Dead Reckoning in A River of Change:
Stories from Grand Manan Island
Five days ago there were over a hundred people at the opening of my exhibition at the Grand Manan Art Gallery, a 4 year old institution on an island known more for it’s fish than it’s art. After the opening last week, I took some time off to visit remote Cheney’s Island with childhood friends, dulsers,and deer, and then I worked on the Sardine Museum project with Vera Graaf and Nancy Ross.
Today, I returned for the first time to the gallery, where I took some images away and added others, as well as words I had written earlier on the theme of dead reckoning, knowing how to navigate through a world of constant change; I’ll post some of those words here in the coming days.
I tried to listen to the visitors reactions about the words carefully, most seemed to feel the reading deepened their experience, but the biggest revelation of the day was discovering that the way I hung the show affords the opportunity for making more pictures. In this presentation I’ve laid bare the walls and filled the floor with images, so there’s not much room for visitors to socialize, they are always surrounded by the pictures. People seem to spend their time looking, while also being enveloped by the sounds of birds and sheep and foghorns recorded by a friend I visited last month on Long Island.
There’s something mysterious about seeing the way people explore an opportunity to see, so I’ll continue to make these “pictures at an exhibition” in the five days remaining and again in St John where the show reopens September 10th.
