Works in progress / experiments
from Shoals Marine Lab
Artist in Residence program, July 2023

I was invited to a two-week residency at Shoals Marine Lab, which is the largest marine lab dedicated to undergraduate education. Appledore Island, where Shoals is located, is a breeding site for Greater Black-backed gulls and Herring Gulls. I walked the rocky shores while dodging attacks from anxious gull parents, and had the privilege of visiting other islands in the Isles of Shoals to see nesting sites for Common Terns, Roseate Terns, and Arctic Terns. These are some little exploratory projects I made while at the residency.

Cartographic Shift (2023), ink, watercolor, and collage on Claybord, 12″ x 4″. I’ve been reading “Terra Forma: A Book of Speculative Maps” by Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes, and Axelle Grégoire. When I made this piece, in which the line shifts from describing a landscape point of view to describing a birds-eye view, I was thinking about their playful thought experiments and unusual maps.

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Happy Giant (2023), watercolor on Claybord and watercolor paper, 20″ x 4″. The Happy Giant (aka Oppama, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis, and Mont) was the longest self-propelled ship in history, with the heaviest deadweight tonnage recorded to date. At the time of my residency, the Gulf of Maine experienced a startling rise in sea surface temperature, in fact warming faster than most of the world’s ocean surface. It has also been experiencing a dramatic decline in plankton, a productivity loss that is likely tied to the warming seas. I wanted to play with scale, brining the plankton (Ceratium fuscus) to the foreground, pushing the distant oil tanker off the edge.
Happy Giant, detail

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Islands (2023), watercolor, graphite, ink, and collage on Claybord and vellum, 20″ x 4″

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Mapping Change (2023), watercolor and ink on Claybord, vellum, and watercolor paper, 16″ x 4″. This piece uses one of the oldest known maps of the northeast coast, and experiments with a possible future coastline.

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Epic Migration (2023), watercolor, graphite, and ink on Claybord, watercolor paper, vellum, and sticker, 48″ x 4″. I was inspired by the Arctic Tern, which covers the longest migration distance of any animal on the planet. Sterna paradisaea travels around 25,000 miles from its Arctic breeding grounds to Antarctica, where it spends the Antarctic summer.
Epic Migration, detail
Epic Migration, detail
Epic Migration, detail

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Swarm, Polarized, Milling (2023), watercolor, ink, graphite, and fish vertebra in glassine envelope, on Claybord and watercolor paper, 12″ x 4″. One of my obsessions is collective animal behavior — schooling, flocking, herding, etc. The Iain Couzins lab at Max Planck Institute studies different types of groupings that emerge from local social interactions. Three of the basic patterns that frequently emerge in schools of fish are swarming, polarized, and milling behaviors.

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Rocky Intertidal (2023), watercolor, ink, and seaweed on Claybord, drawing paper, and tracing paper, 16″ x 4″

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