Everyday: 8/28/15

The Cone of Indifference (for Rachel Simmons) (digital image)

Next Year

Next Year (pencil on wall) 2014

A new piece, to be executed anew each year, that consists of the hurricane names for the Atlantic Ocean. This is the 2014 version of the piece.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

[we] hardly see light and dark anymore

A Natural Disaster

Lydia Davis

In our home here by the rising sea we will not last much longer. The cold and the damp will certainly get us in the end, because it is no longer possible to leave: the cold has cracked open the only road away from here, the sea has risen and filled the cracks down by the marsh where it is low, has sunk and left salt crystals lining the cracks, has risen again higher and made the road impassable.

The sea washes up through the pipes into our basins, and our drinking water is brackish. Mollusks have appeared in our front yard and our garden and we can’t walk without crushing their shells at every step. At every high tide the sea covers our land, leaving pools, when it ebbs, among our rosebushes and in the furrows of our rye field. Our seeds have been washed away; the crows have eaten what few were left.

Now we have moved into the upper rooms of the house and stand at the window watching the fish flash through the branches of our peach tree. An eel looks out from below our wheelbarrow.

            What we wash and hang out the upstairs window to dry freezes: our shirts and pants make strange writhing shapes on the line. What we wear is always damp now, and the salt rubs against our skin until we are red and sore. Much of the day, now, we stay in bed under heavy, sour blankets; the wooden walls are wet through; the sea enters the cracks at the windowsills and trickles down to the floor. Three of us have died of pneumonia and bronchitis at different hours of the morning before daybreak. There are three left, and we are all weak, can’t sleep but lightly, can’t think but with confusion, don’t speak, and hardly see light and dark anymore, only dimness and shadow.

drawing

Adam Farcus - Surge (silt washed up from Hurricane Sandy on paper) 12" x 12", 2013

research on the process of this drawing

Rise / Springs / Syzygy

I am working on some research for a drawing about Hurricane Sandy. I plan on using red silt that washed up in my house to make a drawing of a full moon. Below is some research for this drawing.

 collected silt that washed up in my house during Hurricane Sandy

The semi-diurnal range (the difference in height between high and low waters over about half a day) varies in a two-week cycle. Approximately twice a month, around new moon and full moon when the Sun, Moon and Earth form a line (a condition known as syzygy^[8]) the tidal force due to the sun reinforces that due to the Moon. The tide's range is then at its maximum: this is called the spring tide, or just springs. It is not named after the season but, like that word, derives from the meaning "jump, burst forth, rise", as in a natural spring.
-Wikipedia

moon phase over Hurricane Sandy when it hit land in NJ/NY/etc

Sandy talisman

In Far Rockaway, Terrence Nottingham, 32, spoke of the Boardwalk as a kind of talisman. 

“If I’m ever going through something or feeling a certain way, I can come to the Boardwalk and it’s very serene,” he said. “I just look out at the water and I can just clear my head and think about how to help myself.” 

“I just hope that they hurry up and build another one, like this one but make it stronger,” he added. 

 -Where Boardwalks Beckoned, a Way of Life Lies in Splinters. New York Times. Nov. 8, 2012.

all of these, and more can be found and purchased at http://www.driftrelief.org/.

meanwhile, in my studio, i've been playing with 2 sticks that were left behind from Hurricane Ike and a jar of red clay-soot that was washed up when my backyard and basement flooded from Superstorm Sandy.