a light in the darkness.

A gathering of Solstice gifts.  And a return to my roots with some recently fired functional porcelain - the color of glaciers and December dawn.  ~Love and light to all.

Homecoming

Summer splendor, San Juan mountains, Colorado

August 8.  My first morning back in the US.  COLORADO!!  I wake at daybreak- courtesy of jetlag- to the lavish splendor of this temperate latitude, in awe.  The tangle of oak and elder outside the bedroom window and the delicious fragrance of greenery after rain is puzzling at first, a little shocking to my senses.  I’ve become too accustomed to Greenland’s stark horizon of rock and ice, and the pungence of rank seal blubber and sea.  A hummingbird hovers outside my screened window, vibrant amidst vining purple clematis.  Like dormant lichen gathering moisture after drought, I soak it up.  I'm so content. 

I left the Arctic in a dual state of inspiration and overwhelm.  Here at home, I continue to be overwhelmed by the abundance that exists on so many levels: the lushness of the mountain landscape, the ubiquitous excess of food and amenities, the prevalence of conversation, chatter and gratuitous human interaction.
 

Dusk becoming darkness at my wintering site in remote northern New Mexico.

And ohhh… the NIGHT.  I stepped off the airplane onto the tarmac late last evening, smiling into the velvety darkness.  Shrouded by a blanket of stars overhead, I’d forgotten how the night calms me, enveloping and protecting me like the warm embrace of an old friend.  Ahh, darkness- after 40 days of light.

Young friends show me the way, La Plata River Canyon.

 I feel like a toddler, regarding the world with a child’s sense of wonder and innate curiosity.  I’m enthralled by all the succulent details of the everyday, losing myself in the minutiae of a flower petal or a swirl of subtle color on wet asphalt.  Sometimes it takes lack and loss to find one’s way again.  

Claret Cup cactus blooms in Colorado

August 9.  I walked into the grocery store today and had a meltdown.  (You mean I can have whatever I want?? But there are so many choices!) Avocados, eggplant, tofu, chick peas, and tamari-roasted almonds.  Pears and spinach, fig cookies and peaches.  Corn tortillas, coconut, arugula, jicama.  I’m skinny since Greenland.  I can’t possibly buy or eat all this.  I consume visually, with my eyes, my hands pausing over tidy mounds of plums from California, grape tomatoes from Mexico.  Squeeze.  To have so much- is this bounty or gluttony?

I am giddy with the effortlessness of communication, and from being in a place where people know and care for me.  It’s not just the commonality of a shared language, it’s also the sub-culture of familiarity.  Both friends and strangers regard one another, often, with a fluency and ease that I find heartening.  I can talk to people here.  I can connect.

Kayaking, self-portrait

It’s hard to describe the sense of quiet exuberance that possesses me at the moment.  I understand that it's the result of accumulated longing amassed beneath and beyond my Arctic travels, magnified under the pressure of ten months away.  Something in me releases now, and I breathe a long exhale after waiting, enduring, thrashing over countless obstacles.  Fulfillment after yearning.  Relief. 

My time in Greenland, though in many ways a refuge, was as austere as the rock and ice that surrounded me there.  Returning to a landscape of green and a profusion of growing things echoes the renewed bounty of my internal landscape. 

Apache Plume, cyanotype photogram

The downside- if there is one- is that I’ve returned after many months of quiet introspection to the insistent din of contemporary life.  All the solo time spent in the studio- and trawling the backwaters of my mind- will make wending my way back to a busier world more daunting.  I wonder if I’ve unlearned the skills required to join the ranks of muliti-taskers armed with iPhones, earbuds, and daily planners brimming with urgency.  But this is just fear shadowing me like a cloud pausing overhead.  I’ve never really been a part of that lifestyle and my unfitness for it is likely more a gift than I will ever know. 

Postscript- August 31.  I’ve been back three weeks now and my sense of wonder and delight in the world remains.  Eventually the bustle will claim me again, but for now everything still sparkles, as light-filled and luminous as the ice of a northern glacier.

Icebergs near Melville Bay, NW Greenland