The eye has to travel, away from technology.
Away from phones and keyboards and roads and rush.

To find a century-old claim where someone else's technology still litters the land.

Where someone else probably lost their nerve.
More than once.

Where someone else had their tenacity tested.

Their wits frayed.
Their foolishness exposed.

The eye has to travel in order to understand the rush of a frenzied search. 
To know the echo of a pick on a mountain,
the breaking apart and boring into,
the flying shards and gasping certainty 

(recognizing that the certainty of some is far more certain than the certainty of others, 
and weighs more, too)

so that when you make that descent,
that return to your life, your pace, your much more realistic personal goals,

you will remember to retain the fever. 

Because it is this fever, this tenacity, this wit, this foolishness, this nerve,
this ring of metal against stone,
this willingness to bear the weight

this ... certainty

that will ultimately drive the work.

Culross Mine, Prince William Sound, Alaska, May 2015.

Detail images from the solo show "Reliquary," June 5-30, 2015, Bunnell Street Arts Center, Homer, Alaska. 
Art photography: Brian Adams

PS. The rusty dock bollards used in the first piece shown in this post did NOT come from this mine, they were found on a beach in 2014; we didn't disturb any of the old equipment ... ok, we sat in some of it. The slimy sack of rocks, however, was taken on this day and is sitting in my garage because those rocks are clearly "full of silver. And gold. And probably rubies and diamonds. And sapphires, too. And they're probably worth about a hundred dollars! And Mom! I can make you a necklace!"


So, if this was mildly interesting and you still have a full cup of tea, you might want to read some other Traveling Eye posts. They have their very own category over there on the side bar because hey, my eye travels and yours should, too.

Let's be clear though:
​wandering eye -- no,
traveling eye-- yes.

I'm just saying.

The eye has to travel 
when it's been immersed in the darkness of winter.
When snow didn't come in the way snow comes,
          and couldn't brighten in the way it brightens 
          (because damn if that snow didn't go dump itself elsewhere),

          and the retinas need searing technicolor.

Walls of it.

Mountains of it.

Sheets of it.

Did I mention the walls of it?

The eye has to travel because when darkness reaches that unbearable point, in the way darkness does, the eye becomes sluggish. 
Drowsy.
Lazy.
It stops seeing the obvious.

And goes deep inside itself. 

And it forgets that the greater part of seeing 
is to stop constantly looking down at one's own work,

and to instead, 
look up and be in awe of someone else's.
Someone who is doing more work
         
          for less
          
          with less.

The eye has to travel,
in order to discover what reverence means.

Not because we've been taught this in some church, or in some room, or by some one
and have since forgotten,
but because we are curious about the word. 

Reverence.

The eye has to travel if one wonders how to instill reverence in the most ordinary things,
the object we step over or toss, 
the thing that in our constant seeing has become
          unseen.

The forgettable rock.
A bit of shell.
The unidentifiable bone.
Someone's cloth.   

Does one build a vessel?  

A frame?

If I say, "This is an object not to be forgotten," will you believe me? I have no scrap of parchment proof. No indication that what I'm showing you is some true relic. You can question the authenticity, but I'm also not asking you to worship.

I'm just asking you to think.

All I have to show in my hands is reverence. Time and time and time
          amassed.

The eye has to travel, 
in order to observe how best to hold the things we love,

much the way nature does.

The eye has to travel,
in order to consider the wayward journey of things not of one's land.

Not to judge,
but to remember that there are forces more enormous, more powerful and further beyond our control than the minor acts of what are first assumed to be irresponsibility. 

And to also remember that we are all guilty of these accumulations, 
these small, yet mindless acts of discarding.

The eye has to travel, inward, in order to solve the challenge of preserving the things we love.

Not because of some need for nostalgia. Or sentimentality.
But because these objects deserve reverence. 

The things we find deserve to be held.
Even if for a short time.
Even if they are ugly.
Even if the task involved with some of them feels insurmountable.

Because it is through this act of holding
that we learn and teach and discover
the most basic lessons of responsibility.

I'm working with circle imagery and the containment of loss right now. This wasn't where I intended to go with the piece I'm currently working on, but it's where I've arrived. I can draw in my sketchbook or scribble on little shitty scraps of paper that I then lose, but until I start messing around on the wall with fabrics and bits, the depth of what I'm trying to ask myself isn't fully fleshed. (Mostly what I'm asking is: "What?!" and "No way. Could I do/say/put that in a quilt?" and "Why wouldn't I?" and "Is a quilt the right place for this?" and "Why is it?" and "Why won't it?" and "Why should I?") 

My 5-year-old daughter announced in the doorway: "Mama, you aren't even really down here working. You're just standing there staring at the wall. And why are you whispering? Who are you talking to?" How do you explain to a child, who understands that good, solid work is done with hands and body, that this stillness is also a way to work, that work with the mind never stops?

And the whispering: "That was just me talking to me."

And the mystery of this: "Why do you want to talk to you?" 

And we can travel to the farthest, darkest corners of our minds, and we can whisper-ask the same questions again and again and think we're coming up with answers, but this, itself, is also a form of circular containment ... of the wrong kind ... and one that we have to claw our way from because it will hold us back. It will keep us seductively safe from asking questions, from looking up and out. We will disappear inside ourselves instead. We may continue to create, but we won't risk.

My last employer and mentor from the clothing design industry, Manuel Mendoza, a couturier from Manila, used to say, "You can't design from inside a box." But more importantly, he said, "Damn it, stop standing there. If you don't just cut the pucking pabric you'll be paralyzed forever. You have to move. Just cut the pucking pabric! Unless it the last pabric in the world, you can always buy more." (I should mention here that this particular 'pucking pabric' was a $500/meter Versace silk print featuring enormous turquoise peacocks or flowers or something that had to overlap and match precisely up the center front for a certain busty client. And I cut it, but I tight cheeked it the whole time, and no I didn't have to buy more fabric. More deodorant, maybe.) 

Then, of course, there's Diana Vreeland, who said: 

"The eye has to travel." 

And we do this
in order to discover that nature almost always provides an answer:

In order to compare maps and learn the landscapes others have already explored:

In order to process
and to go deeper and to connect to something dark and real and split:

In order to return
probably more than once
with the intent to collect:

In order to 
contain the fear of loss and loss and loss,
and ponder the need to gather and to hold.
Itself, a mystery 
that lies within us all.