Chapter 22: Lifeline, A Water Storytelling Project

The ice has melted...spring is almost here.

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter." –Rachel Carson

Photos by Meredith Heuer.

The ice has melted in the Hudson River. I look forward to the ice transforming, gathering and crowding in the river every year. In the morning when I walk along the shore, the ice is loosening under the winter sun’s touch. A few hours later I go back and everything is changed and rearranged.

Muhheacantituck is the river’s original Lenape name–the river that flows both ways. The ice speaks this clearly, sometimes with stunning swiftness orchestrating thunderous floe collisions and other times with slow shiftings that crackle quietly.

In 2022, I made a series of works titled Box of Waves capturing this.

Above: Box of Waves (River Ice and Sky), 2022.
Blackened oak, brass, digital video and electronic components, 14″ x 23″ x 10.5″ Courtesy of Melissa McGill and David Totah.

The Box of Waves series transmits movements in time across different elements, expressing our ongoing dialogue with nature. To open the box is like opening a portal into a moment-in-process—one marked by the perpetual reciprocity of wind and water. Drawing us into water’s inclinations, we engage with them by way of sight, sound, reflections, and movement. Water is as much a vital substance as an expressive language—be this articulated through wind, waves, shifting light and shadow, or the flow of time itself.

A small collection of winter’s ice stories from this year–

Hudson River Ice structure illuminated

A constellation of stones that have been tossed onto the thick ice of Toronto Harbor.

My first experience with frost shadows! Long Dock Park, Beacon.

Studio Experiment with ice and indigo

When I used the keyword “ice” this morning to find images in my archive, many of my recent works came up, embodying the language of water in its different forms.

The four works above and the one below are details of works courtesy of Melissa McGill and Mazzoleni.

I celebrate another trip around the sun in a few days.
In these exceedingly challenging times, I am thinking about all we can learn from this:

“There is a common thread that links these scenes and memories — the spectacle of life in all its varied manifestations as it has appeared, evolved, and sometimes died out. Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden. It sends us back to the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even in its prelude; where the forces of evolution are at work today, as they have been since the appearance of what we know as life; and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear.”
–Rachel Carson

Thank you for being here with me.
Happy spring (almost)….

XO
MM