In April 2020, as for many others, my supposedly emptying house was abruptly full again. My sons returned. Time rearranged, winding back to a long-past stage of life when my sons’ worlds were much smaller, circumscribed by home and family. 

When I look at my work from this strange, heart-rending interval, I see time suspended. At a stage of life when the impetus is to go and do, circumstances compelled my sons – and all of us – to wait, turn inward, reflect. We were all Hansel and Gretel searching for a trail of breadcrumbs in the woods, dreamers wondering about what might be next in an altered world. There was danger, but also opportunity. In these reflections, in the pensive mood of this work, I see my sons growing in patience and a tolerance for ambiguity – along with an oblique sense of humor; qualities necessary for creativity and resilience in a re-ordered world.

Fog (2) I have been walking my dog, often with family and friends, around Lexington’s Old Reservoir for, well – my third Labrador is now in her middle age, and her immediate predecessor had a very long life – it has been years. Circumambulating the pond at least once and sometimes two or three times a day across the seasons has given me the opportunity to experience the Reservoir’s changing light and mood with the depth and intimacy of long acquaintance. It is a pensive place for me, especially in the quiet beauty of off-season, filled with sometimes quirky reminders of summer – a forgotten snack jar, a misplaced picnic table – and unexpected playful moments. The Old Reservoir has given me quite a gift:  a deepened appreciation for the importance of the small, day-to-day places where people and nature (and even dogs) connect. For the transitions that mark the passage of time.

 

Strings 1

The genesis of the Bass series was an assignment in an early class I took with Robert Moll at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. We were asked to photograph one object in as many ways as possible. The string bass's history in my family begins with my husband dancing with my young sons to Charles Mingus' Ysabel's Table Dance. None of us were surprised when my oldest decided to play string bass in fifth grade. The bass is an unwieldy, but also surprisingly fragile and elegant instrument. At its lowest pitches, it is dark and rich, but its upper tones can mimic a cello, or even the lower range of a viola. Single lengths of wood are carved and shaped and polished to provide resonance for a mere four strings. There is nothing wasted. Every part of the instrument, (made with more or less refinement depending on the craftsman/artist) has its purpose.

Olmsted

World's End is a small peninsula, a series of low hills and salt marshes, that projects out into Boston Harbor. It has been and almost been many things. It was a farm, then a never-developed subdivision, with its roads and lawns laid out by landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. By some quirk, it was shortlisted for the UN headquarters, then briefly considered a potential location for a nuclear power plant. The farm is gone and the UN is in New York City, but Olmsted's landscape, simultaneously wild and tamed, remains. Perhaps that is why this series channels something of the aesthetic of 19th century American landscape paintings; where humans, nature and light intertwine into something, if not sublime (see the somewhat overwrought Hudson River School!) - then autumnal and contemplative. 

I am thrilled to be showing selections from 'Not Just Dirt: the Belmont Victory Gardens at Rock Meadow'  with Atelier 29 at the Griffin Museum of Photography, in Winchester, Massachusetts. My thanks to my fellow photographers in the Atelier for their support and - especially - the pleasure and privilege of seeing their work in action. It's been an honor.

 

Cultivation I first encountered the Belmont Victory Gardens looking for a new walk with my family and dog. The idea of tightly packed, fenced community garden plots intrigues me - given I come from the world of large-scale farming, where fields are not measured in yards, but rather in unfenced miles. For me, the Gardens and their environs are a 'micro' landscape. They encourage me to take a more intimate look at our relationship to the land: our tools, its seasons, our cultivation and its produce. 

"A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself."

Roberto Burle Marx

Landscape Architect and Artist

And beyond it is empty Growing up on the Minnesota prairie, the spaciousness and drama, emptiness and sometimes desolation of the landscape remains embedded in how I see the world. Finding myself on the East Coast now, the landscape most essential to me, unsurprisingly, is the ocean's open edge. It is particularly salient to me off-season, when the wide, quiet beaches and dry grasses most closely comment on the world of my childhood; especially, that tenuous, transitional time - the interlude when winter hovers and spring hesitates in the distance.