BCA Burlington City Arts - Of Land & Local: Watershed

September 29, 2016 - January 14, 2017

Now entering its fourth year, Of Land and Local: Watershed continues its commitment to the creation of new work through site-specific and place-based art making as well as community programming that encourages critical dialog. August 2016 marks five years since Tropical Storm Irene hit Vermont. Water, as both ecological fact and metaphor, will be the subject of this year’s Of Land & Local. Here in Vermont, while the effects of agriculture and climate change experienced in the Champlain Basin and traumatic flooding continue to reinforce our need for water resiliency, our lakes, rivers, and snow also represent the beauty and leisure that is an important element of the Vermont identity and economy.  As an ongoing partnership between Shelburne Farms and Burlington City Arts, Of Land & Local: Watershed combines the missions of both organizations and supports artist led conversations about social, ethical, and political issues impacting the Vermont landscape, culminating in exhibitions at both locations.

Cameron Davis

Installation Airs, Waters, Soils, (Places)                                          Medium: paintings, glass jars, air, water, soil, stone, flora

ARTIST STATEMENT:

"Airs, Waters, Soils (Places)" is an installation of paintings and objects, that felt like an internal and material conversation with issues pertaining to clean water in the Lake Champlain Basin, as well as the wider implications of water quality globally. Borrowing loosely from Hippocrates “Airs, Waters, Places,” I am applying a similar integrative thinking. Where Hippocrates describes the interrelationship of the three domains of air, water and place as affecting human health, the installation of paintings and objects extends this whole systems thinking across scale, time, and place; through the use of laser etched text, place names, and imagery on jars filled with water, soil, stones and plant samples taken from Lake Champlain and tributaries. In this way I hope to talk about the intersectionality of clean water, healthy soils, climate change, and our emotional and metaphoric connections to water,  to maintaining flourishing ecosystems, economies, and lives.   

Apothecary I and II

My participation in the Vermont Clean Water Network systems mapping process, and Fritjof Capra’s notion of a living systems view of life informed the work Apothecary. Some jars are etched with drawings of invasive plant species, others with text of water quality facts, clean water organizations, place names, poetry, prose or water blessings including Mni Wiconi acknowledging the extraordinary Standing Rock movement. 

Special thanks to  Generator Maker Space artist Jean Cherouny, woodworker Liam Mahabir and the Middlebury College Enviornmental Studies students with professors Rebecca Kneale Gould Ph.dD and Diana Monroe.

Photos: Sam Simon. For additional photos from the exhibition: http://samsimonimaging.zenfolio.com/p193354712

www.burlingtoncityarts.org/Exhibition/land-local-watershed

www.generatorvt.com

www.shelburnefarms.org

Eyes on the Land, Artists Explore Farms & Forests, Shelburne Museum in Partnership with the Vermont Land Trust, Shelburne, Vermont 2015

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina is Latin for “sacred reading” and refers to a practice of reading sacred texts while contemplating aspects of those texts that bring us into our own heart knowing.  I worked with my son, cinematographer Ben Bach, on the video projected above a shelf of cut apple branches. The piece attempts to ask the question, what if we see Earth, nature, the orchard, the tree, as the sacred text? How might we live? 

www.benwbach.com

The Orchard Project: Tenalach

During my time at Champlain Orchards I became fascinated with the notion that every orchard has a different felt quality, a particular presence --- its own perceivable genius loci. 

For this project I was partnered with Champlain Orchards in Shoreham, Vermont. The orchard struck me as possessing elements of the tame and tended in the interaction of orchardists, pickers, cider production, farm market and families. Yet simultaneously the orchard was redolent with a kind of wildness. Its deep time geology was evident beneath the hills’ steep slope towards Lake Champlain. The strong westerly winds sounded more like the ocean, than the rustling of leaves. The gnarled twists and turns of apple branches easily conjured memories of fairy tales. The long history of tending apples through the ages is still evidenced at Champlain Orchards through their annual mid-Winter Wassail celebration. 

It was to this ancient, wild and weathered side I seemed to respond to in the painting Tenalach which is Old Irish "for a deep connection to the land, air, and water that allows one to literally hear the earth sing" (John O’Donahue). The jars filled with hard cider made on site at the orchard spoke to the notion that there is a form of communion with place through the sipping of cider.  I must add, however, that my courtship with the land always felt like a brief affair, without the deeply committed love that comes of the Orchardists relationship of living daily through the vicissitudes of tending, pruning, seasons, people, and economies;  for which I have the utmost admiration.

Reminded of a series of paintings I had completed a decade earlier exploring the notion of Chora, old Greek for the imaginative dimension of place, I wondered whether what I was sensing was invention, or possibly another primary knowing accessible to the imagination. I further wondered whether my observation of the orchard made any difference to the orchard!!

Thus began a series of paintings, videos, installations and drawings exploring various concepts about the implication of perception to the human – nature relationship.

The Endless Spring Series is part of The Emergent Universe Oratorio Project that represents a three-year collaboration between composer Sam Guarnaccia, Visual Artist Cameron Davis and Executive Producer Paula Guarnaccia. Inspired by the work of Thomas Berry and the Journey of the Universe by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, and the film of the same name by Tucker and husband John Grim. This major work, with its interplay of music, imagery and word, places them among what has been described as “ecstatic environmentalists” ---- those whose work seeks to open hearts as a path to engaged environmentalism.

Each aspect of the project can stand on its own; the Emergent Universe Oratorio composition, the Endless Spring Series paintings, and the Recitatives from guest writers. Yet what was abundantly evident and reported back from the audience from the premiere performance September 15, 2013 at the Breeding Barn at Shelburne Farms, Vermont was that the synergy of music, imagery, word and witnesses (the audience) catalyzed a powerful shared experience of love of earth and a re-dedication to creating a flourishing future.

"It is our interest to whenever possible to have both the choral work and the imagery work together, while also partnering with events, symposia, conversations, and actions that may serve this re-dedication to our flourishing future." - S. G., P.G., & C.D.

www.samguarnaccia.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

This painting series titled, Endless Spring, refers to one of many Buddhist terms for enlightenment or awakening. With the fluctuation of climate, spring’s renewal is no longer a given. Moving towards the darkest night of the year, I am reminded of the turning cycles of season, of Earth and of Cosmos.  My painting process allows me to address collective ecological emergencies. These same emergencies are a call to embrace our belonging to Earth and the Cosmos, remembering What we do to Earth, we do to ourselves!

108 Blessings, 215 College Gallery, 2011

Shelley Warren and Cameron Davis’ February 11, 2011    

The title Devi Prayer means hymn to the divine mother. This painting began with thoughts of the honeybee collapse and photos of apple blossoms taken from neighboring Shelburne Orchards. 

Whole systems theory, Deep Ecology, conceptions of an animate universe, and the Buddhist notion of interpenetration of the visible and invisible, offer frameworks for reweaving the inner and outer --- something Theodore Roszak claims in The Voice of the Earth as the root of our collective misbehavior between humans and nonhuman nature.

Over the couple of years' journey of constructing the painting the process became a contemplation of the mystery in nature; conflating honeybee with Egyptian Goddess symbols, apple blossoms with the esoteric white rose & the lotus, and bees wings with angel wings.

Blackbirds Singing in the Dead of Night, 2011

In Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night, I paired abstracted iris forms with blackbird imagery taken from the Arkansas blackbird die-off. In medieval western painting the iris was the symbol (amongst many attributes) of the union of heaven and earth. Birds in Celtic art also symbolized the mediation of spirit and matter. In this sense by using the Beatle’s lyrics as the title, the blackbirds become the metaphor for exploring human’s collective awakening. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly, all your life, you have waited for this moment to arise … blackbird fly, blackbird fly….into the light of the dark black night.” In other words, which interdependent event; environmental, geopolitical, transcendent will catalyze our collective waking from the slumber of denial and separation from each other and Earth.

The Secret Garden

This book uses a 1962 publication of the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett with illustrations by Tasha Tudor. It was rebound with 128 drawings on sheer fabric and rice paper inserted between each original page.

The book was part of the exhibition “Re-Covering: 26 Artists Re-Imagine 26 Books,” Art About Books Gallery, Brighton Press, San Diego, CA, Dec 8, 2007 - Jan. 12, 2008. The exhibition was curated by press co-directors, Bill Kelly and Michele Burgess.

I have cherished memories of reading the Secret Garden each early spring to my now adult sons. It provided moments to discuss racism, classism and the healing presence of nature as we waited for the snows to recede and the magic of the first shoots to show themselves after their long winter's nap.

108 Blessings was a two person exhibition with sculptor Shelley Warren.

www.shelleywarrenstudio.com

Drishti: Sanskrit for soft gaze

My process in this series, and in general, draws on the practice of Drishti where one looks into the world while maintaining the multidimensional “knowing” from behind closed eyes.

In The Voice of the Earth, Theodore Roszak presents a provocative theory that the roots of our collective misbehavior can be found in the historic and conceptual split between “in-here” and “out-there.” This dichotomy manifests as the large and despairing gap we feel between ourselves and nonhuman nature.” (Laura Sewell, The Skill of Ecological Perception). Painting becomes a devotional practice. On good days, boundaries between “in-here” and “out-there”, self and other, self and place, self and painting, and the visible and invisible dissolve.

Limina: the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect; the place or point of entering or beginning; threshold

The series, Limina: Painted Prayers for Threshold Times explores the implication of the practical, ethical and spiritual opportunity our planetary crisis affords. I created the 24 drawings as an elegy to the 500 million monarchs that died in a 2002 cold snap, as well as an expression of my general concern for the loss of species due to climate change.

Both abstracted and recognizable images of stamens, bones, butterflies, macro invertebrates and petal folds have been a thematic presence in my work since 1999. They function as a vehicle to explore place, sensuality, and the numinous quality of nature.

The veil drawings came out of a conversation with a friend about our shared perception that the landscape is losing its vitality. It is as if the nature spirits have withdrawn.

Knowing that perception is fluid and participatory (Merleau-Ponty, David Abrams), we questioned whether our observations are objective or subjective. We wondered if acknowledgement of the invisibles, like clapping for Tinkerbell, brings the nature spirits back into our gardens and landscapes.

The waxwing veil drawings were inspired by an encounter with a flock of cedar waxwings one late February.

It was one of those despairing mornings. My mind was deep in thoughts of global climate change and watching the vitality drain out of the woods. Suddenly, I was surrounded by what seemed like a thousand cedar waxwings. They were splashing in puddles at my feet, flitting around my head, and filling my eyes as I looked skyward. The cedar waxwing's call is a single trilling note. A thousand trilling notes wrapped everything in loud, vibrant sound and, for a moment, we were one—the woods, waxwings, and me.

I rushed home to look up the symbolism of cedar waxwing, and was amazed to find the response to my despair. These birds live in supportive social communities and their “medicine” is that transitions can come gently. What better message as we navigate the radical changes occurring in our living systems, social and environmental.

These twenty sheer fabric veils were composed into ten different installations meant to inspire the walkers participating in first climate change activist event, “The Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walk for a Clean Energy Future” with Bill McKibben—a 60 mile walk from Ripton to Burlington, Vermont.

Video by Jan Cannon

These paintings explore the notion that when we see with “love eyes” our relationship with the world, and our behavior, changes. (Joanna Macy, Laura Sewell, David Abrams)

Domina was painted in response to a road trip in northern Scotland. We traveled form Findhorn to Erraid and Iona in search of a stained class window depicting a pregnant Mary Magdalene, which we found in a tiny chapel on the Isle of Mull. This painting became a tribute to the Goddess tradition.

500 Million Monarch Rise Again: In the winter of 2001-2 an estimated 500 million monarchs died in Central America due to a cold snap. At the time I completed an installation of 24 drawings (see Installations: Limina, painted prayers for threshold times) as an elegy to the monarch butterfly and my general concern for the collapse of habitats and species due to global climate change.

This painting was completed in the summer of 2007 after reading that the monarch population had returned in full and with more resilience to cold snaps! The speed of their recovery is still a mystery to scientists. This painting is an expression of my delight as we open to what we might learn form our non-human companions. (Sadly, 2017 has now seen a drastic decline of the Monarch due to habitat loss). 

Natural Grace exhibition catalog essay by Adrian Ivakhiv, PhD. “Sustainable Vision, or the Art of Seeing Gracefully.”

My paintings explore the natural world—along the edges where perceptions of outer phenomena mingle with intuitive listening.

The Eleusinian Mysteries arose from readings and thoughts on honeybees and the myriad explanations for the recent honeybee collapse disorder. Apple blossoms from trees in my home inspired the abstracted forms.

While researching theories addressing the honeybee collapse disorder I came upon the work of Quantum mathematical theorist, Barbara Shipman. Shipman discovered that a sixth dimensional formula, when translated onto a two dimensional surface, created the same pattern as the honeybee “waggle dance,” one of two patterns honeybees display to direct their fellow colonists to a specific supply of honey. Shipman’s controversial position postulates that the honeybee perceives and interacts at a quantum level in order to communicate the location of food. I saw this painting process as a celebration of this stunning notion.

Inspired by the poems of Mary Oliver, these paintings explore the notion that nature displays its own personality regardless of our human projections (James Hillman, Schumacher 1998). The painting process becomes an act of courtship, or the dance of getting to know the other.

The Lilies Break Open Over Dark Water
by Mary Oliver

Inside
That mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
That reeking
Leaf-yard, that rippling

Dream-bowl, the leaches’
Flecked and swirling
Broth of life, as rich
As Babylon,

The fists crack
Open and the wands
Of the lilies
Quicken, they rise

Like pale poles
With their wrapped beaks of lace;
One day
They tear the surfaces,

The next they break open
Over the dark water.
And there you are
On the shore

Fitful and thoughtful, trying
To attach them to an idea—
Some news of your own life
But the lilies

Are slippery and wild—they are
Devoid of meaning, they are
Simply doing;
From the deepest

Spurs of their being,
What they are impelled to do
Every summer
And so, dear sorrow, are you.

"Chora is old Greek for the imaginative and evocative dimension of place—the West lost this dreamlike or mythic sense of place when the word, chora, became divorced from the physical and utilitarian sense of place, topos.”

– Joseph Sheridan

Sacred Space: Intention/Attention

This body of work engages the dynamic between the intention to connect to a felt yet invisible presence in the world, while paying attention to each moment through mindful noticing of mark, color and configuration of form. In the process the decisions and responses that remain have a deeply felt resonance with this unnamable presence

The concept for this project is rooted in the many ancient and contemporary practices of hanging strips of cloth as invocations or symbolic statements. These practices can be found at sacred wells in the UK, outside Japanese Shinto temples, along pilgrimage paths in India, and in the similar act of hanging Tibetan Buddhists' prayer flags. A contemporary secular example is the popularity of "awareness ribbons" to represent messages of solidarity.

Student's from the University of Vermont's Environmental Program class, Environmental Art: Lecture Series and Studio Seminar, facilitated the writing and installation of messages throughout the trees on the University of Vermont central Green for the Global Climate Change Action, StepItUp.org.

Quantum Community, a participatory ecological event

This performance was a collaboration between Gillian Kapteyn Comstock (www.mettaearth.org), Ogion Fulford (www.lookfar.org), and me.

“We are collaborating in the creation of an ecological event. Just when the planet seems to teeter in the balance of healthy ecosystems and the extinction of life, including potentially the human race, a resurgence of creative initiatives is arising. In this challenging time, we may be motivated, by the sheer threat to survival, to originate solutions. The mandate for an evolutionary and quantum leap has arrived.

Trusting, then, the innately brilliant creativity of the universe, the cosmos, and nature, solutions and evolution seem inevitable.

Calling upon the power of the circle we create a theater in the round. With the alchemical collage of layered video images projected on a nine-foot hoop screen, multiple paintings on veiled fabric, poems, sounds images, and contemplative practices, we enter the realm of possibility. Stirring the sleeping parts of ourselves into another octave of awareness we call for quantum consciousness.” 
—Gillian Kapteyn Comstock

Let Ours Be a Time Remembered, A Performance on Behalf of the Atmosphere, is a recitation-performance marrying political activism, spoken word, and the spiritual practice of yogic Sanskrit chanting. The piece came from the desire to generate hope, courage, and trust in our capacity to evolve creative solutions to global climate change.

The participants simultaneously spoke from texts including The Earth Charter (an international document of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society), atmospheric data from the research of NASA scientist, James Hansen, and the Sanskrit chant "Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu" ("May all beings be peaceful and free"). Ten different languages were spoken.

The original version of this performance was part of the global climate action, 350vt.org, in Battery Park, Burlington, Vermont, USA. The performance was documented for a video project of the same title.

"Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life." —The Earth Charter

For Love of Earth, A Celebration of the Earth Charter, September 9, 2001, 
Shelburne Farms, Vermont

From 1999 - 2001 Sally Linder and I created the Temenos Books Project, as a way to introduce the Earth Charter, an international document outlining principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society (www.earthcharter.org).

We facilitated reflective gatherings where participants could make an image for a single page or a full book. through workshops, to businesses,  sustainability conferences and 50 schools throughout the state of Vermont. Simultaneously we planned for the largest Temenos gathering, For Love of Earth, A Celebration of the Earth Charter, where nearly 2000 people were introduced to the Earth Charter through music, visual arts, dance and guest speakers: Jane Goodall, Satish Kumar, Steven C. Rockefeller, Reverend James Morton, John Todd, Nancy Jack Todd, Stephanie Kaza, and Musician Paul Winter at Shelburne Farms in northern Vermont.

At the end of the day, the Ark of Hope (www.arkofhope.com), designed and painted by Sally Linder was unveiled as the holding place for the Temenos Books. Our intention was to deliver the books to the United Nations General Assembly as endorsement of the Earth Charter.

Two days later September 11, 2001 stunned the world. Hearing the news while cleaning up after our event, Sally Linder and three friends “grabbed by a powerful instinct” decided to walk the Ark of Hope with its cargo of Temenos Books 350 miles to the United Nations where they were exhibited in January 2002. The unexpected and remarkable journey resulted in The Ark of Hope traveling to four continents, with over 20,000 participants, including: Johannesburg, South Africa as part of the World Summit on Sustainable development, Bangalore India for the 2005 International Women’s Conference hosted by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and to the Netherlands where 8,000 children and Queen Beatrix participated as a symbol of the Dutch government’s endorsement of the Earth Charter. (www.earthcharter.org)

The community art project Temenos Books emerged from the conviction that envisioning an act of compassion is the first step to living it, and that art has the capacity to engage inner dialogue with the external issues of the world.

Sally Linder and I created the project using contemplative practices and ecological awareness games with the invitation to envision images of a positive future, while introducing the Earth Charter, an international document of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society. www.earthcharter.org.

University of Vermont Department of Art & Art History

ARTS 001 Drawing

ARTS 012 Perspectives on Making

ARTS 121 Introduction to Painting

ARTS 195 Painting: Art & Ecology

ARTS 195 Art & Ecology

University of Vermont Environmental Program & Rubenstein School of the Environment & Natural Resoures

ENVS 192/295 Greening Aiken: Art & Architecture Studio

Cameron Davis and Diane Elliott Gayer

Students in the Art and Architecture Studio will have the opportunity to participate in design proposals that explore the common boundary of art, ecology and design in what are called “Ecoventions,” or art that restores damaged habitats, allows water infiltration, and enhances living environments. These art interventions will build awareness of the “green” features being designed into the George D. Aiken Center, home to UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Students will learn and develop critical thinking in the following areas: the growing field of environmental art, the fundamentals of ecological design as related to human spatial needs and site specific requirements, and understanding of the relationship between form and function, and design parameters which include aesthetic, biophilic, mechanic, and living systems criteria.

The class is part of a three-year sequence of courses designed in conjunction with the Greening Aiken Renovation Project. Course designs will be passed from one class to the next in the sequence; ending in the implementation of designs during the final design/build summer intensive. Students are encouraged to design thesis, research, and/or grant proposals in conjunction with this sequence (e.g. URECA! Projects).

Students from this class are invited to submit their designs to the exhibition: Human=Landscape, Aesthetics of a Carbon Constrained Future (working title), Firehouse Gallery, Burlington City Arts, Burlington, VT, August 2009

Guest Speakers:

John Anderson

Janet Fredericks

Terry Irwin

Patricia Johanson

ENVS 195: Ecological Design Studio: co-taught with Diane Gayer

ART 195/ENVS 195: Place Based Environmental Art

ART 195/ENVS 195: Environmental Art: Lecture Series & Studio Seminar in partnership with Burlington City Arts exhibition Human=Nature

Cameron Davis

Environmental Art: Lecture Series & Studio Seminar explores issues within the field of Environmental Art. Held in collboration with Burlington City Arts this course continues themes raised by the Firehouse Gallery exhibition Human=Nature. This show explored several emerging themes within the Environmental Art movement including Ecoventions (restoration & remediation), sense of place, and understanding the human venture within the larger living web of life. Students will be required to attend public lectures at the Firehouse Gallery, classroom lectures, as well as create a body of work reflecting course content. Readings, discussions, lecture response papers and artist statement essay will further support students' understanding of their own studio or site-specific work within the wider context of the growing Environmental Art movement. 

Guest Speakers:

Jackie Brookner

Kate Pond

John Anderson

Adrian J. Ivakhiv

Nancy Dwyer