It is the first week of August and for the first time in eight years I am not busily readying my studio for hundreds of visitors. Like me, the Art Drive Juried Studio Tour is on a Covid Sabbatical. Without a list of of Art Drive related tasks constantly running through my head I am free to spends hours in a hammock watching the dappling of light on tree trunks 20 feet over my head. There is time for swimming, visiting, and my eyes are more attentive to what is in front of them. They linger in the garden finding unexpected and striking visual relationships as different flowers embrace one another’s forms. These observations are percolating in the background and just might become future transfer prints or fabric design elements.

During this pause, while the art world reconfigures itself, I am slowly rebuilding the scaffolding of my creative life. An important part of that new structure will be my participation in Synergy II, a collaborative venture between the Art League of Rhode Island (ALRI) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). This two-year project pairs scientists with artists to find a common ‘language’ to communicate oceanographic life and activity through artistic expression. It will culminate in an art exhibit and other events.

During the matching process I got to speak with many ocean scientists about their work and what motivates them. These conversations inspired me to start reading science literature again and listening to podcasts like “Ologies” and “the Ice Pod.” Although these are still the early days of this project, the climate scientists I am working with, Svenja Ryan, Ph.D. and Caroline Ummenhoffer, Ph.D. have opened up new windows on the world. I feel like I am traveling through time and space as I tag along, virtually, to a year-long polar exploration of the Arctic ice, look at how Whaler’s logs from 150 years ago might inform our understanding of climate change, and learn about the newly emerging science of marine heat waves that can have dramatic consequences for coastal life both on and offshore.

More posts will follow as this exciting project develops… but now it is time to go for a swim….