Welcome to MissouriBendStudio!

This is an online journal of my artistic investigations and a way to communicate about my work, ideas, quandries and queries! I welcome comments and conversation and do hope you enjoy these musings. My artwork is available in my shop MissouriBendStudio on Etsy.com or on my website.

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Monday, October 18, 2010

A Walk Through The Universe: Place, Part II

Another week in October, bringing a new opportunity to think about the idea of "place" in our walk through the universe.  I gave myself an invitation to weigh in with my own thoughts and fairly recent revelations regarding place, so I'll start by giving you a bit of background.  


In 2005, my husband and I decided to make the rather drastic move from Florida to South Dakota, with the acceptance of his appointment on the faculty at The University of South Dakota.  We'd both been in the same location in Sarasota, Florida at the Ringling School of Art and Design (since renamed Ringling College of Art and Design) for quite some time...I'd gone to school there in the mid-70s and had remained working in the library ever since and my husband had come there to teach in the late 1980s.  My father had passed away several years before and we were both ready for a change.  For Johntimothy, it was a change, but not as drastic as it was for me, since he would actually be returning to his alma mater, having gotten his graduate degree in printmaking from USD many moons before.  But...I digress.  So, here's where my story really begins.  We came out to look for houses in mid-May and I immediately felt at home in this landscape of the mid-west.  I'd only lived my 40+ years up and down the east coast, so this was a pretty new experience for me.  I attributed my new found sense of place to a kind of connection to the town in eastern Montana where my parents had both grown up.  It was a much different landscape there, situated on the edge of the badlands, but still it was my only explanation.  As we settled into our life in this very small university town, in a terrain of rolling farmland, I not only felt an affinity for the land, but the sense of history coming from the land itself.  All of this was new to me.  I'd lived in Florida for thirty years and as much as I loved it there, I never felt connected to the land and only knew of the "sense of place" as an intellectual idea. Here I felt it in my bones, in a sort of uncanny way. I began to read more about the history of this part of the country--the Native Americans who spent countless generations here, the white settlers who came west, changing the lives and the land forever.  The land is a palimpsest and contains a rich history in its layers.  

While I was reading about the history of the west (I realize that we are firmly placed in the mid-west, but generations ago, this was very much the west), I also began to delve more into family history and genealogy, as there were tales of my ancestors having come from Canada and clearly they had to have come through this area.  I come mostly from French Canadian stock and I started with my mother's side, but found very little that I didn't already know, except that my great-grandfather had truly come through these parts, through Omaha,to the Black Hills of South Dakota during the gold rush there.  He apparently had a stagecoach operation (information is quite sketchy), traveling supplies (and people?) between Bismark, ND and Deadwood, SD (at that time all of it known as Dakota Territory) and then followed the railway out to Glendive, Montana.  However, what was most astonishing was the genealogy I uncovered on the RootsWeb site that traced my father's ancestry all the way back to France in the early 1600s.  There I learned that my ancestors were indeed in the mid-west, along the Mississippi River by the 1740s...before St. Louis was in existence, just as the territory was being juggled back and forth between the French, the Spanish and the English.  I learned that since that time, all of my paternal ancestors have been in Missouri, Minnesota and Montana, always on locations with a river and until a couple of generations ago, farming the land. As I noted all the locations in this extremely thorough genealogy and made the connections with locations of ancestors on my mother's side, I understood something about this land and why I feel a sense of place....I am sitting, literally, in the middle of the circle of my ancestors.  

The artwork that came forth during this period is called Bloodlines, which refers to my own bloodline, that I have now found, is clearly part of the bittersweet history of this part of the country.  My own blood runs in the layers of this landscape and I am part of the history of this place.

Bloodlines




This is a land of wide-open spaces, gently rolling, rich with color in every season of the year.  I think the mountains are beautiful, but given a choice, I'll take the plains.  A few shots below, taken the other day on an off-the-interstate drive back home from Sioux Falls.  The corn and soybeans are being harvested like gangbusters, but you get a sense of the wide open spaces.  Don't despair, just because there aren't a lot of trees in these photos, doesn't mean we don't have them--really!

Thanks for listening to my tale and I'd be curious to hear if you have a similar story about a strong sense of place that you have found is part of your very own history.  I think there is something that is handed down, perhaps, something akin to memory.







15 comments:

  1. Wonderful post. Like reading from Dakota or something by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I love the notion of a circle of ancestors. I live 20 minutes from where I was born and all my close relatives (mostly all passed on are around me too. Ancestors from Canada of the Dutch /Scottish variety and was thinking today how much I would fit in in those farms in the maritimes. Wood and trees surround us and I feel settled and at home here with wonderful inspiration to create. Sounds like you have found it too. Package arrived, it is more beautiful in person. Thanks. xox Corrine

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  2. Corrine...first, I'm so pleased to hear the package arrived and the piece is more beautiful in person...that's always what I hope for! Thanks so much for your response to this post. I think there is sometime mighty important about feeling "at home" and I envy you having lived your own history there in the same place. I'm not familiar with Verlyn Klinkenborg...will have to do some investigating!

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  3. Pretty amazing that you felt so connected and at home there. The photos are wonderful and "Bloodlines" is so very rich. Was happy to see your "Blue Embroidery" piece featured in Cathy Cullis' mosaic last week (I think) (I picked it out of the bunch immediately!) The body of work you are creating is very beautiful. Cheers!

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  4. Another awesome "walk" Patti! I completely agree that there are affinities for places just as there are with people, you know, the way you are drawn to a person and then later find out you have all sorts of strange coincidental things in common. We are far more aware of things than we think, or pay attention to! Even 9 years after leaving it, my native NYC will always feel like home, the place my grandparents landed over a hundred years ago from Italy, but my connection to more pastoral landscapes and activities must come from past centuries of those kind of settings sustaining my peasant ancestors. I've never visited those exact locations, but when I've been in Europe I felt something sympathetic and welcoming all around me, in the very color of the light hitting an old stone building...that said "home." Many thanks for sharing all the details of your history! Great post.

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  5. Bloodlines is truly an amazing piece. I enjoyed this post -- I love hearing or reading about an artist's background. I'm off to Google South Dakota and learn more about it.

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  6. Gloria, thanks for your comments and compliments! Yes, that was my piece on Cathy Cullis's mosaic, which I was also happy to see and so pleased you were able to pick it out right away!

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  7. Hi Kim...nice to hear from you and happy you are finding out more about South Dakota! To be sure, there are many frustrations for me, living in a tiny town with very little in the way of shopping, restaurants, art venues, etc., but there is still this strong connection to the land. Glad you like Bloodlines...it's a very important piece for me.

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  8. Gabriella...your Italian ancestry remark reminds me of the woman I met in Vermont at a residency a few years ago who told me of her month or more of travels in Italy. She'd planned to move back and forth through the entire country, but found that she seemed glued to one particular area in northern Italy and spent the whole time there. Only when she came home did she learn of the generations of her family who had come from that very area. So interesting, this sense of place we carry with us!
    Glad you liked this post!

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  9. I got goosebumps reading.... "I am sitting, literally, in the middle of the circle of my ancestors". I know that feeling!
    My stepfather had a large farm in the Drakensberg and when i first visited the farm I felt such a strong sense of belonging even though I was only about 5. I spent many years there and fell head over heels in love with the area. Its not a feeling I have experienced since. Later I learned that my ancestors had farmed in this area. I have such a yearning to be there but life changes of course and there's not much chance that I will live there again.
    Your Bloodlines piece touches me too. I've been studying the enlarged photograph and the more I look at it the more I love it.

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  10. Robyn, thanks for sharing your story...there has to be something that becomes part of our physical make up that is handed down to us. I'm always intrigued by these experiences that people have and would love to learn more about any genetic connections to memory...there is so much we don't know yet. I was going to post a couple detail shots of Bloodlines, but the post already seemed so long...let me know if you'd like me to send them to you!

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  12. This post really spoke to me. I'm orginally from Maryland, came to Chicago for college, then left for Seattle where we lived for 6 years, then came back to Chicago and have been here for 2 1/2 years now. The MD landscape will always speak to my spirit because that is where I grew up. That is what I know and what is familiar. The Pacific northwest became my home and so entrenched in my identity- it is the place where I became an artist, a wife, a mother, a place where I created a home. the beautiful mountains and fir trees inspired my work. I became so identified with the pacific northwest.
    ...and yet it always felt a little foreign. Perhaps because I didn't have family there or a sense of community. We came back to chicago and it took me 2 years to adjust. The first signs I saw of me accepting the midwest as home was when the colors started to appear in my paintings. And the trees and plants that are native to the area. It was my way of trying to understand and make this my home again.

    You have such a wonderful blog here. So glad We stumbled upon each other!

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  13. Bridgette...you have really dwelt in three vastly different landscapes, absorbing some of each of them I'm sure! Glad to hear your story and thanks for your comment here! I'm so glad we stumbled on each other as well!

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  14. This is truly wonderful, that you were in touch with your subconscious instincts enough to follow the scent of ancestry. I do believe that in some way or another the universe leads us on our path, provided we are open to receive it. Sometimes we don't even know we are in it, but through time, we see it is where we ought to be. I know of the feeling in your bones, where you feel alive, unleashed, confident and limlitless. Unbound by the social constructs of city life and the subsequent pressures that follow. This move has obviously steered you both in a creative direction, of expression and wonder... this is the jewel! I found similarities to Kathleen Norris's account of her move... maybe she ought to read your blog too. Thank you for sharing Patti and a pleasure to meet with you. :)

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  15. Thanks so much for your comment Louise....I see from the initial bit of reading your blog that a sense of place is very much a part of your experience as well! Not that we don't have some frustrations here, with the lack of being close to what cities can provide...but still, it's the land that sustains. I think I will have to go back and reread Kathleen Norris's book Dakota to see what she has to say. I read it so long ago, long before I knew I would become a South Dakotan!!! Thanks again Louise and so good to meet you as well!

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I'm happy to hear from you...comments and questions are welcome!