Ride

For the second year in a row, I will be participating in the Buzzards Bay Coalition's "Watershed Ride." I will ride 75 miles around the perimeter of the bay.

The goal of the ride is to raise money for The Buzzards Bay Coalition. To show my appreciation for the Work of The Buzzards Bay Coalition, I am donating a number of a print edition (pictured below). Anyone who donates $50 or more to my fundraising page by October 6 will get one of these prints. The prints will sell for more than $50, so there's motivation to give to this cause now. I believe in their work. I hope you will do so as well.

January 31, 1827. 2013, pigment print on Mylar. 13cm x 13cm, ed. 100 + 1AP, 1PP, 1BAT.

Please note: Getting your print is a two part process. You can pay for postage and/or framing of the print by clicking the "Add to Cart" buttons below. But you will also need to donate on my fundraising page at the Buzzards Bay Coalition.

To donate to my fundraising ride and qualify for a print, follow this link: http://www.savebuzzardsbay.org/waugh

And select the buttons below if you wish to pay for postage or postage with framing.

Postage Only ->  
($6.00 for any number of unframed prints to a US address)

Framing and Postage ->  
($50.00 for each print to be framed and posted to a US address)

Please note that paying for framing or postage does not include a print.

This print, showing the image of a snow crystal is composed of the entire newspaper account of the death of Gideon Dexter (the text of which I posted on the first entry of this blog). The image of the snowflake is significant because the text recounts Dexter's death by freezing during a winter storm. But the form is also evocative of lace. Images of lace and knot-making make up most of the imagery that I'm working on in the next series of drawings related to this project. In a way, this little piece is a key into understanding one aspect of those drawings.

I, also, can't say enough about the Buzzards Bay Coalition. The coalition does an amazing job of monitoring the water quality of the bay. They provide data about the water quality to the towns in the watershed so that they have the facts that they need when deciding on policy.

The coalition also has a top notch education department. I worked as a docent for them this summer, and I saw first hand the value of experiences that the coalition is providing for kids in the New Bedford area.

I also helped with water testing, going out on the coalition's boat and taking down the numbers that the science department uses to evaluate the impact of development in the area.

I was glad to help as a docent and as a water quality tester. But my time at the coalition was also invaluable for my current artwork -- which centers around my great-great-great-great grandfather, who was a shipbuilder -- and who froze to death during a winter storm in the middle of Buzzards Bay.

The efforts of the Buzzards Bay Coalition have been crucial in reversing and slowing decades of declining water quality. And I want to raise money for the organization so that this important work can continue. But I also want to raise money for them as a thank you for educating me about Buzzards Bay and for giving me the chance to go out on the coalition's boat and experience the body of water that figures so prominently in my family's history and my current work.

Sippican Week: Artist Michael Waugh submerged in 2-year project

By Georgia Sparling | Nov 29, 2012

MATTAPOISETT — Hopping into a narrow boat you’re almost sure to capsize in 55-degree water is an unusual way to connect with your ancestors.

But Michael Waugh’s project is anything but run of the mill. The Brooklyn-based artist, who also spends time in Mattapoisett, began a two-year rowing project earlier this summer to retrace the final hours of his great-great-great-great grandfather Gideon Dexter.

Dexter was killed on January 31, 1827 when he rowed into Buzzards Bay trying to save his employer’s runaway skiff. The following morning, he was found frozen on Martha’s Vineyard.

“This very tragic, personal story, has a larger economic truth to it, too,” said Waugh. “Working class people take risks that other people don’t.”

With his project, Waugh will retrace Dexter’s trip in reverse – rowing from Martha’s Vineyard to Mattapoisett with a boat and oars of his own making

The performance artist, who began rowing lessons this summer, launched a boat into New Bedford Harbor on Monday to document his progress.

“I’m a visual artist. In order to document and communicate visually where I’m at with this project, I needed to do the performance.”

Waugh used oars he engraved with excerpts from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” considered the first modern work on economics, and “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” a book on morality and society.

Of his launch, Waugh said, “In essence, this is to illustrate where I’m starting and how the right equipment matters.”

Still a novice, Waugh said he wouldn’t be surprised if he got wet. “It’s like being on a tight rope. You have to keep the oars level or you just go over.”

With help from New Bedford Community Rowing Program Director Cheyenne Bayse and other members, Waugh climbed into the wobbly boat and was pushed away from the dock.

Once in the water, Waugh found the narrow boat difficult to balance, and tipped over a few feet from the dock.

“Today’s footage really communicates clearly my level of experience,” he said. “Today also lit a fire under me, driving home what I still need to do.”

Waugh will help raise funds for his project through a show in New York City in January.

Originally published in Sippican Week. Photos and video by Georgia Sparling.

Sippican Week

I was really happy to see that the community weekly, Sippican Week, ran an article about my project. Georgia Sparling, a writer who recently moved to the area, did a great job communicating a pretty complicated undertaking:

Artist pays homage to Mattapoisett ancestor with rowing project

By Georgia Sparling | Jul 30, 2012

Artist Michael Waugh plans to retrace his Mattapoisett ancestor's fatal boating trip, while exploring his working class roots.

MATTAPOISETT — Michael Waugh doesn’t know much about rowing, he isn’t familiar with water currents and he’s got tendonitis.

That would be unremarkable if he weren’t planning to row 20 miles Martha’s Vineyard to Mattapoisett Harbor in a homemade boat.

Waugh, a full-time artist based in New York City, has started a two-year project that will trace his great-great-great-great grandfather’s (yes, that's four greats) tragic last day in reverse.

On January 31, 1827, Waugh’s ancestor Gideon Dexter rowed out of the harbor on a stormy, icy night with his cousin to fetch his employer’s runaway skiff.

“It was clearly a bad idea,” said Waugh of his “working class” ancestor. “The storm is coming in, let the damn boat go.”

But as Dexter and his cousin chased the ship, in their individual boats, the wind blew them into Buzzard’s Bay. Both were killed.

“My ancestor was found the next morning with his oars shattered and his hands lacerated and frozen solid near Martha’s Vineyard,” said Waugh.

Now Waugh wants to relive this ill-fated expedition, sort of.

“This very tragic, personal story, has a larger economic truth to it, too,” said Waugh. “Working class people take risks that other people don’t. As part of his job, he died. Part of that is making a snap decision to try and save someone else’s property.”

Waugh wants to take Dexter’s journey in reverse. Instead of starting out at night, Waugh’s plan is to start in the morning. Instead of making a quick decision and rowing into the harbor unprepared, Waugh has a two-year plan.

“I’ll be in control of every aspect of it, from training my body to building the oars myself,” he said. “I’m trying to keep in the spirit of these working class origins.”

Waugh is going to document every step of the process in what is a new step in his career as a performance artist.

“This current project is more involved. I reached a point where I have a desire to go to the next level,” said Waugh, who's art is admittedly “hard to sound byte.”

In his previous work, for example creating poems from press releases on a street in New York City, Waugh combines text, performance and, usually, a video camera to record it all.

“I always try to make work where the immediate impression of it is very inviting and comfortable, so inviting and comfortable that you want to know more,” he said. “The more you know, the more you realize how complicated and involved it is.”

The artist’s work is usually political, combining “big ideas and individual lives.” Working in Mattapoisett’s shipping industry, Dexter’s individual death clearly coincided with the bigger economy.

Waugh, may not be tapping into the town’s shipping economy with his project, but he doesn’t plan to go it alone like Dexter.

“I can’t do it myself,” said Waugh. “Hopefully, I can meet boaters and rowers and people interested in the Bay who can help me, and on the day that I decide to do the event, there will be people with me.”

Waugh has already connected with the Buzzard’s Bay Coalition and is taking lessons from the New Bedford Community Rowing program (luckily rowing hasn’t bothered his tendonitis, so far). He will also craft his own oars this summer at a boat building nonprofit in Maine.

To fund the project, Waugh hopes to raise money through grants and an upcoming show featuring rowing-themed drawings. But Waugh knows getting grants could be an uphill battle.

“If you just keep waiting, you’ll never do it, so I’m just plunging in," he said.

Finishing the project in 2014 also has special significance for Waugh.

“Gideon Dexter died 66 days before his 47th birthday. The date I’ve set is 66 days before my 47th birthday. This project is meant to be,” he said.

To follow Michael Waugh’s progress, visit his blog Rowing Back at rowingback.com and see other examples of his work at michaelwaugh.com.

here's the article's link: http://sippican.villagesoup.com/ae/story/artist-pays-homage-to-mattapoisett-ancestor-with-rowing-project/874053

Generations

The rowing project, to which this blog is dedicated, had its genesis while I was spending much of my time In Mattapoisett, Massachusetts with my parents. My dad's various health issues were catching up with him. Twenty-five years ago, he had a septuple heart by-pass, then he had colon cancer, then he had testicular cancer. He survived them all and was grateful for the years that followed. But the last two years were hard. I'm grateful that, because I'm an artist, I can take my work anywhere. I was able to hang out with him and simply enjoy his company. But, of course, my work was effected.

My parents' house is the one in which my mom grew up. It was built by my great-great-great grandparents. And spending so much time there and reminded daily of my dad's mortality, I incorporated the presence of that house into my work. The emotional capital of that house is tremendous.

But while I was working on that body of work (the associated drawings of which you can see here), I was also reading a bit about my mom's family who'd lived in the house since 1850 and in Massachusetts since 1630. What survives from the earlier ancestors, for the most part, are wills. But there is the article with which I began this blog, the one recounting the death of my great-great-great-great grandfather, Gideon Dexter -- how he was blown out into Buzzards Bay and froze while desperately trying to row back home. It's no surprise that while my dad was working hard to stay with us (he was given two months to live and pulled it out to over two years), I saw the story of Gideon, rowing against the freezing storm, as an allegory. He was an Ur father, of sorts, and his struggle was that primal struggle to stay alive, and my response was that impossible desire to anchor those we love to this world and pull them back to us, whether that be to pull them back from the funk of a bad day or to pull them back from  serious illness.

My dad died on April 15th, tax day, a day that no one likes. We had his memorial yesterday. I took this picture (below) later in the day, when my brother, sister, mother, and my cousin went back to the cemetery to tend to the flowers. They are all standing near my father. The red flowers that you can see are each placed near the headstone of one of my ancestors. Gideon's headstone is on the left, and his father, and son are shown too. All together, the headstones of seven generations are in this frame. Gideon's grandfather is buried far behind where I took the picture, on the other side of the cemetery.

The graveside gathering was secular and fairly informal. My mom spoke, then my brother, then my sister. then me. This is what I read:

Cheap gas and cheap flights have made it relatively easy for us to travel hundreds or thousands of miles -- to gather briefly for the purpose of remembering my father, uncle Pete, Charles Ruggles Waugh -- but the ease of traveling vast distances spread us out in the first place. The living gathered here today have less physical community than the dead.  Within 20 feet of us, lay the remains of 7 generations. They lived, sequentially, but overlapping, as neighbors. That couldn't have been easy. The traits we share with family are just enough to facilitate profound irritation. Each summer, I watch as [my nephews] Ricky and Jaycee bicker incessantly just like [my brother] dave and I fought as kids. At some point in my 20s, I realized that the stubbornness and self-righteousness that got me so worked up about Dave were just as present --or even more present -- in me. I couldn't be an artist if I didn't believe on some deeply narcissistic level that my vision of the world is one that should matter to everyone else in the room. We are reflections of one another, though reflections distorted by fun house mirrors.

When I was three, my dad had his mother move in with us. Relating to Lyda was never easy:  I know where I got my self-righteousness. No relationship is easy. Yet through those 10 years that she lived with us, I learned that love is not a choice. When Lyda finally went into a nursing home, her memories unravelling to the point at which she thought she was a child again, my dad generously answered as her brother, or sister, or mother -- whatever role was needed. He did not need her to know it was him or if he was a man or a woman. He held her hand. I hold as one of my most salient visual memories, at the funereal home, my father tenderly stroking his mother's forehead and tracing one finger down the bridge of her nose.

While most of my friends grew up and spun further and further away from their families into communities of choice, growing up with my grandmother set the stage for an older way of living -- So when Ricky came along, it seemed totally natural for three generations to live under one roof. Ricky and Grampie got the chance to be buddies, picking up rocks, fixing broken toys, dissecting monster centipedes -- because doing chores together and poking at bugs together and learning together, even having breakfast together, is the genesis and embodiment of love.

My dad was always a person with the tenderest of hearts. He is the one who scooped up baby birds that had fallen out of their nests and fed them using tweezers. He sat by the bedside of every sick pet, stroking their fur and offering them water with an eye dropper. As he got older he always signed his emails "love dad"; when he went to bed he said "good night -- love you." Recently, he took to greeting and saying good bye with the sincerest of bear hugs. This was no hearty handshake, no chest bump or bro slap on the back. Dad had no patience for that macho crap.

As much as my dad believed in the healing powers of his tofu lunch, I believe that he lived an extra 25 great years as a cancer survivor because more and more he chose to embrace that sincerity, to engage compassionately as much as he could. Walking at the Mattapoisett wharf, he never hesitated to ask a fisherman about how often he needed to paint his boat's hull, or about bilge water regulations; if he asked you how you were doing, he expected an actual answer, not an empty "good." His compassion reached out to the buildings he repaired; he worried about them like children, and he wanted to have a little talk with every dog he met on the street during his morning walks with my mom. There is a popular philosophy that we should spurn connections, simplify our lives, throw out, start fresh. Dad did not subscribe to that philosophy. He would not throw out the unresponsive computer, or the broken hair clippers, or the useless cell phone charger, or the wobbly chair. They gave him good years -- and he might salvage a part. He engaged with these objects as they exist in this world -- he'd express mock outrage that the screw he used to fix the chair two years previous had worked its way out and plopped to the floor. But that's life, and having to re-fix things didn't depress him. Putting back those loose screws again and again kept him engaged. And this, too, is an embodiment of love.

I am glad that we can all be here in this cemetery; even though this is not a place any of us choose to be -- short or long term. This is a place that embodies history and connections and family. This is a place of love.

rowing back

I started this blog today to record the progress of a project that I've been thinking about for a couple of years -- and I've finally gotten to the point of action. The name of the blog is "rowing back," not because that will be the name of the work when it’s done, but because the core performative act around which everything else depends will consist of me rowing back from Martha’s Vineyard to my family's home town of Mattapoisett, MA, a distance of about 20 miles.

In 1827, my great-great-great-great grandfather Gideon Dexter, who worked in the shipbuilding industry of Mattapoisett, was killed. Here’s how it happened as reported in a clipping from a New Bedford newspaper of 1827 and reprinted in The Dexter Family in America:

"On January  31, 1827, the sloop Betsey of Wareham came into Mattapoisett Harbor and hauled in as near the shore as  was practicable on account of the ice; soon after she was seen to be drifting toward the bay and several persons from the shore went to her assistance. About 7 o'clock in the evening they lost the small skiff overboard and Mr. Gideon Dexter and Mr. Caleb Dexter, Jr. of Mattapoisett, took a boat and went to recover the skiff. The wind being strong at north and the weather extremely cold, they were unable to return to the sloop, which was run ashore, and the persons on board landed with difficulty, wet and much exhausted. The next morning, the men and boats not having returned, search was made and the skiff was found on Goat Island, about half a mile distant, and the body of Caleb Dexter was found lying on the marsh frozen. The other boat drifted out of the bay and was picked up near East Chop, off Holmes Hole, with the body of Gideon Dexter, which was also frozen. His hands were much lacerated and the oar battered to pieces, from which it  appears he exerted himself to return until exhausted. Mr. Gideon Dexter was 46 years old, and left wife and nine children. Mr. Caleb Dexter, Jr. was 34 years of age, and left a wife and an aged father and mother to lament their loss."

I’ve set myself a little over two years to get the project done. Gideon was blown eastward about 20 miles from Mattapoisett to “Holmes Hole,” now known as Vineyard Haven on the island of  Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. For me to row the 20 miles from Martha's Vineyard to Mattapoisett, most likely against the prevailing winds, will be a huge undertaking, especially for someone who has never rowed, who has very little upper body strength, and who suffers from chronic tendonitis of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder from drawing too much.

My previous projects (drawings and performance-based work) are self-consciously masochistic. My right arm’s tendons will most likely never fully heal from what I continue to put them through. But the reason that I make work like this is not that I like pain. Really, what I’m concerned with is labor -- and especially the relationship of the labor of working people to capital. Artists' labor is not that different in the larger sense -- except that artists’ work is fetishized to the point of aestheticization. The extreme quality of my work means that its labors can not be ignored, and that is unsettling because the aesthetic experience of the viewer is interrupted.

I am continually looking for ways to prevent aetheticization, to make the world, to make labor, to make the extremity of my labor break the experience. That desire motivates me to spend the next year doing physical therapy and fundraising. I also plan to present, in early 2013, a solo show (at Schroeder Romero & Shredder) that is a prequel to this rowing project. This show will have plenty of labor-intensive micrographic drawings. For these drawings I have copied out, word for word, the entirety of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which weighs in at over 500 pages. I also plan to make (by my own hand) the oars that I will use for my rowing project, and I plan to show those oars (again, as prequel) in this 2013 show. They will sit at the center of the show as totemic objects of power; they, too, will be covered in Adam Smith's text.

The following summer (2013) I will build (again, by hand) the boat that I will row those 20 miles. And over the whole two years, I will be working on drawings with rowing imagery composed out of text that delves into theories of history, class, and labor. I plan to edit those same texts as voiceover into the video piece composed of footage shot during my whole project. Drawings, video, performative rowing, and in-gallery performances will all bleed into each other and inform each other.

What happened to Gideon was thoughtlessly negligent. Was it worth it for two men to risk their lives to fetch a skiff from the harbor -- as a storm was bearing down -- with the harbor so dangerously full of ice that a ship couldn’t get to the wharf? Why didn't someone stop them? 

By contrast, my two year project will be methodical, calculated. The haste of Gideon’s decision will be replaced by the care of my own. I will build the best boat for the situation. I will get in the best shape for the challenge. I will have a coach. I will have a master builder guiding me. I will gather a cohort of boaters and rowers to safeguard my journey. Unlike the working class men, Gideon and Caleb, whose lives weren’t worth as much as a skiff, I will build a network of friends, colleagues, and sponsors who will be by my side both figuratively and literally. And through this process, I will rewind the cynical accounting that led to Gideon's solitary and fatal exertions. I will not just row back in the opposite direction, I will reverse all the decisions, all the aesthetics that devalue labor. I will refuse the tragic end of one person by returning him to the interconnected and continuing histories of many.

Here's the source of the picture of Gideon's grave.