My goal for the past 2 weeks was to crank out at least 7 good new drawings. I have done nothing except eat, sleep, think and draw for 11 days. I reached my goal of 7 today. That doesn't count all the mess-ups and crappy ones! I am aiming for 10 drawings for February and at least 5 more in March.

The snow stays in København

It began snowing on Sunday and now it is Tuesday and it is still on the ground! This is the first time I have seen this happen since I have been here. As you can tell, this is very exciting for me.



It is cold out there so it is NOT raining. The snow creates a beautiful blue at around 5pm and remains until about 6:30.
So I am staying indoors and enjoying the sun and snow from a warm apartment!

New drawings

This week I have been drawing. I am on the first part of the final count down to my show.









The drawings are influenced by the random letters, stories, items I have come across in the Danish Arctic Institute's archive. I am aiming for a series of 10 or 12 drawings.

Chasing the archive, day after day

I have been working up in the actual archive space at the Institute off and on for the past 2 weeks. Trying to photograph it in various styles, to evoke different feelings from it. Some questions arise about composition while others are about portrayal.





My process has become all about returning: the more photographs I take of the archive, the more I will be able to wrap my head around what I am doing and why. To turn into an image that which has been kept as precious object over time. It is not a cataloging process. I am not there to 'document' what is kept and stored. But rather to find something within the space, how it is arranged, what is left out of boxes and just sitting on a table and labeled, when does dust begin to settle and where does it land. Is it important to show that this is a Greenlandic- Arctic archive?





It has been refreshing to put the research and writing aside for awhile and concentrate on my photography and drawing.





We have set the date for my show at the Institute: my exhibition will run from April 14 through May 1. It is concurrent with the openhouse that will occur at Nordatlantens Brygge during the 3rd weekend in April. It is exciting to finally have an end date, a horizon line in sight, and also a little scary of course.

Møns Klint

On Saturday, a friend and I drove down to the island of Møns, which is the island just south and a bit east of the main island of Sjæland. It took about 1 1/2 hours to drive down, crossing a bridge and lots of tiny villages, farms and fields.

Møns Kint is a national forest and naturepreserve that runs along the length of tall cliffs formed out of chalk and flint. Fossils have been found there from about 70 million years ago. There are also land slides that slowly take out more and more of the cliffs and sometimes part of the trail system.



Here you can barely see a staircase on the bottom of the cliffs and people walking on the beach.


We walked the trail at the top for about 1 hour.


The trail rambled along the edge and some places you could see where the landslides had occurred and would probably occur in the Spring or at some point during a heavy rain. Tree roots sticking up out of the ground and little valleys cut into the hillside from mini waterfalls.




The chalk also formed a white line in the water, from where the chalk had settled and built up from the continuous waves to where the ocean floor began. The water was a pretty light blue because of the chalk buildup.


And then came the stairs DOWN! AND DOWN AND DOWN....and DOWN!! The stairs probably took about 20 minutes to walk down the very steep, little stairs, meandering through the woods.


Finally we made it to the bottom!




And came upon not a sandy beach but a black peddle beach with lots of various colorful stones scattered amongst them. And the waves were very rough that day because of the weather and wind. As each wave receded, you could hear the stones rolling back, clinking against each other as if they were shouting and jostling for space.


Here you can see the chalk and the dark parts in the middle is the flint


There was quite a bit of garbage washed up along the beach and I also kept looking for fossils but found none. I did add to my rock collection but then kept remembering that I had to carry them back up the cliffs in my pocket.


We walked along the beach for about 45 minutes back in the direction where we came from. As we approached the staircase, we realized that that tide was coming in and the staircase, from a distance, looked like it was already submerged in about 1/2 meter of water! But as we got closer, we found out the water wasn't as deep as we had originally anticipated.


And then it was BACK up the stairs!


For some reason, going back up the stairs was easier ...? Not sure why. Even with stones in my pockets. And the wind really picked up the higher we climbed! On the beach, there wasn't really much wind.


This is the section of the trail we covered, starting from the Geo Center and walking along the top out to the Røde Udfald and then back along the beach to the Maglevands Fald.


We walked for about 3 hours. I hope to go back in the summer to see how the colors are different. Also to walk the entire trail and do some swimming in the crazy waves.