Seeing Ithaca

This is a portrait of myself and my child. It is dedicated to my child, my daughter Lorna who was born at the old Tompkins hospital, went to school at South Hill Elementary and graduated from the Ithaca Alternative School. Ithaca is not just beautiful scenery but also beautiful people who live here and have lived here.

I go on walks in the Fall Creek neighborhood, and something catches my eye, and it feels like it could be a still from a movie or a TV show. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, always interesting to me. Little slices of life—parts of greater stories that are playing out all around us—taken between 2018 and 2020. They vary in perspective and design but they are always photographed from the sidewalk.

My idea for this artwork was to honor Ithaca as the home of a large, vibrant Tibetan community as well as the location of the original “American Brahman Bookstore.” I began this artwork with a sketch I had made on the grounds of Wisdom’s Goldenrod of the Buddhist Bodhisattva/Goddess of Compassion and photos of the Namgyal Monastery (including a mandala), Buddhist prayer flags, Cayuga Lake and the American Brahman Bookstore.

My crew of installation cats is hanging some of my own art with special meaning for me: a new turn in my artistic path, a special favorite, or actually sold to a gallery visitor who came, saw, and liked... while seeing Ithaca! As for the cats: I believe artists (including me) are rather like cats: following their own creative paths…wandering off into their own mysterious worlds…emerging with a treasure—(a mouse, perhaps)—or a new perspective.

I study medieval calligraphy and its culture. These videos reflect my attempt to re-copy the Seven Penitential Psalms from a 15^th century manuscript. I lettered in the original style, but translated into modern English. I sing a setting of Psalm 51 (Miserere Mei) in one of the modular melodies used to chant the psalms from the Early Medieval period onwards.

I fell in love with Ithaca, so similar to my familial Viking-steeped region of Vestfold, Norway—the green forests, the fjord-like Cayuga Lake, and the deep gorges. My work on Viking navigation and family history finds expression in my Vinland—Vestfold Series, which combines photography with printmaking, here using wild grapevines from my woods and the ravens native to both countries, pairs of which nest in my trees.

As a landscape photographer, the show title and prompt, Seeing Ithaca, could not be explored without acknowledging the presence and value of water to our city and the region.