25 at 9,500' -- A Winter Artist's Residency

Breckenridge, Colorado.  9,500 feet above sea level. Deep snow angled against the studio, more white falling from the sky, a swirling winter wonderland.  I've made myself at home in the historic Tin Shop, which was bought and renovated by the town's well endowed Arts/Historic District and is now offered as a cozy guest artist's live/work space.  I was a resident here in 2009 and had the good fortune of being invited back for the month of February.  I am now in the midst of  25+ days to make all the art I can make - and I'm off and running!!

Winter in Breckenridge... snowy Wonderland!!!!

 As always, I've come bearing some notion of my intended projects, but I always allow myself to follow creative tangents as they arise.  It's a bit like tracking an animal through the forest on a winter's day, fun and then fruitless, hopeful and maddening!  Now on my ninth official artist's residency program, I've learned that this is the best time to explore brand new creative ideas and to allow myself to wander into uncharted territory with complete abandon. Since I work in a variety of different media, this can lead to some frantic overwhelm - along with sleepless nights - but I am going with it!!

"Lay Down Your Grief And Kiss The Ground" -- a mixed media piece I created for a traveling exhibit called 'Down the Rabbit Hole'... 

"Earth/Ice Listening" -- Studio installation in progress with encaustic wax, discarded paper towels, charcoal, xerox transfer and pencil drawing.

"Tea Series/Mindfulness" -- work in progress -- discarded tea/bags, Usnea, map, paper towel, beeswax, damar resin, box elder seeds, and ink on paper handmade from old lists, fliers, junk mail.

"Tulugaq/Raven of the North" -- ink, charcoal, and acrylic on tree-free paper

 Along with developing new projects, I've also finished a large commission piece for a buyer who shares my appreciation of raptors and other winged things: Tulugaq/Raven, whose range takes her into the Arctic.  I'm currently working on a second commissioned painting, Falling into Blue, which is a creative exploration of color, feeling, and possibility.  As a friend writes, "the breezy surface pulls you in... and then you fall into the mystery."  To me, blue is the essence of what I found in the very far north - rock and ice, sea and sky - and a reflection of the world that lives inside us all. 

"Northern Nightscape Ice-land Aurora Love", study #7, ink and acrylic on tree-free paper

A pile of my hand made paper in the Tin Shop.  Such pleasure in recycling my To-Do lists into creativity!!

 I'm exploring more ideas about Greenland and the Arctic; about land-earth-ice, climate-environment-ecology, human relationships and how the din of our lives can keep us from hearing feeling seeing knowing.  I also find myself creating simple works of art that are - essentially - a celebration of life and aliveness.  The beautiful miracle of it all, like a love letter to Greenland penciled around the girth of the planet.

I've also discovered a relationship between Breckenridge - this cute snowbound ski town in the high Rockies - and the Arctic: our climate delivers the possibilities of change more swiftly to those places that are either high up, or far up. Altitude vs. latitude.  Here the snow drives fast and hard, while at home in southwest Colorado, drought is the hallmark of the current winter season.  What next??

 For me, I've been invited to go North again this summer, to live and work in Canada's Yukon Territory at the Klondike Institute of Art.  May I discover there an untangled pathway to creating sculpture, installation, painted images, porcelain objects and word-craft that resonate with meaning and reach beyond me into the vastness.  As the poet Mary Oliver has written, "I want to be improbable amd beautiful and afraid of nothing, as if I had wings."  Onward. ~

Canyonlands/Crepuscular

Frozen kettle ponds of melted snow adorn the redrock near home.  Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

Crepuscular means to be active at dawn and dusk, like a bobcat, a puma - a creature of stealth, alert and watchful.  Here in the desert, the dawn of the day and the long finale of twilight are my cherished moments.

I've accepted an invitation to create art in Canyonlands National Park for one solitary winter month. It's currently the off-season and the world rings with silence. Snow has settled like a thin blanket over the redrock and the stillness is absolute.  I am loving it.  My greetings to dawn and dusk are a salutation to earth: thank you. 

This morning I rolled out of bed to walk under the stars before the sun before the ravens before I was really even awake, the frigid-oh-my crackle of ice and frozen desert grass under my boots. Orion overhead, North Six Shooter on the eastern horizon, gaining light.  Here: a spaciousness as wide and deep as my heart, a place called home.

Twilight is the bright, sparkling in-between time, and I understand how comfortable I've become in this.  In transitions of space and seasons, I finally relax into the mystery that threads all of creation together.  I'm reminded that I am - we are- so small and fragile, yet as unbounded as clear luminous light.

To be fragile: Little Auk rides swing in a storm!  India ink and acrylic on paper.

Late night, before bed, I step outside into the darkness to listen to the desert, my ears straining to hear something.  Only this: the sound of my own heartbeat thrumming in my ears. The faint hum of life beneath the noise. The sound of a planet at rest. 

There is a parallel to this open canyon country and the Arctic.  Both speak to me in the same language.  Both describe a prevailing natural rhythm where stars take the place of street lights and the illuminated glare of big box stores. There is a timelessness here that captivates me daily.  I fantasize about never leaving.   

In the act of making art exists this same expansiveness.  Writes Terry Tempest Williams in her book, When Women Were Birds, "Creativity is another form of open space, whose very nature is to disturb, disrupt, and bring us to tenderness."  Yes, I think. YES. 

A dusting of fresh powder near the house, and a brand new day at Canyonlands.

Hush, the world
like the desert dawn draped
in her sweater of white.
In silence
all things are possible. 

-R.Barfoot, December 2013

Canyonlands NP, Utah

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

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.