My Instagram feed kept alerting me to the fact that the Dalvero Academy Journey of Transformation show closed at the end of the day yesterday. My colleagues were at Mystic Seaport today picking up their work and enjoying the cold but sunny weather. And all of a sudden a moment draws to a close.
Good intentions aside, I spent the better part of the weekend on technical issues I hadn’t expected as I wrote the last post on Friday. Lately I find myself surrounded by the unexpected. When I say lately I mean 3 or 4 years now. I am not one to be comfortable in my process, at least not in thinking there is little room for improvement or that it can not be looked at from another angle.
As I traveled out to Provincetown, RI on July 11, 2014 I saw on the horizon beyond the Sagamore Bridge leading out to Cape Cod several wind turbines. With all of the industrial history behind the business of whaling the modern image of energy stuck in my mind over the next two days as we worked on the mural. On my way back out I took notice of the Sagamore Bridge once again, but this time the structure and not the view behind it—which was now in turn behind me—and the body of water I was crossing. Something about the landscape was very serene. If memory serves me well—it some times does not—it was Quentin Snediker, head of restoration on the Morgan, who told us the route the ship would be taking after she traveled to Boston. With one final pit stop at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. the Morgan would sail down the Cape Cod Canal enroute to Mystic. The wheels were turning the whole way home.
While I wasn’t present the day the Morgan sailed under the Sagamore and Bourne Bridges, I did return to the canal and make studies of the surrounding area. First opened in the final years of the Morgan’s life as a whaling ship, I pictured her sailing the canal beneath the bridges that were built many years after she was retired.
Unlike Boston, the canal image was constantly evolving each time I made another pass at it—trying to work in all of the symbolism between the whale and the turbines, energy of old and new. By the time I was drying the screens I was looking forward to making the print runs.
Contrary to how it probably looks in the course of these posts, the white ground was unique for each print run. Above I took a shot midway during the I the darker yellow run, only the lighter yellow is on the right board. This was the moment that this banner moved to the top of my list of the series.
Registering the blue film and prepping it for the screen. The slug at the bottom of each banner was the same each time, 38 stars for 38 voyages. The only consistency between all of the banners.
