Fish Finder

Fish Finder 4' x 8'

This painting, its story and imagery, came about as a result of an afternoon fishing with my dad and son. We gazed upon the fish finder- a magic cartoonish view into the depth- hoping to find a school below us. Occasionally, a few dozen might meander into view which elicited howls of excitement from my son and a flurry of casting. I secretly hope that no fish are caught because it pains me greatly to see any creature suffering but after fishing for hours, floating about in Hull bay, I am even more saddened by my son’s disappointment. We talk of days of old, when my dad’s dad (Pappa) fished regularly in Boston Harbor while working as the senior mechanic for American Airlines.

“I had only to drop my line and a fish would be on it” He used to say.

My Great uncle emigrated to the US from Sicily and settled in the North End. He was a commercial fisherman full of tales of the sea, its wrath and beauty alike. Gradually, over the course of his career, he had to fish increasingly deeper and farther out as the fish became less plentiful. So far out to sea he once was, that a storm blew in Suddenly and he could not get back to port in time. His ship sank. He and his entire crew were very fortunately rescued by helicopter. Soon after that, he retired. The fish were too far away.

In the research I’ve done on pre and early colonial New England, I found many accounts of the cod and other large fish being so abundant that they were actually a nuisance for ships coming and going from the harbor and waterways. The native people, (Wampanoag) relied on the plentiful fish as a dietary staple, especially during the summer months when tribes moved from their sheltered inland wintering lands to the coast and islands.

The science tells us that soon, there will be more plastic pollution in the oceans than marine life.

My son knows these stories and facts. He is sad and angry that he cannot catch a single fish for his dinner. He is sad and angry that the generations before him exploited the abundant abundant fish in the Sea, polluted the land and oceans, and left his generation with a world on the brink of collapse.

All this is true. All this is sobering and dejecting and while I wanted this painting to document these sentiments, I also wanted the words to be able to rewrite our future. I want it to also foretell of possibilities of a positive future. The words can be picked out, rearranged to say that ‘once upon a time there was plastic and pollution in the ocean, that the fish were gone but now there are many fish in the sea. I want this for my son and all generations human and non human alike. I want this to be the future.

Mi Playa Su Playa

mi playa, su playa 4'x6'

Mi Playa, Su Playa is a play off the common expression, ‘mi casa, su casa’ or ‘my house is your house’. When said, it implies pride in home and generosity to offer home to another who would respect and treat it like their own. The ownership, title, deed, etc., of the house itself is not important. The sentiment refers to the heart of the home, the love and care for place, the extension of that love to a guest, and the reciprocal respect and grace of the guest.

In the painting, ‘mi playa, su playa’ or ‘my beach is your beach’ I want to emphasize that sentiment. Upon the beaches where I live and where I have traveled, I see a sad and pervasive trend of visitors to the beautiful shores who derive great pleasure from their expeirence. They spend the day eating, bathing, playing, swimming, etc., and then depart, leaving a wreck of debris in their wake- Styrofoam coolers, aluminum grill pans, plastic cups, cans, and much more. Do these people treat their own homes like this? Would they be happy if a visiting guest did? If everyone who enjoyed the beach treated the beach like their own, would their respect, care, and stewardship of it change for the better? That is my hope. If we all can treat every natural place we visit as our home, if ‘my beach is your beach’ then maybe attitudes can change. Maybe greater respect can cultivate stewardship, care, and love for the place that brings so much joy.

‘mi playa, su playa’ is 4 feet tall by 6 feet long set within a 3” deep shadow frame. It is painted upon foam insulation board that was leftover from a construction project. Beach trash used includes:- plastic bottle caps- black garbage bags- dog poop bags (unused!)- bungee cord- rubber tubing- lobster trap ID bands- fishing rope- lobster trap bait bags- asphalt shingle- flip flop- traffic cone- helium balloon- ice bag- beach ball- brillo pad- bubble wrap- fishing net- Amazon package- plastic cup- yarn- foam padding- coffee bag

Caps on Black

Caps on Back

‘Caps on Black’ is a painting I created for my own home which is designed to fit over the TV recessed within a shallow nook in my thermal mass chimney. Black can be a bold choice for a room. Upon initial consideration, it is even a bit scary; will a black painting rob the room of its brightness? I find the opposite to be true. Sometimes black is just the thing to draw in light and interest. With the pop of 35 plastic bottle caps recovered from Hull beaches, ‘Caps on Black’ is bright, soothing, and harmonious in my living room.

Other marine debris used:
-bubble wrap
-lobster trap
-plastic buoy
-screen from a window/door
-artificial leaves
-condom (in wrapper)
-bike reflector
-polystyrene packaging
-beach toy
-bungee cord
-fishing net
-lobster bait bag

Salt Works Triptych

Salt / Middle Ground/ Works 4.5' x 6.5'

Salt, Middle Ground, and Works form a triptych created for a collector’s bespoke contemporary sea side home in Cohasset MA. The brief was to create three paintings for the main entry corridor/ feature dining room wall that highlights the elegant features of the home- What an opportunity!

The homeowners swim in the ocean daily- even in the winter! They clean trash from their private beach and collect the buoys that wash up regularly.

After spending time on their beach, observing, collecting old broken up buoys, and just being in the environment, it became clear to me that I wanted to bring the movement of the water and the solidity and mass of rock into the paintings. The colors would evolve from and be determined by the buoys I collected there.

The title, ‘Salt’ is derived from the Old Salt Works that once operated their beach and shore. Thanks to the help of the Cohasset Historical Society, I discovered this amazing industry that was once the lifeblood of the town. I knew that I had to incorporate this historical detail into the paintings.

‘Middle Ground’ is representative of the mass of rock along the homeowners shore that is wrapped by waves as the tide come in. It is peaceful and solid amid the tumultuousness of the water that encircles and crosses it. This painting is the calm in the churning water. As the subject of the middle painting, it is the rest and ease for the eye that allows the paintings on either side to imbibe the ruckus of the flowing water.

Most of the hundreds of pieces of buoys I cut up and incorporated into the painting are from the homeowners beach, collected by them on their daily beach cleaning vigil. other beach debris materials on the three paintings include:

-yoga matt
-lobster bait bags
-lobster trap
-vinyl siding
-rubber hose
-bungee cord
-rubber tubing
-bubble wrap
-polystyrene packaging
-lobster trap ID tags
-flip flop
-bottle caps
-foam padding
-popcorn ceiling sheets
-fiberglass road sign
-scalloping rubber ‘cookies’
-jeans
-fishing rope
-rubber boat bumper strips
-erosion protection bag
-boat shrink wrap
-many other miscellaneous plastic bits

The paintings are created on exterior ridged foam board that was left over from a commercial build and waiting in the dumpster for me to pluck out

902 ballonns- 1 beach clean

The amazing Laura Ludwig from The Center for Coastal Studies Provincetown dumps 902 balloons that I helped to painstakingly sort and count. They were gathered on one Cape beach cleanup

South Shore Home, Life, Style magazine

I am so grateful for the amazing job South Shore Home, Life, Style magazine did on the article. The response has been amazing and I hope that my message continues to reach out into the world through the power of art!

Squantum

As developed as the Boston shore line has become, there still remain incredible pockets to explore. I love Squantum. My mom grew up lust off of Wollaston beach and she remembers coming here as a kit. I am sure it looked a bit different then- a bit less trash, maybe not so much graffiti, etc. but still it remains for her descendants to visit and enjoy.

At low tide, we cross over a spit to Thompsons island (ignoring the no trespassing signs!). The island is owned by Outward Bound so we stay clear of the land and stick to the shore. Though I have explore many harbor islands extensively, I haven’t been here. Thompsons has a distinct environment that feels so removed from the world and yet Boston is right there- so close. Unsurprisingly, there was not shortage of trash to pick up!

Slice of Paradise

This little slice of the Cape is one of my favorite places. It is windswept and harsh and so so beautiful- but not the best place to swim. The great whites have returned! which means the seals are abundant! I hope this is a good sign among so many disheartening facts and figures and first hand evidence about our struggling ocean.

For this 9 mile trek, I came prepared with trash collecting bags but blissfully, the beaches were nearly pristine save for a rubber glove and a few tangled masses of fishing gear that I was able to haul above the tide line but were way too heavy to carry 5 miles back to the car.

Trash highlight of 'Boston Light'

Here are the ‘fruits’ of a trash gathering trip which were all incorporated into ‘Boston Light’, among much, much more! The plastic boat shrink wrap spoke to me of the changing tides and shifting waters around Boston Light which I am fortunate to be able to see from my house.

Within a few miles of my house, thousands of boats are being prepped for the summer season and it leads me to wonder, as I haul a sheet of plastic winter boat swaddling as large as a twin duvet off the beach, where does this material end up? It is not recyclable- not that that is any guarantee that it will actually escape a landfill- and millions of yards of the material is used every winter. Is there a better way?

Bottle Caps

Step anywhere along the ‘trash line’ on beaches and you will inevitable find a bottle cap. They comprise of roughly 8% of the 5.25 TRILLION estimated pieces of plastic in our oceans. Because of their size and bouyancy, they look like food to sea birds and marine life. Pick them up when you see them. Throw them away or better yet, transform them into a beautiful piece of art that reminds us of our responsibility to reduce and restore!

All the bottle caps (and more!) pictured below came from a small patch of bay ‘beach’ in Hull along George Washington Boulevard and the Truro neighborhood. They wash up, get stuck in dead marsh grass beds and so remain until picked up by human hands, swallowed by birds, or washed away again by the tides. I only had to stand in place and reach around me to pick up nearly 100 caps.

Nantasket Sunrises

'To Be an Ocean'

Reading: curling up with a book undisturbed on a wintery evening by the fire, is a reality that just is not mine for the moment. But, I hunger for stories and so I plough through audio books while driving. My preference nowadays are memoirs and thought provoking non fiction. And just as a beautiful cover would catch my eye in a bookshop and happen to be the perfect book for a long flight or that wintery evening by the fire, the right audio books seem to come my way.

Without reading the description, I downloaded from my free library app, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer and listening to her speak her own words was like coming home. I think everyone the world over would benefit so greatly from her story and in turn, the world as a whole would benefit.

Robin speaks of the Potowatami language and with such beauty she describes the word for ‘bay’.
” ‘A Bay’ is a noun only if water is dead. When ‘bay’ is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb, ‘wiikwegamaa’ '-to be a Bay- releases the water from its bondage and lets it live” (apologies that I cannot cite a page because I was listening)

What a respectful way to refer to non human living beings/entities in the world. By animating what Latin based languages understand as inanimate things, life and caring are breathed into them. Understanding a tree not as an inanimate thing but as ‘being a tree’- living and thriving, nurturing its surroundings that nurture it back. If we all thought of the ocean in the same way, would we think twice before harming it? If we considered it not to be a thing but a living dynamic entity that nurtures its life within as well as around it as a tree nurtures us and all the animals that call it home, would we care for it? protect it? ask first its blessing before taking from it*? give thanks? Do the limitations of our language predicate our inability to interpret the natural world as a thing only to be used, an object like a computer or paperweight, a commodity? Given the origin of the English language, it is not surprising that the natural world is so relegated. But, could our perceptions be changed?

The image below is so utterly disturbing and deeply heart wrenching. This whale and her unborn baby, among untold millions of others who call the oceans their home, are suffering horribly. I call on anyone who will listen to reassign the ocean from a thing into ‘being an ocean’ as the Potowatami would say. The ocean is a living entity that nurtures us and in turn, we must nurture it back or there will be nothing left for either of us to give.

*Robin describes this as both a left and right brain activity. The right brain intuits what the plant is non verbally saying while the left brain analytically observes if the population can sustain harvesting. And never more than half is taken if the answer to both both hemispheres of request is yes!

Entanglement

While I am smiling in the photo below, I am not at all happy to find fishing net on the beach. The reason why I am working with beach litter is not simply to clean the beach for our enjoyment, it is so that the problem of ocean pollution specifically in the form of fishing ghost nets, rope, plastic debris can be brought to the forethought of consciousness among more and more people. It is so troubling and desperately sad that the critically endangered right whale, cited in the article below, (among a long list of other marine creatures) is suffering from ingestion and entanglement in all this material which leads to painful slow death.

Please support local groups like The Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium who are dedicated to combating the these threats to our oceans. Talk about it with others. Pick up trash on the Beach. Get involved in any way you can!

Awareness

I am delighted that the Hull Times chose to feature me and my work. As an artist, the recognition is great but the TArt Collection is also, and most importantly, about raising awareness about ocean pollution. The first step to improving the problem is realizing that there is a problem. When there is a collective consciousness around the need for cleaning up beaches and actually getting the root of the trash accumulation, real change can happen.

Laying Foundations

Laying my base- getting the bulk of the trash down, is the most exciting and even therapeutic part of my process. I am not thinking about what I am making. I don’t care about the end result. I am just reacting to the myriad bits and pieces before me and applying with furry. Once I stop, when I stand back to appraise, is when I begin to formulate and I want to prolong that specificity as long as possible: I want to stay in fluid loose limbo where anything is possible

The Bundle

The bundle has been sitting on my studio floor since I picked it off of Hummarock beach a few months ago. It’s not that I don’t tidy my space, I simply tidy around the bundle. It is beastly, this mass of fishing rope, knots, nets, and this cool melted hodge podge of synthetic rope and plastic buoy. I have been hacking bits off little by little until I could take the bundle no longer. Systematically, I dismantled the behemoth, cutting out bits for use and for trash. I made piles of rope, melted bits, fishing net, lobster trap. All was going well, if not incredibly painstakingly, until a rogue piece of rusty lobster trap flew at me and lodged in my knee through my jeans. A tetanus shot and a week of hobbling later, I was as good as new.

Tide -O-Foam

This pyramid of dock foam was waiting for me on the beach after a super moon high tide. I am kind of excited to repurpose the orange- it’s a new color for me.

Collaboration

It’s always fun to create with my son. Normally that means that I work on my stuff and he makes something of his own along side of me. On this occasion, he requested that we work together and this is what emerged. Somehow, we both channeled a disapproving mother wearing a bathing cap in 1950- at least that’s what it looks like to me. I think I will hang it above my son’s toilet to remind him to aim into the bowl- not the floor, or wall, or ceiling.

Prickly Progress

Most of the elements of this painting were collected at Hull Gut after our big snowless Nor’easter. I dumped them on the floor of my studio and they just demanded to be made into cactus. I have a lot experience with the prickly plant. When living in Texas, I photographed and painted them regularly. Their bulbus twisted forms are so appealing and compositionally perfect. Sadly, New England lacks most varieties, save the prickly pear.

When beginning a painting, I normally have a concept in mind- maybe even a vision of an end product, but rarely does my work ever go according to plan. In many ways, this painting was no exception except that the plastic bits, trap, and all other trash held firm in their determination to become cactus- and I relented to their wishes.

Painting with Puppy

I puppy sit for this little cutie twice a week and by the end of the day running around with my two old grouches, she is exhausted. On this afternoon, she settled in to a cozy spot between my calves as I knelt and painted. The problem was that I regularly sat back on my heals when the painting demanded I be lower down and then I rose up again. Poor, sweet, tired little Lu went back and forth between curing up on top of my quads and then back around as I moved. I couldn’t resist the snapshot!