Until That Day, My Drift is Glacial
⊛ Until That Day, My Drift is Glacial
⊛ cut + torn paper / wood
⊛ 11.8 in x 11.8 in • 300 x 300 mm
⊛ private collection
The Winter of '94, before I moved to Japan for the first time, was the most brutally cold I've ever experienced. It began with a week of -40 degree arctic chill on top of our little mountain, not counting the wind.
A freezing rain coated the roads with six inches of ice that stubbornly lasted until after I left in March. Driving to work was an exercise in agility, trying desperately to keep the tires on the narrow strips of pavement that showed through. A new layer of snow or ice fell every other day, like reinforcements filling the breach left by their icy fallen comrades. I seem to recall a blizzard at some point too.
All of which left me about as eager to venture outdoors as a hibernating vole.
Glaciers, by way of contrast, are always in motion.
Just not at a particularly rapid pace. I can empathize. After all, it's more than easy to become hitched to your environment, to the status quo, to the familiar sway of the everyday tides. Until, that is, the call comes.
Until That Day, My Drift is Glacial was one of two commissioned pieces designed to complement another. I suppose, in the end, no rock is an island. It's an interesting challenge; returning to a theme without copying it too directly, utilizing all the skills learned since without separating the pieces too much. The foundation paper (the piece I use as the border and the anchor for the artwork) was a godsend which I had received as a gift only a few days earlier. The whitish plants embedded in it reminded me of frost and served as a major inspiration. It was also one of the toughest papers I've ever worked with, thick and soft and hell to cut cleanly. Totally worth it.
