Today I dropped off my last artist at the airport. Next Saturday, 30 November, my contract as director of the Spitsbergen Artists Center and Residency will end. I didn’t come to Svalbard intending to run artists studios, a craft center, exhibition spaces, and an artists residency. That was not the plan. This came from a […]
In the years that I have lived on Svalbard I have often described the passage of the year as being more like one long day than a year with seasons. One with weeks of sunrise and sunset, and months of night and day. Of course this is not truly accurate either. In fact, I’m not
A Farewell to Darkness Read More »
I have been gone for most of October out on the Arctic Circle Residency which was an amazing experience. Writing about that will come later. This is about coming home. We arrived, 30 of us, back in Longyearbyen after an intense few weeks seeing and experiencing amazing things and developing close bonds such as one
“So you want to understand what will happen as we lose the ice on Svalbard?” He took another swig of beer, then set his glass down on the table creating a new ring on the surface. “Imagine you have some ice cubes on the table. If you like, you can arrange the blocks across from
There is a saying “Life is what happens when you are making other plans.” Like many traditional sayings, it comes with that grain of truth. Our lives are the not the great sweeps of drama depicted in novels, but exist in the quotidian. The house needs cleaning. There’s a parent-teacher meeting for the kids. Will
On the Cusp of Change Read More »
Today was spent working on the 2022 calendar. Every calendar I have made has a title that has personal meaning for me. The first, 2018, was titled One Good Year. This sprang from my desire to have one year where no one died. The previous years so many people died. My husband, my brothers, my
Persistence of Vision Read More »
Winter is in the air. The temperatures are not yet cold, a little above zero. But you can taste what’s coming, and now that we lose the sun, temperatures get lower at night. We have had frost. Today I was walking along the river, and I saw ice. I scrambled out into the river bed to look.
March 29 I am moving to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Trying to find a place to live in a location under such a severe housing crisis is hard. Every avenue I explored turned into a dead end. I had the first two weeks of April at the residency to hang my show, but I didn’t know where
Location Independent Read More »
A few weeks ago a friend told me an uncomfortable thing. She said (names changed) “Gabe isn’t taking pictures anymore. He told me there was no point. He’ll never be as good as you. He still wants to hang out with you and go hiking with you, he just doesn’t want to take photographs.” More
How do you have a creative life? The good news is that there is no wrong answer. The bad news is it’s not easy. I believe that the single most important requirement to have any success in the arts, and by arts I mean anything that is a creative effort whether it’s writing or photography
Working the Creative Life Read More »