Water is physically or metaphorically present throughout my practice. Here, I translated the experience of viewing one northern American river through 4 years and 4 seasons into an interrelated video series, using the spiritually significant number 36, often associated with the r St. Michael's chaplet. The use of beads as an awareness practice in everyday life complements my recorded impressions of particular bodies of water.
© 2019 marsha mcdonald
This is a Wisconsin river meditation in the form of a chaplet created for a Wisconsin Academy of Arts Letters and Sciences invitational exhibition honouring International Water Day 2015. A single river walked and photographed over the course of 2 years, this chaplet is part of an ongoing video piece of 108 beads chronicling this particular river over 4 seasons and 4 years.
This is a piece created for an exhibition honouring International Water Day 2015.
This is an overview of work and themes of work.
This was created as a contemplative exposition of my work themes for the Wisconsin Academy of Arts Letters and Sciences, International Water Day 2015.
Night fluid, moon penumbras, deep winter, north, ice inside water, wind inside ice.
© marsha mcdonald 2019
Night fluid, moon penumbras, deep winter, north, ice inside water, wind inside ice.
Sakaigawa low water, dry summer, urban darkness. Filmed over three months, midsummer, Kanagawa Japan 2017
n e t (s) is an ongoing meditation and process-based project. I’ve been generously given the time, space and support (from the director, staff naturalist and groundskeeper) to pursue it at the Lynden Sculpture Garden.
I am a resident of Wisconsin but often teach a semester in Japan. There, living at the western edge of Tokyo, I am not far from both farms and forest, laced with rivers and streams. There has been increasing development of this old urban area, echoing the development of my own riverside city neighborhood in Wisconsin. I have thought about change, and opportunity, as well as the conservation of small pieces of nature and water in cities, and the edges of cities. Nets catch or contain or guide in water and garden. They are good metaphors for growth and also death.
The nets are used in small gardens in Japan and for river fishing in China. I placed the first nets in late August (4) early September (2) of 2018. I had the advice of a naturalist, siting them carefully to avoid harming birds, fish, frogs, and bats. More will be added seasonally.
What will I net? Well, gathering from 4 nets in mid-September gave me two curled leaves and a twig. I also found grass and plants growing out and around the nets or fallen brush bowing up to press against them.
But something wondrous, an unexpected echoing, was beginning to happen. Alongside, within, under and above the nets small webs appeared, webs far more effective than mine at gathering what floated, flew or fell into them.
At project’s end, I hope to send a photo of the collection site and small remnants of the seasons’ detritus to 108 people living on 6 continents. I will ask them to respond to their remnant with, again, a small, easily mailable thing or thought, gathering them together into a final net to be exhibited.
b e d uses a found object - an old bark bench in pieces - to construct a “net” or rope double bed. Constructed late August 2018.
The net is a vertical Japanese bean net.
Twig collected mid-September 2018.
The first time I saw a contemporary rope bed it was lying, abandoned, curbside, along a dirt road in a desert city. The rope remained sturdy, the parched wooden frame skeletal but strong.
B e d net showing position of collected twig, mid-September 2018.
twig, detritus collected mid-September 2018.
twig remnant, collected mid-September 2018.
Web incorporating pieces of b e d net, near foot, mid-September 2018.
Web utilising b e d net twine, foot corner, mid-September 2018
Chinese fishing net placed over mouth of sculpture by Kevin Giese, late August, 2018.
Chinese fishing net placed over mouth of Kevin Giese sculpture, plant growth, mid-September 2018.
Chinese fishing net luminous float, Kevin Giese sculpture, mid-September 2018.
Japanese vegetable or bird net, placed over collapsed Kevin Giese sculpture, with 4 weeks growth and stick bowing outward, mid-September 2018. Artist’s shadow.
Japanese vegetable or bird net, placed over collapsed Kevin Giese sculpture, with 4 weeks growth and stick bowing outward, mid-September 2018.
Stick bowing, branch and grass protusions after 4 weeks, net over collapsed Kevin Giese sculpture, mid-September.
Chinese fishing net, hung from yew, mid-August, 2018.
Chinese fishing net, hung in yew, late August, 2018.
Insect-eaten web, hosta leaf edge, under y e w c a u g h t, mid-September.
Cinese fishing net, hung from yew, late August 2018. Checked, found tangled as here, mid-September 2018.
Web, alongside y e w c a u g h t, mid-September.
Web constructed alongside Chinese fishing net. Mid-September 2018.
One of two leaf remnants, gathered, mid-September 2018.
Leaf remnant, gathered, mid-September 2018.
Leaf remnant, gathered, mid-September 2018.
Leaf remnants, gathered, mid-September 2018.
Chinese fishing net, placed mid-September 2018.
Japanese vegetable net wrapped around 3 feet of bottom bole, excluding root, mid-September 2018.
Japanese vegetable net wrapped around 3 feet of bottom bole, excluding root, mid-September 2018.
Japanese vegetable net wrapped around 3 feet of bottom bole, excluding root, mid-September 2018.
Japanese vegetable net wrapped around 3 feet of bottom bole, excluding root, mid-September 2018. In bark under net, within hours, a web expanded.
Japanese vegetable net wrapped around 3 feet of bottom bole, excluding root, mid-September 2018. In bark under net, within hours, a web expanded.
bird netting, tambo -Japan Women’s University, Nishi-Ikuta, autumn 2018
web incorporating garden rope, near the US Army base at Yabe, Japan
This is a film done for a Ninebark Press 2015 book trailer for novelist/ poet Anca Cristofovici. Music composed by Tyler Marino. Video and book image by Marsha McDonald. Text by the author and Ninebark Press.
© marsha mcdonald
