The Pond Collection

This collection depicts scenery and tender moments from the artist’s walks and meditations at the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. The Emerald Necklace is a series of six parks spanning 7 miles and covering 1,100 acres. The parks were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. This collection includes scenes from two of the six parks: Olmsted Park and Jamaica Pond.

Artist Statement

[Content Notes: description of panic and anxiety]

1. I have a tree that I daren’t tell you about. A tree that I whisper to and tell my fears. When I’m most afraid, I bring my fears to the tree and say “these are too big for me, I am only a human. Your roots carry far into the earth and your branches far into the sky. Can you help me hold these fears?” I hold the tree to my sternum, rest my cheek to the smooth bark, and listen. Once I can hear my heartbeat, I listen through the roots for guidance. I leave flowers as gifts. I leave well wishes.

2. There was a point at the beginning of the pandemic when I knew I had to leave the house in order to maintain my wits, but was still afraid to open my window. I was still afraid to take out the trash, afraid to get the mail, afraid to even think about breathing. The first place I managed to go, triumphant and skittering, was to the Pond. When I arrived, I was scandalized to see that Spring was carrying on. I wanted to yell at the budding spring flowers until my voice was raw, “Don’t you know the world is ending? Don’t you know there is a pandemic going on, that lives are ending? How can you grow at a time like this?” Eventually, my anger petered out, slowly replaced by quiet awe. I marveled at each tuft of moss, mushroom fruit, bloom, sapling, and lichen patch. Life was continuing on, despite my anger, despite the death. This ecosystem was not fussed about the pandemic.

3. When I part from the tree that I bring my fears to, I stop to talk to its sibling. This sibling tree is stationed closer to the path and seems older and more ravaged by time. “Will you keep each other safe?" I press my hands to this tree, too. “Do you both have enough to be able to carry on?”. Enough of what, I couldn’t tell you. I listen all the same. Branches are so heavy. 

4. The state-wide declaration of emergency happened when I was with a friend from out of town. We were at Back Bay station, on the platform, waiting for the train to take us back to my apartment. I read the message on my phone. I considered our options. We got in the relatively crowded train a little before rush hour. Neither of us contracted Covid.

5. Have you thanked a flower lately? Like, really thanked it; gotten down to the ground on your hands and knees and cupped it gently, your thumb and forefinger outstretched as you might gently triangulate the chin of a lover for a kiss, and gazed deeply and softly at the flower? Have you told the mushroom, the psychopomp of the forest, how grateful you are for their labor, transforming the dead fallen trees into life-giving rot? Have you considered how ancient this alchemy is, the way the moss and mushrooms are ever ferrying passengers across the lines of living and dead?

6. I want to know all the ways the Pond smells. I know so many of them already. Just before a late-Spring mid-afternoon rain shower. After three days of dry heat in the summer. After weeks of cold and damp. I know in my bones what it smells like during mushroom fruiting weather. I know the barely-there smell of cold, of the nasal sting and snap of a deep freeze. And then, too the scent of cold mud with the softer crunch of a light layer of snow melting into a muddy pathway under foot.

7. Some biotech executives had an international business conference which kickstarted the spread in New England. So near to me - just on the other side of town. So nearby I can, and have, walked between that neighborhood and my own. It is good to be in a city with so many things in walking distance. Sometimes the smallness is overwhelming. 

8. I have sat meditating, counting breaths and releasing tension in my diaphragm in many places in the Emerald Necklace. I could point them out to you, but I won’t. 

9. A duality: I am not strong enough to bear the weight // Please share the weight with me, I will not take more than I can handle.

10. Flowers and sunlight and moonglow make my heart swell with the feeling that I am about to burst into tears. I don’t cry. It’s not that I don’t want to, my body just won’t. Everything happening in the world, and still, I can’t cry. Nor can I even take a full breath.

11. I have sat at the edge of a stream and thanked the water that goes by for continuing to do so, and with such a sweet sound.

12. Go find a tree you like and run your hands over the trunk. Run your lips over the bark. Press your chest into the bark and wait for the tree to embrace you back. If you can reach the branches, hold them. How do they feel? Ask the tree how many secrets it has. Ask the tree how slowly do trees make friends; listen for the response. Do you have the patience to befriend a tree? Have you ever grieved the loss of a weed?

13. There are these bushes that create small tents out of their limbs, akin to a willow’s but with sturdier branches. You can crawl underneath them to be enclosed and then transported into another world. You can rest and nap, with a child’s sense of safety.

14. I have had panic attacks in so many places around the pond. Something will trigger my anxiety, and I march off to a quiet walk with the moss until my vision clears, my breath calms, and my jaw stops tingling. I have prayed for the vagus nerve in my parasympathetic nervous system to let me take a deep breath again. I have stayed in the trees until my hands stop shaking and I no longer feel like I’m floating away from my body. Those places, I could not map for you even if I wanted to. 

15. I have marveled at how the sun sets, with its golden light refracted through the trees. I wonder how the branches and paths will look in the snow. I thought about waiting to release the collection until I have a year’s worth of pieces, all the seasons. And maybe I will continue this collection of paintings, but in the meantime, the pieces have whispered that they are ready to be shown.

16. I pray to the dirt, which has seen all things, and which also is childlike from such new decomposition. I pray that it turns me to moss, or gives me the strength to keep going. Sometimes I wish more strongly for one outcome than the other. I have greeted the spiders and the bees. I have politely asked mosquitos not to bite me. I have apologized to countless bunnies and chipmunks for startling them into bounding away.

17. These paintings are the lessons I have learned from the trees and the streams and the fauna of the Pond.

Video Art: A Nature Documentary

The Liminal Space between a panic attack and a meditation practice

“The Liminal Space Between a Panic Attack and a Meditation Practice: A Nature Documentary” is a video created from footage from my trips to the pond. Some of this footage was taken to share with friends, some of it was taken just for myself as calming video for high anxiety days, and some was taken as reference for paintings. I invite you to the pond with me.

Song, “Undergrowth” by Lonesome Joan, was written specifically for this piece. Lonesome Joan is a songwriter and musician working out of Boston, Massachusetts. They also spend quite a lot of time walking down to the water.