Why I Did It

The main reason I did the Virtual Residency was to explore means to address several physical sites simultaneously without jetting all over the world. My goal was to find means to collaborate across geographies and cultures. It was more difficult than I would have thought but that is only because my expectations were unrealistic for the first attempt.

I just came from my studio, where I was working on a painting of the Gulf of Maine. It is an image I have worked with for seven years. It was based on the cumulatuive impression from research about ocean pollution the ten years of Ghost Nets. What I said in an interview about what I was studying, in 2000, was that the Gulf of Maine was as polluted as the Ganges.

So back in 1999, I was already making at least the abstract connections between different sites.

As I worked on this painting, this past month, what emerged was a portrait of land in trouble, caught between acid rain from midwestern coal burning factories driving airborn mercury to our coast and rising sea waters threatening fresh water supplies. These problems are being faced globally. Dotting the landscape of my painting are the cityscapes, foci of more pollution. All the colors are dark except the cities: the rural, agricultural and open land is being poisoned.

Walking back up the hill from my studio this evening, I smelled some delicate pink and orange wilfdflowers and picked some of the last huckleberries.

Those flowers are the ultimate reason I did the residency: to explore a new model to address our ecological problems. The old models won't be enuf. There are two many factors converging simultaneously now. The edge we are all teetering on is too steep.