Weatherworks series: ‘24 | ‘23 | ‘22 | ‘21 | ‘20 | ‘19 | ‘18 | ‘17 | ‘16 | ’15 | ‘14

Earthworks, weatherworks, land art, snow auras, ash collages, ice installations, public art … ephemeral artworks lasting only hours, created in and destroyed by nature (reverse anthropocene.) Made with found weather: wind, snow, rain, ice, water…

Found branches and ice sculpture; drifted and glitched work on snow using found flora, tablecloths, and cardboard; harvested icicles; a frost painting, using breath, a bee hive, a song.

Ice crystals as discrete units like a pixels in a jpeg. Post-weather, these works only exist digitally and the hardcopy works have an ambigious perspectival depth.
(These works, done on a frozen snowy lakebed, eventually led to the Shift/Drift series of paintings, which are large canvas and smaller works on paper done en plein air in various locations worldwide.)

All images available as editioned prints. More in each series coming.

FROM THE BLOG:

The newly frozen bay, somewhat snow white, sounds out as it warps — ringing, and singing, like an ice siren, alarm and allure. I jump, stomp, and kick down while walking onto this winter canvas. I’m holding a broom sideways — if I fall through, maybe it’ll save me. Should I be wearing a life jacket?

Every December I make enormous weatherworks. The process is physically demanding — a duel, a sport, a dance — due to the difficult conditions (which are different every year). This art is always in cooperation with acquiescent to nature; i.e. this year, for the first time in ten, there is no ice. So “going-with-the-no-floe”, I shifted my colordrifts and glyphs to nearby snowy fields and frozen flora. But because the art is not at the time-honoured site, and I can only work at a much smaller size… all attempts are fails.

Scaling-down is the opposite of what I want to do at this point — haboobs of blue and fuchsia blasted out by snow machines onto gargantuan Gstaad mountain slopes… would be the way I’d like to go.

So I watch the soft water, ice pining. Days pass. The above modest mild-weather-fails get made. A week goes. Then another. It rains, drizzles, pours, showers, sprinkles, and every other synonym for dull drops falling from a slate-grey sky.

Then suddenly, two days before we leave, the temperature plummets. The bay freezes. A day after that, a beneficent Mother Nature gessoes it with snow.

6 am. Standing on the shore. Day of departure. Tweny below zero. The fishermen, always a safety augur, aren’t out on the ice. (Should I…) Go out, holding a broom like I’m a tightrope walker. I listen for ice cracks, squint at the bright sun. Scan the far clouds, calculate the close shadow paths. The wind scours the snow, sandblasts my cheeks. I take off a glove, shoot a test photo. Fingers freeze in seconds. I drag step my boot — at least this year I didn’t have to duct tape wood blocks to my feet — to test the snow depth. Shallow. Drop to my knees. The rippled ice hurts even through my kneepads (and snow pants, and pants). 5 hours to not fail. (Why try?). With an upside-down funnel in each hand, I shape the snow fast as I can. I look like an over-caffeinated lunatic crab.

I make snow mounds into the distance. The wind is so strong that by the time I’m done the last one it has shaped the first mounds into mini Bilbao-esque buttes and hoodoos. I lug out a couple big rocks and long tree branches and shove them around to somewhat channel the wind’s sculpting, then hustle out my 40 lb box of powders and cups and sifters. My snot is going to be purple: I choke a little on the reds and blues I inhale as I open the bags and prep. The wind gale steals the first thrown drifts of color, dispersing them a hundred feet long, to gone, so I have to work closer. And faster. Even so, the snow dunes erode as I paint them; it’s like watching a time-lapse film, shot from a satellite, of an apocalyptic psychedelic Antarctic. I take some photos before the shapes disappear completely. Fingers fucking freezing. Phone buzzes. Time to go.