The Ice Pan Cometh

Well, it’s been a wild ride here this winter. Wild as in wildly swinging temperatures and lots of precip, very little of it snow. “She’s some slippy eh?”. You could luge from the house to the car. Last weekend we set out for a nice country dog walk. It ended abruptly 10 feet from the car.

"slippy" b.t.w., is maritime speak for "slippery"

By the ocean, when rapidly dropping temperature occur during relatively calm seas and an outgoing tide, a very unusual and lovely ice forms:

This is called “frazil” ice. It is an accumulation of thin layers of freshwater crystals, the beginning phase of sea ice. I could explicate with some heavy-duty physics the mechanics of how this ice ends up not salty. I am primarily taken with it’s beauty. That, and the fact that it makes me think of frozen Margaritas. Admit it, you thought so too.

Sea ice also manifests in sugary forms.

These ice-topped intertidal rocks remind one of iced buns. They are covered with "glaze ice”.

 That slushy, pre-consolidated sea ice often found at the shore is called “shuga”. Which makes me think of The Archies. Which makes me think I have too much working memory taken up with bad pop music. Oh shuga shuga. You are my candy girl.

Shuga

So, we found ourselves short on ice for our traditional Friday night Tiki Cocktail and thought, well, what the heck. When life gives you frazil, make Aurora Bora Bora Borealis cocktails!

frazil

proof of ice provenance

frazilicious!

We tried one and it was delish! The ice melts very slowly and is not salty due to the brine rejection effect during freezing. This video of the formation of a "brinicle" shows the process. It's like an underwater tornado. This may be one of the most amazing non-CGI ocean phenomena EVER. Unless you are a starfish. Just take a look:

While in the process of researching for this blog we had the most awesome ice spectacle you can ever experience here in the north atlantic - drift ice.

You may fall asleep to a seascape like this:

And awaken to this:

We have not had drift ice come into our bay for 3 or so years. Here it is a rather counter-intuitive sign of spring.

 It makes the most lulling 'shushhh shushhh shushhh' sound as it laps onto the beach.

It's the shushhhing of spring here in Cape Breton.

 

 

Happy almost spring to you wherever you are.

Storms and Statements

 A... Happy New Year!

 

I see it's been exactly a year since my last post. I suppose this can in some way be viewed as consistency, in a sad underachieving sort of way.

 

 I have BIG plans for 2018!

 

 To begin my work this year, I am composing an Artist Statement. You know, a few short sharp sentences on what I do as a creative type. Apparently key to accomplishing creative goals is knowing what they are. Seems sensible (tedious).

 

After a glorious summer and autumn we had our first big storm. It was a bit of business as usual for us at the pink house where the wind routinely blows in four directions simultaneously. We were prepared. I decided I would use the housebound day without power to sit by the wood stove and work on my artist statement.

By day two of the storm I had 4 short pages of semi-legible notes, 2 sketches of something mysterious and a Venn diagram. Sometimes protracted periods in the dark can lead to having a drink or two for courage and warmth. Perhaps it was the cocktails, or the faint candlelight, but my notes offered up a baffling statement.

 

 

 

 

The question remained. What do I call what I create? Well, stuff, of course. A lot of stuff with handmade books. Some stuff with photographs. Some stuff with shells. Shells and driftwood. On a box maybe. On a frame. On a heart.

 

 

 

  

Sometimes it all comes together and it's a fish!

 

 

 

                                                                 Sometimes it is just perfect the way it arrives.

 

  

What I can say decisively is that my work is inspired, motivated and materialized by the ocean. By, for, about, and literally made of this landscape. I work with what comes to me, is driven up onto the shore, washing up after storms such as this. Aye, thar be treasure...or part of my neighbour's wharf, or shoe, or lobster trap, or bird house:

 

    

 



 

For diversion during the storm I picked up this book, a Christmas gift for my sister that Santa Amazon forgot to deliver:

 

 

It's a beautiful exploration of three islands in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland owned by the author. Adam Nicolson "inherited the islands when he was twenty-one and in this spellbinding and luminous book, he recalls his keenly deep connection to the wild, windswept, and yet enchantingly beautiful property...exploring his complicated relationship to the paradoxes of island life and the wonder of revelatory engagement with our natural world". A perfect read while the storm raged about us in our little house out on the point where we are sometimes an island ourselves.

 

It was this book that finally gave me the idea for my artist statement.

 

Chapter 6 revolves around the finding of a bronze age piece of celtic tribal jewelry near the islands. Objects like this immediately become the property of the queen and must be reported to the authority that governs these finds. This official enforces the laws around maritime salvage. A number of countries have once of these people, traditionally called upon to keep law and order after shipwrecks. They prevented pillage, and policed the terrible practice of luring ships onto the rocks. Anything washing up on the beach became the responsibility of this person.

 

This person is call The Receiver of Wreck.

 

 

 

 

And that's exactly what I am. I am The Receiver of Wreck for my beach. Whatever washes up becomes my muse, my materials. I think it's the perfect phrase with a perfect acronym. So when I go to write my artist statement and print up some new biz cards, or introduce myself at a party I will be

 

 Katherine Scott, R.O.W.

 

Receiving Wreck and transforming it into images, objects and hopefully inspiration.

 

 

 

 

Peace and love to you in 2018 from us here at the little pink house.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking vs. Seeing

2017. A whole new year of beachcombing ahead!

As I sit at my desk facing Gabarus Bay I am watching a nice nor'easter tear away at the beach behind the house. All summer long we have had calm seas and constructive waves. Now we are into the season of wildly destructive wave action. Always a little frightening if you live 30 yards from the north atlantic, but a thrilling time if you are a beachcomber. Pickins have been slim the last few months. Treasures few. We needed a good churn.

Lately my reading and t.v. watching has been decidedly Anglo-centric. Historical London seems to be a theme. I re-read an excellent book about the sewers of London:

 

 Did someone once say you could tell things about a culture by the things they throw away? If not, I have just made that clever observation. The sheer amount of crap (literally and figuratively) that either flowed or was tossed into the Thames is mind boggling, and a little disgusting. To a beachcomber, hundreds of years of human presence along this river makes the banks of this famous tidal river a dream destination. I must go.

Mudlarking, as it was called, was traditionally done by the poor - either children or the elderly - who scavenged for trinkets to sell. It was nasty work, dragging around through muck and raw sewage and occasionally encountering human and cat and dog carcasses.

Today, mudlarking in London is a hobby, a tourist activity and very carefully regulated. The things people find are amazing. This is an excellent book that has just been released about mudlarking finds.

My little beach has seen only 300 years of "official" continuous occupation (the Mi'kmaq presence would predate this considerably, hence the " " ). Much of what might have been thrown into the ocean has either rusted into oblivion or broken into smithereens by the relentless ocean. Some days I am happy for a single sad sliver of beach glass. One cannot be too goal directed in beachcombing I think. The more one hopes and wants to find something, the less likely it is to appear. A kind of Murphy's law of beachcombing. Still, amazement sometimes happens.

Object lesson. Over the years I'd been collecting these tiny white tubes from a beach that was once the location of a number of fishing wharves and a lobster factory. I hadn't given much thought to what these white tubes were, assuming they were likely part of some kind of electrical wiring system. I don't remember the moment of revelation when I discovered they were actually clay pipe stems at least a century old. And I had dozens of them.

They fascinate me. They are a direct link with people who would have worked, fished and smoked in the very place I now walk and swim. It seems just a little magical that these fragile things would have survived time and tide. But here's the thing. While I've found stems, I've never found a pipe bowl. Never. Likely being more fragile they would break apart quicker. Stems, stems stems....

Some of my collection of pipe stems on a seal clavicle

 And then.

This morning I was walking by the cabinet that is littered with my daily haul of beach stuff and was rooting around for shells when I came upon this:

about an inch high and .75 wide

I don't remember where and when I picked it up but on closer inspection I thought it looked unlike all the pottery shards I've found. More archaic. A little bit of research confirmed that, YES, it is a fragment of a pipe bowl! Take a look:

Mine looks like # 21

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EXCITING THIS IS.

 Have the caps and fancy font convinced you? Well, it was exciting enough to revive my moribund blog in order to share this with you. Coincidentally, this discovery dovetails with my resolution this year to be just a little bit more mindful in my travels in this beachy world I inhabit.

2017. Look closer. Take more time. Ask more questions.

Find more answers. Share.

Stay tuned for a year of finding and sharing, my friends.

Look who's drifted back in on the 2016 tide!

I've been shellfish. 

I've ignored you for too long.

 Can you sea yourself forgiving me?

La Vie en Rose

For those of you who don't know me, I live in a little pink house by the ocean. When we bought it, there wasn't much pink left on the outside

It took about 3 years to restore it so it would be in the pink again.

Although it took much work, and all the money we (and the bank) had, it's a pretty enchanting little spot. One of the delights  of this place was a massive mound of pink and white rosebushes that grew to the east of the house. It was as if the little pink house grew from these roses, rather than the other way around.

peek-a-boo!

The rose bushes bloom their little hearts out from July 1 through til the first frost, and then beyond. I've catalogued the last rose arriving as late as November 21. Patriotic roses that they are, they form a pact to give their biggest show on Canada Day. This year I was up on the ladder staining the house ("Pink?" you ask. "Ah, yes. I reply" rolling my eyes imperceptibly). Just before I fell off the ladder I snapped this shot of the roses doing their thing:

One side of the booming behemoth is white, the other side pink. They now commingle in the spot where the surveyors hacked a swath right through them. They've rebounded, unified and determined. They're spreading. If you look a little further down the point you'll see mound after mound after mound. There was once a road there. Not long ago. As I've discovered, Rosa Rugosa is an invasive species. Can we hold that against them?

An artist friend recently challenged me to "make some darn art" (thank you Lynda Lou!) from this flowering mass of inspiration. So for her, I'm posting a few of my efforts celebrating the roses of summer and the little pink house:

A few photos of roses taken from inside the house:

Do you think roses inside dream of being outside?

I had the *inspired* idea one day of creating a photo homage to the house by showering and garlanding it with roses. As I was doing this solo I was both the thrower of petals and the photographer. There was much mad dashing around with petals and cameras. Consequently, every photo is a bit wonky and blurry.  "Tripod?" you suggest, rolling your eyes imperceptibly.

That would've taken the challenge out of it.

We have experienced roses with all our senses. Breathed, drank and eaten roses. Rose petals, harvested at their prime and placed in a sealed jar with sugar will scent the sugar. I've opened the jars in the deepest of winter and smelled the gentle reminder of summer blooms. 

We've made batch after batch of rose hip jelly.  However, it appears that only my mother-in-law Marie has the gift of getting this elixir to gel. Mostly I've made rose hip syrup. But as I like to say, when life gives you roses, make rose (imagine an accent over the e). A bit of it in the bottom of a glass of champagne will blush up your bubbly.

Note the swallow in the upper left. As it turns out, one swallow does a summer make.

This spring I've been working with this image.

I'm recycling some of the print proofs printed on Japanese paper by using them on lids of handmade boxes:

In fact, my love of rose extends to an ambitious project to photograph every pink house on the planet. So far I have two. I may need help with this.

 

Uh oh. I've just realised that this is a photo of the same house from
two angles. So I only really have one picture in my collection.

Turns out I even bleed a kind of pinkish colour. But this is not art, this is the by-product of art. Injury.

As I am now seriously injured I'm taking some time off of making things and stopping to smell the roses. I hope you get time to smell them too. Before we look again, they will be gone.

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think.

Enjoy yourself. While you're still in the pink.