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shepaintsred · 4 years ago

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One Circle

I gripped my steering wheel, as the slope took me down the winter hill to the river bottom and then up again, more momentum on the icy roads than I wanted. I did not dare to tap the brakes. I pulled into the parking space, that over years, became mine, and felt tension in my neck subside. Pushing against the door, I felt release, and headed down toward the pond. My feet are still cold, here, writing, and I am a part of the complexities of the circle, even as I have left the urban pond, sandwiched between what is now called Stoney Trail and Bishop O’Byrne High School in SW Calgary. (see fig. 1)

A murmuration of black Eastern Starlings created strong contrast against the primarily frozen landscape. The water, the circle that remained open, was of the deepest shade of Phthalo blue, and Buffleheads, both male and female, landed in great numbers as I made my way to the bush at the pond’s edge, its translucent yellow leaves, frozen. Enjoying the visit, I was reminded of how distinctly my perceptions evolved through a period of years, walking a circle at this specific place each day from 22 Sept. 2011 until 26 Jul. 2016. Kathleen Stewart, in her 2013 essay from the series, Studying Unformed Objects, addresses, in very specific ways, these experiences of place.

Fig.1. Southwest Ring Road Construction began 2016. Black dotted line to indicate one circle. Single black dot to indicate bush. Screenshot from the cityonline.calgary.ca/GISMap/MainMap.

The social-material world as a composition is a world made of entities that are not simply present and knowable but prismatic, flickering, and gathered into lines, angles of light or motion, for people who are attuned to them, or identified with them, or hostile to their existence, or tired of them, or excited to see their outline on the horizon, or sharply excluded from them (Stewart 2010).

Digging deep into personal documentation; blog, journals, photographs, and poetry, I will begin my recollections of circling one pond in 2012. By that time, my mother was suffering the end stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I met her every evening, on Skype, at five o’clock, and took one screenshot some time during every conversation. These visits took place every day, without exception, for five years. I purchased my camera the summer of 2011, before my drive to visit my parents in Belleville, Ontario. While there, I took daily photographs of my mother’s hands.

Returned to Calgary, I explored the pond, as unformed object (Stewart), and thought that the act of walking this circle daily began with walking my dog, Max, a ‘prismatic’ (Stewart 2010) relationship and experience unto itself. Now I realize that, along with Max, the act of ritualistic and daily documentation of my mother’s hands over the course of two months, was leading to a transformative investigation. Something about this place provided an exploration of memory, ritual, and an almost obsessive compulsion to document.

The shape of this documentation included, daily, one poem and one photograph (see fig. 2) posted to my blog, sometimes, alongside a piece of music. In Sun Dazzle, written on 30 Jan. 2012 and in third person, initial sensory relationships are made.

Romp! Run! Go! Laughing woman and smiling dog, up to their knees, racing! Crunching through the snow’s skin, wind blown and captured in waves; the weatherman’s story from yesterday.

Muskrat, perching on pond’s edge, dark form instantly sliding into water at the burst of their movement. Energy is joy exploding!

Blue sky stretches canvas on a white sea of ice. Yellow-gold grasses etching a circle around the pond. The dog following, explores hidden places.

Sparkle. Dazzle. Squinting, tears roll down her cheeks, light echoes on everything. She cries for the beauty of it all. [1]

Fig. 2: Moors 30 Jan. 2012, Accessed 22 Oct. 2020

Rituals of walking began with very general observations of my natural surroundings, but from the beginning, I felt that this was somehow magical or just-for-me. I rarely, at this point, noticed anyone else. I noticed birds as a general category. At that time, I did not make distinctions between different species. Later, I saw sparrows, ducks and geese, a progression after months of seeing birds.

Patterns of documentation began to emerge, particularly on themes of light and atmosphere, water reflections and wind. I captured a series of photographs of clouds reflected in pond water and created my first slide show, watching with great enthusiasm, back home, at my desk, while the series scrolled past, again and again.

Years later, I would discover, not only an interest in documentation and recording, but also, the collection and creation of objects in series, series of journals, green glass vases, photo books, porcelain hotel creamers and photograph archives. Just as Kyo Maclear, in her book, Birds Art Life, refers to spark birds (113), I received new revelations (sparks) on a very regular basis while walking one circle.

The habit of writing and posting poetry, images and music was not sustained, but became intermittent. This practice saw me transition from wide-eyed observer to steward. By February of 2012, I knew the difference between a Ruddy Duck and a Red Necked Grebe. My language around bird and plant species was becoming more specific. I poured over new birding books in the evenings. Instead of capturing vistas, I was zooming in and trying to focus and make-clear the subjects of my photographs. I was capturing strings of video and I was noticing my evolving knowledge around the camera. It became a treasured object, not merely functional.

Fig. 3 Moors, Findings: 20 Tim Horton’s drink cups, with plastic lids, 14 plastic bags of various sizes, 15 pieces of industrial insulation of the foam variety (likely blown from the construction area, an extension of the sports center), a large sized plastic bucket from the same site, burned book pages, fast-food containers and hamburger wraps, two bags of dog poop and a large purple plastic hoop. 28 Feb. 2020, Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.

What became evident through the camera lens was the fact that this was not a pristine environment. I took a photograph of a red-eyed, Black-Crowned Night Heron and arrived home to find, visible on my computer screen, the wondrous bird standing on rounded stones and a Tim Horton’s cup. I became hostile (Stewart 2010) when I noticed the human impact on my self-constructed and utopic experience. Like my growing knowledge about birds, I was noticing this negative relationship. (see fig. 3) It seemed insurmountable and a feeling of helplessness came with one circle. I decided to fill a large bag with litter while walking daily, to write about it, and archive possible shifts in the aesthetic of the place. I had conversations with people, those teaching classes in outdoor education, City of Calgary Parks Management teams, politicians, seniors participating in outdoor exercise, homeless people and business owners in big-box and fast-food outlets. I became more a citizen than a tourist. Interactions through phone calls, electronic mail and even business meetings, stretched the unformed object (Stewart), one circle, and it became both political and social, as well as spiritual in its being.

While human connection and communications were sometimes disappointing, many were incredibly positive. I met a man who was sleeping under the stars through warm weather. Frank had plans to move to Vancouver for winter. He overlooked the flats, daily, and drank six beer while watching me pick. At the end of each circle, we exchanged pleasantries and then he passed me, each day, his six cans knotted up in a plastic bag. He always expressed his gratitude. Over time and together, we named the location, Frank’s Flats and soon, people in public positions began to refer to this location as Frank’s Flats. I was interested in how access to human connection contributed to an act of naming.

One other noteworthy human connection involved the manifestation of a constructed relationship. This construction surfaced out of the next series of investigations while circling the pond.

On 8 Oct. 2015, I began to capture an Instagram photograph of one bush, the same bush, every day. It is situated at the edge of the pond. (see figs. 1 and 4) Weather, time of day and atmosphere were impacting the appearance of the bush and so, I logged these conditions as a brief caption on my posts. Published to Instagram and then, Facebook, the bush became a familiar character until the final day, July 26, 2016. Friends ‘liked’ the bush/image and wrote comments over almost 300 days. An artist-friend in one of these forums, after some months, named the bush, Bianca. Toward the end of 2015, I noticed a young man slept on cardboard and under an evergreen tree and two sleeping bags. A shopping cart contained his possessions. We never spoke, but he was aware of me and I, him. Moving into December, I decorated the bush, adding ribbon first, then ornaments and finally, solar-powered Christmas lights. The young man would be able to see the bush from above the flats. I filled his cart with gifts, warm socks, hoodie, scarf and thick work mitts, chocolate, and candy canes. That Christmas I felt connected in a new way to this place, through sentiment. The ornaments remained, lighting up the landscape until Epiphany that year.

Fig. 4 Moors, Merry Christmas beautiful light the hawk is perched in the evergreen tree. Instagram Bush, 25 Dec. 2015 Accessed from Desktop Photo Archive 25 Oct. 2020.

My last Instagram photograph was snapped the day before my mother’s birthday and minutes before I headed for the Trans Canada highway. My mother died in May of 2013. I did not want to circle the pond on July 27, 2016 nor did I wish to archive the bush. I wanted to be in the van and driving toward my father.

Returned to Calgary, that autumn I hired a videographer to archive Max and I through the seasons. While filming, I struggled with the destruction of surrounding ecosystems and the impact of the Southwest Calgary Ring Road development and so, the following spring, I left this circle for another on the edge of the Bow River. I used references from the pond to create paintings in my studio and these art works continue to this day, recently taking a new direction, in the world of pandemic.

In series, I am layering reverse transfers of the Instagram bush images onto panels, in chronological order, beginning with the practice on 8 Oct., five years after the first Instagram photo was taken. These images are placed one on top of another and create a container for memory. An Instagram account has been opened (see fig. 5) to record this progress.

Fig. 5 Moors. Instabush_bianca. 25 Oct. 2020

The pond, Frank’s Flats, the bush, all remain forms, but they have also become vivid constructs, numerous material objects that push up against my imagination and likely, always will. Christopher Witmore, in his essay, Archaeology of the New Materialisms (221), quotes Rosemary Joyce in What Eludes Speech.

Then describe and describe some more—all this descriptive detail one can unpack later, if there is time, in a space where hesitation is possible. Dozens of hours of ambient video walks along routes of transhumance, along paths, streets, walls, or through museums; video diaries of those confounding moments of contact with weird stuff will pay off later. Still, anything we do in documentation is always a translation. We can only manifest something of the style of things; much will always remain beyond reach. There is always a trade-off. There are always gains and losses. And there is always more to be said and done (Joyce 2011).

Works Cited

Joyce, R. 2011. “‘What Eludes Speech’: A Dialogue with Webb Keane.” Journal of Social Archaeology 11(2): 158–170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605311403836

Maclear, Kyo. Birds, Art, Life. Toronto, Doubleday Books, 2017.

shepaintsred.com. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.

Instabush_bianca. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.

Stewart, Kathleen. 2010. “Afterword: Worlding Refrains”. In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 339–53. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Stewart, Kathleen. 2013. “Studying Unformed Objects: The Provocation of a Compositional Mode”. Member Voices, Fieldsights, June 30. culanth.org/fieldsights/studying-unformed-objects-the-provocation-of-a-compositional-mode

Witmore, Christopher. 2014. Archaeology and the New Materialisms. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology. 1. 203-246. 10.1558/jca.v1i2.16661. DOI: 10.1558/jca.v1i2.16661

[1] See shepaintsred.com, 30 Jan. 2012 et al.

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