from the Records of Being Held series
Parents I & II
40 x 96 in
Paint made from pigments foraged by the artist on unceded Kalapuya lands: riverbank green earths (possibly celadonaite, glaucontie), chlorite from a friend’s driveway, former basalt gravel pit green earths, kaolinite & yellow ochre from an abandoned aluminum mine, gift vivianite, gift yellow ochre from artist lorraine brigdale, marigold lake, pink volcanic ochre and hematite from a tree plantation, red earth from a roadcut, weld lake; egg shell chalk; cottonwood catkin ink, garden iris ink, buckthorn ink, walnut ink from gutter walnuts, oak gall ink from fallen winter galls, and charcoal made with carbonized blackberry vines; choke cherry gum and glair binders; reclaimed contractor-discarded plywood panel made from local trees.
Plywood panel offered for sale through form & concept gallery. Pigments for rent only, to be washed off and returned to the land at a time agreed upon at time of purchase of this work, with pigment “rental” monies going to the Kommema Cultural Protection Association to support Cha Tumenma, a land reclamation project.Parents I & II are a tribute to two trees that have shared their the comfort, solace and presence with me: one on the East Coast, on Abanaki Nation of Missisquoi lands / Vermont where I was born and grew up, and one on the West Coast, where I’ve lived as a guest on Kalapuya lands / Oregon for the past couple of decades.
The records for Parents I were drawn in late summer near the top of a very tall, elder white pine tree that I’ve been climbing since I was a child. The tree stands in close company with another pair of white pines, has a wide trunk and capacious lower branches, and provides a view of the surrounding former farm fields, now in the early stages of forest succession. In the distance, I can see a lake, stretching into blue mountains and watery skies.
This group of white pines taught me to trust myself, through the incremental strengthening of the courage necessary to move ever-deeper into their soft, feathery green canopies. Stopping midway-up, never climbing higher than my pounding heart would allow, I developed a personal code for tree-climbing that still holds. I learned to ask questions and wait for the wind to bring me answers — vague and filled with mystery, but answers nevertheless — through the oceanic hushing of the wind-tossed pine needles.
Parents II was assembled from drawn records of my time in a large oak in an oak savanna landscape I visit nearly every day in West Coast winters. I’ve been climbing this tree for many years, partly because it borders the path up a mountain I like to ascend, and is so approachable I can almost walk hands-free into it. The tree looks out on a landscape that felt intensely familiar and to me the first time I saw it two decades ago. I soon learned that it is same vista that the four friends run down into, shouting “Take no prisoners!” in the movie “Stand By Me,” a film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, ‘The Body,’ that I watched, rapt, as a kid.
I’ve sat in this oak tree and looked out at the fields, redolent with flowers, or lion-hued grasses, or yipping coyotes and their pups, and many times asked how to orient my heart between the love I feel for this place and my bottomless longing for the white pines that raised me, as well as the human parents who so assiduously safeguarded my childhood creative solitude. Like the two-sided board that holds these records, one side, one coast, one home, one parent is unreachable when in the presence of the other.
Photos by Byron Flesher, courtesy of form & concept.