Cedartown, Georgia – summers in a deep south rural town in the early 1960's, finding an inch worm suspended from its thread; smelling tomato vines; playing in the slow running hose; the taste of the metal window screen as I watched the KKK march in front of my grandmother's house, my first conscious memory of fear
Mexico – 1967, my first foreign travel, mesmerized every moment - the shape of clouds, the weight of heat, the coolness of tile on bare skin, the colossal scale of Mayan ruins alive with iguanas and story, the pungent brine of the Gulf waters, the sparkling colored light in the glass shops in Mexico City, the shop keeper who gave me 3 amethyst crystals in a turquoise velveteen pouch and a pair of wooden castanets, the taste of sangria in a taberna with walls the most deep vibrant red
Truro, Mass – a refuge from the grittiness of growing up in New York City... winters, springs and summers in the solace of Nature which became my sacred text
Biabou, St. Vincent, West Indies – 1972, my first semester of high school accompanying my anthropologist mother on her fieldwork, not attending school and instead, seeing the first world through the lens of another world and becoming a citizen of the larger human ecosystem
Warwick, New York – knowing Luther Barrett: farrier, dairy farmer, a wise man of few words, rooting my growing interest in the back to the land movement of the mid 70's
Beginning in Istanbul, Turkey instead of going to my college graduation in 1984, and heading south along the coast, riding the night bus to Ephesus and beyond. Crossing the Aegean to Chania, Crete. A flight from Athens to London then on to Wales and finding St. David's. Overland across England to the Scottish Highlands by train and on up to Orkney Island. West to Glasgow and over to Northern Ireland coming into Larne, hitch hiking north to Bally Gally and beyond for the last weeks of this solo sojourn. Mostly given a place to stay and the warmth and kinship of others, giving in return garden work or other labor or child care or simply friendship and stories, staying for days or weeks immersed in place and relationship before moving on
South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe - in the bush with a group of naturalists near the end of the second millennium, considering several endangered species, the loss of wilderness, and the troubled interface between nature and culture... this became the lens through which I also observed the artifact of my failing marriage. The carmine bee eaters and the marula blossoms in the Okavango Delta, the tall endless sky at Umfolozi, the massive acacias at Hwange became my measure
Florence, Italy – the juxtaposition of the international contemporary art scene with the oldness of place and people. Staying at Podere La Casellina, Sylvia and Michaelangelo's agriturismo with babies, cats, and friends around the kitchen hearth in December
Ireland – exploring the west coast from the Bearra Pennisula of Co. Cork northward to Donegal in September. Learning the colors of the place - silver, green, ochre, wine - and the texture of the rain and the ancient stones
Tuscany, Italy – returning four years later in 2009 for an exhibition and the grape harvest at Michaelangelo and Sylvia's again, crushing the grapes by foot, and exploring the hill towns
Swift Run Farm, Albemarle County, Virginia a sanctuary of field, wood, and river and a largeness that could hold the paradoxes - the winged losses, the polished bones, the pollened wind. It became my family's place in the late 1970's and it became the place where I made my life and grew my language and practice as an artist for two decades. When loss of my family to death and other endings had taken all they could, my own tethers to the home and studio I had made dissolved.
