Cedra Wood — Journal Project

Here's a look at some work in progress from one of the Land Arts alums here in Australia, Cedra Wood. At UNM, Cedra made some stunning paintings based on photos from her Land Arts experience and other staged scenes, usually in outdoor settings. In Australia, she continued in this vein, placing herself in the role of performer on several occasions for photos that will be used as source material for paintings.

In addition to this ongoing project, one of Cedra's main projects in Australia is to fill the pages of a Never Ending Story-style book with writing and images based on her Australian experiences. The book itself looks medieval — it is romantic and intimidating at the same time. And toting this thing around must have been a constant reminder of her commitment. Below is a statement from Cedra about the project. The final image below is the journal used as a prop in her last performance role at Calperum.

Both the beauty and disadvantage of a journey like this is that so much happens every day, and you're whirled through a thousand successive moments that you want to remember in crystalline detail. Photographs help--and believe me, I took tons of them (O bless the digital age), many of which will serve as visual references for paintings in the studio later--but just as important to me was to keep a written and hand-drawn record of the events, thoughts, ideas, performances, and conversations that occurred. So often during travel, brains and lives expand in significant ways, and I wanted to remember how and why mine did, this time.

6/23 Murray River Walk

On Tuesday, June 22 we returned to Calperum Station. I took the opportunity to relax a little and get caught up on some things. I also made plans for what to do on the 23rd, which, I had decided, would be to walk to the Murray River. I've read before that the Murray is "the Mississippi of Australia." Now, however, its flow is completely managed by numerous dams and locks. Ill effects of human activity in the environment is plentiful around Calperum. I wondered if their were any similar signs with the river. More than that, I wanted to see the force that helped shape the area long before people existed here.

Cedra joined me on this extraordinary walk. It is approximately 3 miles from Calperum Station traveling south-east. Like my walk to the salt lake a few days before, it featured several changes of scenery — from cess pools and dead trees to sun-parched mud and mammoth bird's nests and finally to the surprisingly serene Murray River itself. Once there, Cedra and I broke for lunch. It was truly peaceful and quieting. Not quiet — things rarely are — but the sounds we heard, primarily occasional bird calls, had that effect. I took a little nap by the riverbed. After about an hour and a half or two hours, we started back. The pics don't do it justice, but here they are anyway.

6/20-21 Fred's Place

On Monday, June 20 the Land Arts crew plus John and Frank (an ANU post-grad) set out for Fred's place, approximately 20-30 min west of Calperum Station. There we would camp for the next couple of nights. This was the closest thing to a true UNM Land Arts experience so far in Australia. We were in a more remote location, we had only the barest equipment for cooking and there were no bathroom facilities (helloooo shovel!). Personally, this was a very important couple of days. I felt like I could walk forever and not reach any other human. And since my process, both in Land Arts and here in Australia, comes from direct contact with the environment, this kind of space was an important factor in allowing myself to be uncensored in my work. Generally speaking, I've found it difficult to get into a sustained rhythm of uncensored artistic activity for the past several years. I've had my moments, but they have been sporadic. This was a significant reason why I wanted to come to Australia.

Unlike my previous walk to the salt lake near Calperum Station, my walks here did not lead me out of one kind one environment and into another. It was entirely mallee, a term that describes these types of eucalypts as well as the particular environments where these plants are dominant. It was more minimal than other areas we'd visited. To my eye there weren't many varieties of plants, the main ones being the mallee and spinifex, which is a low-growing tussock grass with sharp-pointed leaves. These were the reason for my packing tape shin guards, which worked quite well to prevent constant pricking. Otherwise, this was not a densely overgrown environment. Much of the loose, red sand was exposed. I traveled perpendicular to the ridges, which run exactly east-west (you can see it clearly on the satellite images to the left). This made for fairly easy navigation to and from camp. My pics.

Our Map

Frank, Cedra, Bill, Joseph, John and Blake

Mallee and Spinifex

Evening as Cedra wraps up work on a drawing

6/18-19 Intro to Bookmark and Calperum

Filling in the gaps, because there's more to the trip than I was able to complete while I was still in Australia...

Calperum Station is located on the Bookmark Biosphere Reserve north of Renmark in South Australia. The Station promotes awareness of the unique environment of the Biosphere through educational and community outreach programs. From 6/18-24, we stayed on site along with eight ANU art students (aside from two nights when the Land Arts folks went camping not far from there...more on this later). The people who work at Calperum were truly generous and great in every way. Grant, who runs the place, was very keen to the idea of working with artists as a means of communicating issues of the Biosphere to the broader public. In the U.S., such openness to artists by people in scientific fields seems rarer. Possible residency for the future??

The station and its surroundings were quite varied and strange, as I saw on a couple of my long walks. Some of the nearby lakes look utterly bleak, like they belong in a haunted forest. Others are completely dried out, with a top layer of encrusted salt (and more salt beneath the surface, as found by Joseph in his hole-digging). The mallee, which is the unique environment around which the biosphere was formed, are quite lovely and strange. These eucalypts produce several trunks from a single underground root, called a lignotuber. Something like 80% of these trees were removed from Australia to create grazing lands. On the two nights away from Calperum, we stayed deeper into the mallee woodland to experience this type of environment more closely. Here's some pics of Calperum and my walk to the salt lake.

Calperum Station and the Murray River Basin

My Path from Calperum Station to the Salt Lake

Out of the Mallee onto the Crusty Rocks

Salt Lake

Yoshimi Hayashi — Just One Cup

Although he's away in New Zealand, Yoshi is continuing his work with souvenir spoons begun in Australia. He sent me some images and writing about the project:

June 6th, 2011
Gunnedah, New South Wales
"There are alot of Aborigines that live up in there."  Chris commented.  "And cows too", I replied.  "Yes, cows also."  Chris agreed.

June 14th, 2011

“Surfer’s Paradise Australia, Sea World”

“They have seals that can balance a ball!”  I said excitedly.  “Yeah, and its near that crocodile guys zoo.”  Joseph added.

Statement:  “Just one cup”,  2011

What does it really mean to know a place? How do we know that we actually know it at all?  Why does it matter that one own a bit of a place?  Why do we find it so necessary to make a mark on a place or to collect a memory of our visit?  To leave those memory or to be left with and burdened by someone else’s life journey summarized in a small shiny utensil.  Is it a functionless taboo object or should we just use it and live in this moment?

6/28 Winding the Line (A Jump to the Present)

Knowing that much has to be posted still about the remainder of this Australian adventure, I'd like to return to real time here because the immediacy of what I'm feeling is important. 

The line is winding back into a coil. We wound back our line from Calperum to Canberra and now from Canberra to Sydney. In a matter of hours, the winding will take me back across the Pacific to LA and then to San Francisco. There's something about this that makes me sad because what has transpired here can now only exist as memory. Its forefront is no longer in the present moment.

We are in the process of saying goodbye, though in many cases, it is very likely to be an "until we meet again" rather than a goodbye. It still, however, feels like goodbye. We've said our goodbyes to the Field Studies artists from Jigamy and Calperum. Yoshi was called away earlier in the trip, even though his spirit of levity and generosity stayed with us throughout. And as for John Reid, who is pure, unadulterated class, our inevitable goodbyes somehow still managed to feel premature. It would have felt premature regardless of how or when it was done.

Of the remainder of us who came from the States to embark on this amazing journey together — Bill, Cedra, Joseph and me — we say our goodbyes tomorrow at varying times. It is a testament to Bill and John that these goodbyes resonate with me as strongly as they do and especially to Bill for bringing all of us together.

Blake, Yoshi, Cedra, Joseph and Bill at Sublime Point, photo by John Reid

6/17 On to Calperum Station

Here's images from our trip from Canberra to Calperum Station in the Bookmark Biosphere Reserve. An hour and a half outside Canberra, we stopped at Dog on the Tuckerbox, which is a place and monument dedicated to 19th century pioneers. The story is that a dog stood by his dead master's tucker box (lunch box) until death. Further into the trip we had to gorge ourselves with fruit. Apparently one of the rituals of traveling westward in Australia is getting rid — one way or another — of all fruit due to the man-eating fruit flies. After being in coastal field locations thus far, the flat, dry plains of Hay en route to Calperum presented a familiar environment to us Land Arts folks and an indication of inspiring environs ahead. More pics.