Site Specific: Green Earth Vinalhaven
August 20, 2009
This day-long, earth inspired arts event, featuring work by more than forty island artists, took place on a glorious August day at sites spaced throughout town. From Vinalhaven Land Trust to The Nature Conservancy’s Lane’s Island, it is estimated that over 200 people visited the sites to review the work of artists in all medias. A sponsor of the event, Vinalhaven Land Trust was home to 3 of the sites and the closing artist’s reception and shore dinner.
Event visionary and organizer, Pat Nick, remembered that the Town’s Comprehensive Plan, although rejected by the voters, called for, as a distant dream, the town to become the first island community to get its electricity from renewable or green power. As the Wind Towers are soon to be a reality, she called on artists to respond to the issues of water, wildlife, woodlands, marine resources, energy, global warming, and climate change.
And that they did, with contributions that inspired the viewer to think about (and act) on the island’s most pressing environmental concerns. Stretched between the two preserves, viewers could find the works at the Fog Gallery, on signposts and an apple tree along Main St., at the pond on Armbrust Hill, and at a home just off Atlantic Ave. Each artist contributed something that he or she cares passionately about – and wrote some words to enhance the viewer's experience and understanding of their work.
At VLT, Pam Johnson chose to “draw attention to the fouling of our coastal habitat with the improper disposal of products from our everyday life on Vinalhaven.” With her painting, she displayed trash picked up from the shores of Grimes Park over a 2-3 day period – so much that she could not use it all!
Marguerite White presented Alternative Proposition on the “structurally weary” welding shed adjacent to the Land Trust. The echo of industry remains; the work “brings past into present, and invites one to see beyond the perceived ‘junk’ to understand the structure not as an imposition on the landscape but as a functioning thread in the fabric of a working waterfront.”
A collaboration of Diana Cherbuliez, James Rigsby, and Alison Hildreth showed that as alien matter, a consequence of human habitation, is introduced to a place, it can be acclimated or destructive to the place. James’ fortification, with native sumac vegetation, is assaulted by the invasive knotweed, that “overtakes species such as the sumac on which a multitude of native insects and birds depend. The glass has a parallel …. innocently brought in as containers…. glass’s characteristics of insolubility, the tendency to shard and splinter, and its simultaneous durability and fragility, make it a formidable foe.”
Down the road at Grimes Park, Janet Gohres showed her ghost flounder “swimming” in the cove – a reminder that not so many years ago, all Vinalhaven’s coves were “carpeted with flounder”. She notes that in the more than twenty-five years that she has been coming to Vinalhaven, “ravens have become rarer, and kestrels, swallows, herring, and sea urchins are missing.” Her ghost swallows were found at Lane’s Island.
At the site of the original Harbor Gawker, Kitty Wales and Matt Miner constructed a Dog Machine Sculpture, "powered with renewable energy inspired by both the history of the space and the island's resources." (Photo by Francois Deschamps)
Elaine Crossman and Kathryn Osgood collaborated in honoring the dense island spruce forests in drawing and photo. “These woods, with their tangled branches and intertwined trunks, have guarded vast areas of island land from human trespass – protecting habitat of many other species, as well as watersheds and recharge areas of the island’s aquifer. As this forest ages, it becomes ever more vulnerable to wind and fire. Each year new areas of forest are downed by the elements.”
Katharine White built a three-dimensional “line drawing” of an iconic Maine house, standing in the water above an island of marsh grass close to the shore. As the winds shift directions, and water levels rise and fall with the tides both house and marsh grass are affected. “As the debate about global warming and rising sea levels escalates, I invite the viewer to pause to consider how nature’s cycles shape the way man decides to live in a particular environment and how man’s intentional thoughts and actions affect the cycles of nature.”
Also at the Lane’s Island Preserve, Diana Cherbuliez’s work reminds us that at Lane’s Island, one experiences the timefullness of the place, “an ever-encompassing continuum of time. The pasts have not been erased, but let exist as the necessary layers that create the natural state. One’s time in a place becomes, blatantly or not, part of that place.”
These are but a small sampling of the works of the artists, which also included poetry readings, musical performances, and many other works of art. They were, of course, best experienced in person, but they remind us of our place here, and our responsibility to caretake this incredible green earth. Congratulations to Pat Nick, co-chair Elaine Crossman, committee members Gillian Creelman, Deborah Pixley, Helen and Philip Greven, Valerie Morton, and Melissa Ryan, and of course, the 41 artists, for the production of this outstanding event.