Wit(h)nessing Interdependent Loss in the Pandemic Year of 2020

Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, is a chance each year to explore the stories of extinct and critically endangered species, cultures, life ways, and ecological communities.

The GRIEVING PLANET PROJECT is rooted in my understanding of Hospice Care, Deep Ecology, the power of grief awareness, and communal mourning.

The fires in California continue to rage, now erupting in Washington and Oregon. The planet’s state of “terminal agitation”¹ resounds within my body, soul and psyche. Our planet is writhing in furor, screaming in pain, the sensitive balance of ecosystems shattered. What have we done? What have we done? What are we doing?

As I write this the world wide pandemic swirls around, dismantling all that we took for granted, invading the delicate tissue of our lungs, confronting the ignorant selfishness of our economic system, and revealing the glaring fissures in our social networks. The current administration of this country, using the diversion of this pandemic is actively dismantling every piece of EPA legislation. There are days when the heaviness of my sorrow and the shrapnel of my rage undoes me. I go to my studio and weep.

We are not victims of the flood. We are the flood. We are running waters, seeking a way, cutting fresh courses when springs swell us with power. We move mountains and break banks, creating. Chase Iron Eyes, Lakota Activist. 3-25-17

These are difficult times, a time of “dark night for a green soul”. I find myself navigating in a forest of heartbreak for our planet. Long shadows of denial, ignorance, and destruction are cast from the current occupants of the White House on a daily basis.

Speaking is impossible, but so too would be silence or a refusal to share one’s sadness.

— Jacques Derrida

The founding of the Grieving Planet Project is my response to planetary eco- side. The entries on this site are my attempt to speak the impossible “when the heart can’t contain what the mind can see”.

My exhibit, “Alchemie Sur la Seine” opened on the evening of 6 September in Marnay sur Seine, France. It was a beautiful event on a warm evening with a lovely turn out. I was humbled to the point of tears at the care and time visitors took to view the paintings and videos. The exhibit is up through the end of September. The attentive time and conversation continues with the viewers.

“Alchemy on the Seine” an exhibit of paintings, films, installations and artists’ book witnessing to the biodiversity of the Seine by the artist Irene F. Sullivan is on display at the church of Notre Dame l’Assomption from 6 September through 29 September.

Created over a two-year period, the exhibit interfaces with the rare XII century fresco paintings of the church while acknowledging the importance of vegetal life, the day to day revelations of life forms carried on the Seine and the phenomenological intersections of the ancient river Goddess of the Seine, Sequanna.

Ode to the Walking Woman

Sit —
you must be tired
of losing yourself
this way:
a bronzed rib
of exhaustion
thinned out
against the night.

A more mindful practice to guard and listen to my soul in these dark times has lead me to seek the wisdom writing of other artists who have, or are dealing with the same. In 2015, the French poet, Philippe Jaccottet published a meditation on the work of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. It was the title of the book; The Pilgrim’s Bowl that attracted me to the prose within its covers.

One month ago I returned from France.  My reflections of time in the village of Marnay-sur-Seine at the     CAMAC artist residency wrapping my soul with threads of gratitude.  This morning as I re-read my   journal entries from time at CAMAC I found these lines from the French poet Philippe Jaccottet.  They seem particularly poignant as another senseless massacre occurred in a small Texas town on a Sunday morning.

I am currently in residence at CAMAC in the village of Marnay-sur-Seine, France. I reside in a small room in a 16th century monastery that sits on the banks of the Seine. My studio space is above my garden room, high walls, natural light, ancient support beams. I am working on paintings, installations and video for my exhibit; Alchimie sur-la-Seine (Alchemy on the Seine.)

Where is the moon?
I am searching for her.
She is not in her usual mountain hallways
of light and shadow.

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and grow despite the times’ darkness.

David Foster Wallace (b. 1962)

Blessed rain.
Philosopher’s Stone.
Woman births herself.
Artist-woman re-conceives
in the Solstice arc.

Irene F. Sullivan    23 June 2017

We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. – Helene Cixous

I am working on new groups of paintings. The first group of paintings is entitled “Leaving Plato’s Cave”. They are inspired by early Greek statues of women held in the antiquities section of the Louvre. I am mesmerized by these statues of early goddesses and muses. Since my last post I have been re-discovering, claiming and appropriating the language, thought and experience of French philosopher and humanist, Luce Irigaray.

Trees have long been an important part of my life.  I talk to them, sit with them, watch them, care for them.  I grieve for them as I witness the disregard for all of the enviornmental protections that I and others have worked to put in place and keep in place over the past decade.  This disregard is on a continuum of rampant greed, corruption, narcissism and vulgarization of the feminine soul.  Disrespect for the  “the other”, no matter who, that “other” is, is a choice.  Dismissal is so easy these days, language so trite.  Choosing to remain unconscious, is just that, a choice.

Fall is approaching. Classes at the universities in my area have started. Perhaps it is the reminiscences of years in academia that make me think of ‘what I did during the summer’. I had long hours of studio time investigating different types of painting supports for my upcoming artist residency during the month of September in France. http://www.camac.org

I read some newly published books that challenged, informed, and affirmed my work as an artist. I share them here with quotes I found important to my studio practice.

I made a pilgrimage to the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay in March. I spent a week immersing myself in these two museums. Meeting the paintings I had looked at via slides, read about and studied in art history. Time and time again I experienced the joy, surprise humility and tears of finally meeting old friends in person. “Oh, I finally get to meet you in person, after all these years. I have heard so much about you, you look different in person.” It was humbling, there were encounters of presence reaching out and enveloping me that I can not write about because there are no words.

Tomorrow my husband and I leave for Amsterdam and Paris.  I am going to meet masters and mentors in person.  Paintings.  The largest gathering of Edouard Manet and Odilon Redon, Cezanne, Pissarro, Sisley and others I have been studying for decades.  I will have long immersive days at the Musee d'Orsay and Louvre.  I am thrilled and humbled by what the experiences of finally meeting these paintings in person will gift me with and open my heart to. 

I have been spending time with the works and writings of Anselm Kiefer. I will be visiting Kiefer’s large retrospective exhibit at the Centre Pompidu in Paris in a few weeks. In a filmed interview Remembering the Future he speaks of the importance of waiting. How a painting will reveal more of itself if you wait. Paintings and waiting is not something I would readily think of. I am realizing what an important part of studio practice this is.