Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 45

#theshortestdays (1)

Snow geese in a field near Lake Champlain (2010)

Outside Plattsburgh, agitation in a light gray sky. We pass a large stand of trees, and come upon a field nearly covered with white, its dark furrows filled with the stocky bodies of snow geese. Above the cornfield, the geese rise, wheel and settle in groups of hundreds out of a congregation of thousands. It reminds me of something, and I finally realize it's the motion of rice grains as I wash them, my hand swirling the water into a clockwise vortex.

Once I made a journey to Cap Tourmente, on the estuary of the St. Lawrence, the famed staging area for the snow goose migration. Thousands upon thousands of geese stop there every year on their way between the Arctic and their wintering grounds in the Chesapeake. We had timed our trip to coincide with the usual peak of the migration but that year we arrived ahead of the geese, and saw only a dozen or so, far off in the salt marshes, and a few taxidermy specimens in flight in the interpretive building's dioramas.

So this is the largest number of snow geese I've ever seen, and because we're on the highway, we can't stop, can't hear, can't photograph, can only try to commit the sight to memory. On our own journey back north, three days later, J. has his camera on his lap, but the geese have moved on.

Small Packages: making the "occasional" illustrations for Annunciation

Every book project presents unique design challenges. As the poems began to arrive for Annunciation, I quickly realized that a major issue would be finding the right balance of illustrations to poems. The project had begun with a large, almost-square image, and I planned to do others in a similar format, each taking up a page on its own.

These new images developed as I read and thought about the poems: the one above arose because several of the poets referred to Renaissance paintings that depict Mary reading a book.

Once I had completed half a dozen prints and laid them out with the poems on the pages, spacing them out through the book, this number seemed about right: the six large, full-page relief prints were graphic, with strong solid black areas. They needed to contrast with the more delicate typography and generous white space on the facing pages, but not overpower the words.

An early "test" layout, above -- this image ended up paired with a different poem.

But there were further considerations. Some poets would be represented by a single poem, others by as many as four, and the poems were of varying lengths, but every author had taken the project seriously and put their minds and hearts into it. It was very important to me for each poet to have some art on their pages. It was already September, and I was running out of time: I couldn't complete sixteen full-page illustrations, one for each poet, and I felt that would be too many pages of art in any case.  I had already done a few smaller illustrations. It seemed to me that these  "occasional" or "spot" illustrations would augment the text, extend the art onto more pages, and complement the words and their meaning.

The first small illustrations I had created were fairly realistic and representational, like this white rose:

 

But as the project progressed, the illustrations had becoming more graphic and abstract, and this direction pleased me. Now I wondered what motifs would lend themselves to the subject, but also allow some abstraction? Leaves? Berries?

These blocks yielded illustrations in several sizes, and by scanning the prints I was able to flip them horizontally and vertically, or to rotate and scale them to extend their usefulness. 

Then I thought of olives, and their long, thin leaves. I played around with that subject, doing a minimum of preliminary drawing, and just carving freely. I had liked the "dotty" areas in the previous attempts, and went for that more intentionally:

 

One of these olive images became the basis for the book's endpapers, a crash design effort that was necessary for a last-minute technical reason.

Those endpapers ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole design -- I'll talk about that in another post.

(I'm giving away an original 8"x8" print (at left) to one of the Annunciation buyers, chosen at random: if you'd like to enter, please put your name in the "December Giveaway" box on the order form. If you've already bought a book, you will be automatically entered. Here's the link for more information on the book and ordering.)

Taking Stock

The activity that's defined my life this fall has started to slow down. For the past few days, I've felt like one of the seals we saw in Iceland, poking my head above water and looking around to see where I am. Over the weekend I had time to clean my area of our studio and file leftover material from these projects. It feels good. But it's also never been easy for me to deal with a sudden lull in activity (hence the cleaning, no doubt) and I see it as a challenge this time. I deliberately haven't made clear plans for what comes next, in order to leave some time and space.

One of the things I want to do is to get back to some serious writing, but where that might go is still quite unclear, and I have a huge volume of artistic inspiration in the Icelandic landscape that is waiting to be explored. I know I need some time now to just be, to refill the energy coffers. I also know that it's very easy for time to become filled up again, especially during the holidays, especially when the person in question is me, and especially when I feel guilty for neglecting other people or tasks. But guilt is an emotion I've worked on understanding better in recent years, and it holds less power over me than it used to.

It's often good for me at these times to turn to meditative handwork (and much more fun than cleaning!) Last week I knitted a warm hat from two strands of wool: a thick natural grey alpaca and a thin creamy white merino - the whole purpose being a hat to go with a fur pompom that a friend bought for me at a Native powwow in the fall. The quilt I started last winter is ready to be backed and quilted, and there's a scarf to hem. Today I cut up some squares of origami paper to fold into Christmas ornaments. The appeal of these projects is that there's no deadline, and while my hands are busy with repetitive motions, the work proceeds little by little, creating a meditative space where clarity about larger questions sometimes occurs, unannounced and unexpected.

The written word, though, always functions for me both as a comfort, and a more conscious means for understanding myself. Reading is one side of the coin, the other is my own writing -- it's how I take stock, how I figure things out, and also, often, how I let go and move on. From the pages of private journals, letters to close friends, or writing for this blog, ideas form, and the swirl of inchoate emotions transform into understanding, and finally into plans. When I'm knocking myself out to meet deadlines, I miss writing that way, and I miss the side of myself that becomes too busy or too distracted to enter that space. It's OK for a while, but eventually the lack of self-care takes a toll.

In the past weeks I've seen a number of articles questioning the superficiality of social media, the emptiness of homes without books or art, the falsely-predicted death of the printed book, and the growing appeal among younger people of more tactile, less digital forms of art: vinyl records, shooting with film, learning how to knit and sew. I get it. For those of us who grew up in a world where all of that was commonplace, some of the advantages of new media feel obvious and compelling: for example, I'd never want to go back to designing on a light table with a parallel rule, waxers and phototype, x-acto knives, rubylith and stat cameras. I'm glad we gave away our collection of vinyl, and even though our house included not one but two darkrooms for many many years, we both love our digital cameras. But I agree that there's a lot that seems to have been lost, as we've hurtled headlong down the digital road: too far and way too fast, I sometimes feel.

We don't know yet if we're in the middle of a pendulum swing, with a "correction" underway, or if the road to "progress" -- in large part a skillful manipulation of human desires and anxieties spurred by corporate interests -- will simply continue as it has. I'm often grateful that I've lived in both worlds and have the ability to choose whether to pick a printed book off my shelf or click on a digital title; I'm glad I learned to play instruments and draw and make my own clothes and be curious enough about the natural world to go poking around in it, because there was nothing much else to do when I was growing up. My mother used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go outdoors, but somehow the books, as fascinating as they were, never felt like they had an organic attachment to my brain and body the way today's phones seem to. I might have continued to think about the world in those books, but I was also able to set them down and concentrate on something else, for hours, without being interrupted or distracted. Working that way feels good to me; it also feels good to use my hands and brain together. Being pulled in twenty directions at the same time does not, and neither does spending hours and hours, day after day, in front of this screen.

I loved the tactile, physical, intellectual, and emotional process of creating a series of relief prints over the past six months. Last night, singing in a performance of the Messiah for a rapt audience in the packed cathedral, I was aware of how physical the act of singing is, and how fully it involves the whole organism: body, brain, and spirit. As a species, we have not evolved at the same pace as our technologies, but we've almost stopped thinking about form follows function when it comes to our own bodies and minds: what is this human-shaped thing actually designed to do? When it's all working together, as it so miraculously does most of the time, what does that look and feel like? When we feel incomplete, empty, hungry, exhausted --  how can we regain or achieve some balance? Personally, what I know is that I want to go slower and deeper, into this mid-winter time that may look bleak, but feels full of possibilities.

Road Trip 13: The Black Beach at Vik

After coming down from the promontory, past the cliffs full of seabirds, the tall blooming angelica, the sheep on their rocks, the car left by young men who had been convinced they could drive to the top but ended up having to walk, just like us...after all of this, we drove out of Vik and around the back of the long weird hill we had just climbed, toward the glacier and then away from it again, following a road along the other side of the promontory, past a church, past small houses with Icelandic horses grazing in their yards, down to a parking lot bordered by low dunes.

It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The beach, absolutely black and made of tiny round stones in graduated sizes like pearls, smaller and smaller as you walked closer to the ocean, glistened like caviar. The waves thundered as they broke, swept onto the black sand and retreated in a pattern of brilliant white lace.

To the right, the famous pierced rock peninsula called Dyrhólaey:

On our left, the tall standing rocks iconic to Vik: legend says that they were trolls who were turned to stone.

And behind us, the rock wall made of columnar basalt, and a famous natural cave crowned by studlaberg as beautiful as any carved cathedral, and guarded by a cacophonous colony of nesting birds above it in the cliffs. (See the small figures of people below, for scale.)

Unusually for Iceland, a sign had warned that the surf here was dangerous, and to be very careful when approaching the cave - and to do so only at low tide. The tide was out, so we were able to walk all along the beach, but the waves were definitely unpredictable and caught my toes twice when I was concentrating on close-up photos - so I don't think the signs were kidding.

On an island of extraordinary places surely this is one of the most beautiful; the waves and the black sands feel like they've entered me and won't let go.

Road Trip 12: Climbing at Vik

We left Skaftafell and drove back across the Myrdalssandur to Vik, the southernmost village on the Icelandic mainland, reaching it just after dark. The small fishing settlement looked like a metropolis after the uninhabited desert we had been in for the past few days: full of lights, homes, even some places of business. After putting our stuff in the guesthouse where we had rented sleeping bag accommodations for the night, we headed to the local gas station/convenience store/restaurant for some supper -- burgers, fries, and a couple of Gull draft beers -- then took showers and went to bed, because we planned to rise early and climb the promontory overlooking the village, as well as visiting the town's famous beach.

Vik must be located in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, on the edge of the sea near the  Myrdalsjokull glacier, but underneath that glacier lurks the deadly volcano Katla. Katla is well overdue for an eruption - the past one was in 1918 and the longest period between eruptions was 95 years. Furthermore, each of the three previous eruptions of Ejafjallajokull were followed by eruptions of Katla. If Katla were to erupt, Vik could be destroyed by a glacial flood. There are periodic drills where the townspeople take shelter at the highest point, the church, because it is the only place likely to be above such a flood if it should ever occur. But a flood might not be the worst of it; Katla's eruptions have been of a violent magnitude from VEI-4 (that's the Volcanic Explosivity Index) to VEI-6, the latter comparable to Mt Pintatubo in 1991. Katla is monitored regularly, but while earthquake tremors have been frequent, the expected eruption has not yet occured.

But on that particular morning, Vik was peaceful and beautiful. We decided to forego breakfast at the guesthouse and just get some rolls and coffee before our hike, because we had to make a ferry crossing some distance away in the early afternoon.

Immediately after parking our car, we had company as we started up the long hill.

As we climbed, the view just got more and more spectacular, as the glacier, shining under a clear sky, was revealed behind the local hills.

Like the sheep, it seemed easy to feel oblivious to any danger other than falling off the edge.

Birds nesting in the cliffs cried and swooped in arcs above us, the glaciers shone, and back toward the east, the sea stretched out along the sands beyond the diminishing houses of the town, still asleep under the volcano.

Road Trip 11: Vatnajokull/Skaftafell: Glimpses of Glacial Peaks

We climbed up above Svartifoss, higher and higher, and began to get little glimpses of the Vatnajokull ice cap that had been hidden by the clouds.

Ahead of us to the north were these peaks, and if we had started earlier we could have gone much closer to them. Our goal was a nearby peak, less high than these.

From the top, looking south across the Skeidararsandur glacial outwash plain. That's a storm on the horizon. This was a Japanese couple we had seen before. After they left, we were alone up there and never saw anyone else until we had rejoined the main trail, halfway back down.

And looking to the west, across the vast Skeidararjokull glacier, with the tundra in its autumn magnificence.

We were given brief glimpses of the high mountain peaks at the top of Vantajokull; it was so beautiful, and so quiet, that you could almost forget that under this glacier lies Bardarbunga, one of the most active volcanic systems in Iceland.

 

Road Trip 10: Vatnajokull/Skaftafell: Glimpses of Glacial Peaks

We climbed up above Svartifoss, higher and higher, and began to get little glimpses of the Vatnajokull ice cap that had been hidden by the clouds.

Ahead of us to the north were these peaks, and if we had started earlier we could have gone much closer to them. Our goal was a nearby peak, less high than these.

From the top, looking south across the Skeidararsandur glacial outwash plain. That's a storm on the horizon. This was a Japanese couple we had seen before. After they left, we were alone up there and never saw anyone else until we had rejoined the main trail, halfway back down.

And looking to the west, across the vast Skeidararjokull glacier, with the tundra in its autumn magnificence.

We were given brief glimpses of the high mountain peaks at the top of Vantajokull; it was so beautiful, and so quiet, that you could almost forget that under this glacier lies Bardarbunga, one of the most active volcanic systems in Iceland.

 

A new book from Phoenicia!

Poetry by
Ivy Alvarez,  Rachel Barenblat, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Chana Bloch, Leila Chatti, Luisa A. Igloria, Mohja Kahf, Vivian Lewin, Vinicius de Moraes (Natalie d'Arbeloff, trans.), Roderick Robinson, Nic Sebastian, Claudia Serea, Purvi Shah, Rosemary Starace, and Marly Youmans

Illustrated and Edited by
Elizabeth Adams

Over at Phoenicia, we're excited to announce that Annunciation is now available for pre-order (at a special price through November 20), and that books will be shipping toward the end of November, in time for the holidays. The website also contains  process notes written by the contributors, and they are pretty fascinating.

For me, it's the first time I've illustrated a book with linocuts, and represents the culmination of nearly a year of thought and artwork (see the links below), as well as the editing challenge of inviting and working with many talented poets on a single project.

Many of the poets will be familiar to readers of this blog; I got to know some of them back during the qarrtsiluni days. Others are new acquaintances who I'm very happy to know, and feel privileged to publish. Because part of my incentive for the book was to look at Mary from an interfaith, as well as secular, perspective, the poets are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and secular, and they've brought an amazing breadth to this volume. I am moved by the way in which each poet has managed to identify with Mary, and express some personal point of connection with clarity, emotion, and immediacy. It could have turned out to be a "religious" book but it's much bigger than that -- it's a human book.

So please take a look - I hope some of you will take advantage of the special price. (The pre-orders really help me to gauge how many books to print, too.) Thanks very much for your encouragement during the year as some of the illustrations unfolded here. I hope you'll like the result; it's been a labor of love for all of us and something I think we can all be proud of creating.

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All Saints', All Souls'

I don't know if I can actually write a post every day in November -- I've got a bunch of deadlines, singing, dental work, and some travel ahead -- but since I usually put something up on Instagram, I figured I could at least echo those posts here.

Halloween is a big deal in Montreal; the image above is my small contribution.

Yesterday, All Saints' Day, is a major feast day for Anglicans and Catholics and was a long one for our choir. In the morning there were two baptisms, a bunch of hymns special to that day, with innumerable verses and descants, such as Ralph Vaughn Williams's famous "For All the Saints," and a relatively new mass setting by Malcolm Archer, flanked by two Renaissance motets for the introit and at communion. In the afternoon, instead of Evensong, we sang the Faure Requiem in the context of a mass, with the names of the departed read aloud. We had a chorus of twenty, a small group of strings, the organ, and two great soloists, and it was a huge pleasure to perform for the congregation and the listening audience on Radio Ville-Marie. I've sung this work a number of times but this was the best performance I remember. It's fun (and difficult) to be a soprano in the angelic chorus, required to float smooth, high, pianissimo melodies in perfect unison. There's one moment when, after a lot of dramatic and intense choral singing, the sopranos enter on a single quiet note that is sustained for several measures, singing "Lux eterna:" I think that transformative moment must sum up Faure's concept of death and resurrection, and be part of the reason why this music is so beloved.

Road Trip 10: Vatnajokull/Skaftafell: Svartifoss and Stuðlaberg

In the morning, still dark and drizzly, we drove just a few miles from Hof (just off the bottom right of this map) to reach the access road for the Skaftafell wilderness in the Vatnajokull National Park. From the road, we could see the Skaftafellsjokull glacier lying in its valley beneath the giant glacial cap, across the sands and tundra:

The parking lot was full, and tour buses bound for glacier walks were loading, but not too many people were actually around. We went into the visitors' center to look at the trail maps, and get the lay of the land. It was pretty cold and raw, but some native Icelanders in their Lopi sweaters seemed to barely feel it. The Japanese, on the other hand were bundled up in parkas and high-tech rainsuits from top to toe.

Concerned about the weather, we decided to climb up to the Svartifoss waterfall first, and if we had time later, to take the flat trail that ends very close to the Skaftafellsjokull glacier. As it turned out, we only did the first hike, but were very glad we'd made that choice. So we headed out in the opposite direction of the people above, to the north and west, up the mountain.

The mountains are split with gorges, each of which seemed to contain numerous waterfalls, cascading off precipitous cliffs skirted by the trail, mostly without ropes or rails, only an occasional warning:

Once we'd gained some height, we could begin to really appreciate the extent of the glacial outwash plain below, so large that we couldn't really see the sea beyond.

Finally we got our first glimpse of Svartifoss, the Black Falls:

We drew closer.

From the bluff on the right near the falls, a trail led down to its base.

These astonishing rock forms are columnar basalt, which results when an unusually thick basaltic lava flow cools and cracks. It's such an iconic feature of Icelandic landscapes that  national poets have written about it, painters have painted it, and architects have emulated the five-and-six-sided columnar forms in their buildings. But before I saw Svartifoss, one of the most famous and dramatic examples of columnar basalt in the world, I hadn't recognized what I was seeing in less-dramatic places. In fact, one of the drawings I had done a couple of years before was of columnar basalt, but I didn't even know it. (Devil's Tower in Wyoming, and the Giant's Causeway in Ireland are other examples of the same geologic structure.)

From Svartifoss we continued to the left, up the mountain, on steps formed from sections of the basalt, which looked just like ancient ruins.

I found out something interesting when looking for references to the Icelandic Stuðlaberg which is their much more beautiful name for columnar basalt. The word Stuðlar means pillar-stone or basaltic pillar and stafr, which means approximately the same thing. The Old Norse alphabet, or Runic Alphabet, contained straight lines also called pillars or staves. Studul is a characteristic of old Norse song, referring to its rock-fast form that allowed it to be committed to memory. I should ask Language Hat for more about these word origins, in which the early words for these basalt pillars seem to have become terms for unchangeable, steady forms that gave structure to oral Norse poetry and in music. And guess what? Even Icelandic knitting patterns draw their inspiration and name from studlaberg; it's part of the bedrock of Icelandic consciousness. Once I had made the connection, through Svartifoss, I saw it everywhere.