I C E L A N D :: blue chasing an elusive blue I had seen in a photograph of Iceland


In November 2016, I was artist-in-residence at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, Iceland. Blönduós is a small town in northwestern Iceland where the glacial river Blanda meets the Arctic Sea.

I C E L A N D :: blue is the story of chasing down an elusive blue I had seen in a photograph of Iceland. This blue represented everything I wanted–being still, frozen, and pure. I had never been to Iceland and I had never been that far north in my life. I not only found the blue I was searching for, right in the studio one morning, but many other rich and deep soul-fulfilling blues. This show is my love affair with this family of blue hues I now collectively call ICELAND blue: streaming into my studio in the long sunrise, in the underwater lights at a community swimming pool, in a window in a house as I walked in one night in Akureryi, and in the first snow and ice.

 

RAMS HORNS Icelandic ram horn cartilage, indigo-dyed thread, PVA, 30 inches high

 

LAND ROCK MOUNTAIN
GREEN LANDSCAPE Digital print on archival paper, 18 x 24 inches

OCEAN SEA
SHELLS ROCKS AND WRAPS Ink on paper, 8 x 9 inches

 

TEXTILES and LIGHT
WINTER LIGHT Cyanotype on paper, 8 x 10 inches

 

VIEWS FROM THE BUS
LANDSCAPES (BUS TO AKUREYRI) Photograph on satin paper, 8 x 10 inches