Artist Residency in Eastern Iceland

Off to Iceland last September for a month long artist residency at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, located on a fjord in the small fishing village of Seydisfjordur. My fifth visit to the island as there is something about the elemental shapes and energies that continue to draw me back to its natural wonders of volcanoes, rift zones and young landscapes visibly being reshaped.

I return to feel its energies and rhythms, to experience its vastness and to open me to possibilities and conversations with and of the landscape.

Conversations with, of and off:

Evidence of the landscape organizing itself—reshaping itself in human time. The eruption site of the Meradalir Volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in August of 2022.

Two years ago in December of 2020, Seydisfjordur experienced an average year’s rainfall over a period of 10 days. Major landslides destroyed 13 buildings.

Now, two years later, evidence of the landslides remain.

displacement, dislocation, movement, shaping, change?

A water process that shapes the landscape

During my stay, I experienced a red alert storm with winds up to 60 m per second. Evidence of the power of the winds (below); a historic pier house built around 1900 by a Norwegian entrepreneur was lost, collapsing on itself.

There’s no everything; everything is always moving as the landscape (natural and human—made) interacts with the natural processes of wind, water and soil.

Dissolving boundaries between art and nature; merging art and earth natural processes. Video by Brooke Holve & Eve Chartrand created during the artist residency at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art.

Listening

So if we have good communication,

I tried and now I see it’s been many months since my last post. A challenging year filled with uncertainty, living through a pandemic, fire season & evacuees, racial injustices and an election many will not forget.

I found solace entering my studio each day. Slowing down with fewer distractions revealed unexpected silver linings such as unstructured time to listen beyond the projects in front of me. To echoes from previous experiences for example, remembering a residency six years ago at Haystack in Maine, where I discovered two useful tools, a scroll saw and a laser cutter, that would enable me to further develop cuttings. I purchased a scroll saw upon my return knowing how I wanted to use it. The laser cutter was a bigger investment and one I didn’t make since I wasn’t as sure about its usefulness. I did investigate places where I might rent one, if the need became apparent.

What I didn’t expect was one coming to me during this auspicious time, from my son whose employer had two sitting around not being used. And my need had become apparent as I was working with plexiglass on a collaborative project with Catherine Richardson, Materiality Re_Mined; The Cell Phone Looking at Itself, scheduled to be exhibited at the Seager Gray Gallery in July of 2021.

Look for more on this exhibition in posts to follow in 2021. And yes, the laser cutter was invaluable.

One of our collaborative pieces to be titled (by Brooke Holve & Catherine Richardson) using a laser cutter.