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

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

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. ~

Art in the Arctic

A small red house at the edge of the world.  Acrylic sketch on paper

 It’s almost time to leave this little red house on Baffin Bay and head back to my other life in Colorado.   I’m watching the sea rise and fall in slow crests outside the studio, the endless cycling of waves and tide on a grey day, quiet and still.  I’m restless.  And I wonder what I’ve accomplished here.

I’ve written in this blog about people and place, kayaking and climate change- but little about my artwork at the artist’s residency.   That’s because much of my daily duty (to myself, my project, and the museum) is focused on various forms of documentation- and paying close attention.  It’s a little less of a studio residency and a little more of a soaking up of land, culture, and environment- which will in turn feed a prodigious amount of creative work back in the US.

 

I’ve tried to greet this truly exceptional opportunity with the blank slate of an inquisitive mind, and not too many preconceived ideas about artistic outcomes.  I’ve hoped that the experience of being in the beautiful, beleaguered Arctic would teach me what to make, which vocabulary to use.  If I just listen hard enough. I want the Arctic to give me the words- the form- I need to describe all this, rather than being too sure of myself from the start.  Tell me what to do.

 Acrylic sketch on paper. 

 So far this approach isn’t letting me down.

Today I worked on photographing and video recording along with creating a series of cyanotype prints (since the sun was out- a prerequisite for this type of image making).  Some of the photos will be used for reference material as I paint, and others will be rendered later in negative format for cyanotype printing.  The rest is my own visual archive of what really happened on the Arctic Art Expedition.

I’ve been painting every day- small works on paper in acrylic, an economy of scale and materials. (Remember the one bag/20 kilo weight limit on Air Greenland? This had significant influence on what I could drag with me on 6 flights across 3 continents!)  I don’t usually paint landscapes. I’m not much good at it.  But here I've been sketching studies of the ice, thinking of more involved compositions while I push paint around and try to create a likeness which, of course, will never do this place justice.  It’s fun to try, and to fall into the beautiful curves and color of the icebergs. I  remember paddling out at sea, close enough to the bergs to feel their raw power.  Ancient frozen water, a still life. 

Icebergs near Melville Bay.  Acrylic sketch on paper.

While I work I imagine a slew of larger projects which are at the heart of my Last Places ideas, all the things I can’t wait to get my hands into back in the US.  I want to work on big canvases, and I want to work in oil.  This fall and winter I’ll develop these more complex paintings, along with (and rather ambitiously?), a whole new body of porcelain sculpture.  I’m writing and taking reams of  notes about my current ideas and inspiration for the clay pieces.  The awesome part is that my ideas develop exponentially when they’re given time to distill and something essential is allowed to surface.

Upernavik retreat guest book

Then there’s the film editing and video project that is also part of this.  Uh. (I’ve begun to think my new motto must be go big or go home…?)  But time.  I have time.  The months to come will be saturated with the bright light of this work, as if I took an iceberg home in my pocket and put it in the freezer to peek at from time to time.  It’s all with me.  It won’t go away and I can’t forget it.

Close-up of ice structure

Time + creativity = art.  In theory, anyway.  The missing part of this equation is that art and life are inextricably linked.  My thoughts about trash burning and mercury, eating seal (or not) and navigating a kayak through a sea of towering sapphire ice sculpture- all this ultimately carries me back to my work.  The seeds of creation are forever born of the most sacred and mundane of things. 

Acrylic sketch on paper.