What is the strangest thing you ever found on a beach?

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  BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND, USA The 4 miles of beach past Southwest Point on Block Island in the summer is hot, littered with trees, boulders, the detritus of the shipping industry it is also empty of day-trippers and family beach parties. The wild ocean facing side of the island here evidence and artifacts lie everywhere but the people are far away, the arc of existence described by a million pointless objects. Decisions that were made elsewhere and long ago. GYRE, The piece I created for Reuse, Reinvent Reimagine started with the beachcombing ; the process of acquiring junk, trash,…

My creative space: finding a room of one’s own

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For years I have had a recurring dream. I am alone in an old house (or is it a flat?).  With a dark central hallway and a number of closed doors  it feels haunted,  intimidating but also exciting and full of potential.  I think I have been here before.  Should I be here? I start to open doors into dark empty rooms. Bedroom? Living Room? I feel an odd sense of propriety – I would like to  live here – but also that somehow I am trespassing.  I walk into the kitchen which is large and old fashioned and hasnt been…

You can never go back: the impossibility of memory

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In the late 1980’s at a time when more than 2000 people a year were murdered in New York City, Southside Williamsburg, in Brooklyn was an extremely hot and heavy neighbourhood and was also where I lived from 1986 – 1990. In April 2012 I went back there with my camera to capture the past, but where was it….? The video shows me in the studio working on drawings for the upcoming blood/MarcyAV exhibition and talking about the inspiration for the show. blood/MarcyAV is  me visual artist Michele Marcoux, sound artist Lynne Thermann and poet Sheila Black and explores the nostalgia…

Catskills artlife: creating sound art in the mountains

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 Lynne writes (and edits sounds) from Moon Hill Farm, a civil war era farmhouse at the top of a mountain near Claryville NY. She lives with Jean, who has owned the farm since the 60’s and her mum Carmella. This is her latest post from the Catskills………………………………………………………… i’m a woman who came of age in new york city in the 1970s, when definitions of creative art were really expanding. as a young person I heard a lot of music that was really brand new. it changed the very definition of listening, of being with sound. the listener became part of…

Homecoming: pollution and nostalgic disconnect

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These balloons are part of on-going research begun in 2010 and were collected from a beach on Block Island, a small island off the coast of New England in the USA. The beach is an isolated and rugged environment of cliffs and boulders facing the open Atlantic. Along with the expected detritus of landslide, fallen trees and wreckage from the shipping industry, it is striking the number of cellophane balloons which accumulates here. Wrapped around boulders, buried in the sand, accumulated in masses like seaweed they are the dead junk of a consumer society which causes huge environmental damage. Formed…