Women's Four

I got up at 4AM to meet the women's competitive team at the New Bedford Community Rowing Pod for their 5:30 training. Coach Bayse wanted to get some footage to help with feedback. I had my Handycam in the coach's launch, and I attached two GoPro's on the four that the women were rowing. Anna, the cox, was a good sport and wore a cam on her head. And Georgia let me put the other one on her starboard oar. They made some jokes comparing themselves to the Jamaican bobsled team in the movie Cool Runnings. But they were great. I rowed in the four once last year, and it was not fun. Granted, four is more stable than a single (which I couldn't stay in at all). However, the morning was so gorgeous that I almost wished that I was rowing.

Here's the view from Anna's seat, reviewing her cox's notes.

And my view from the coach's launch.

Superfund

The best discussion during practice tonight was about a house that sits right on the Acushnet river (Fairhaven side). It's for sale for 1 million. "No way they're gonna get that for a house overlooking a superfund site."

Still, it's got to be the prettiest superfund site around. I started getting blisters yesterday while using the pickaxe in the garden. After tonight's row, my hands look like they've been handling plutonium. Not so pretty.

Queer Erg

Once again, I am working in overdrive, having set myself a crazy deadline. The prequel show of work related to my rowing back project is due to open in 22 days, on January 12. Since the biggest project still remaining to finish is video, and video is notoriously apt to have unforeseen technical issues, and the holidays are going to slow me down, I probably have seven days to work. Okay, I need to breathe.

I have all the video clips imported, and I have them roughly placed. But none of them are in sync with the sound. I haven't figured out the timing. And I need to reduce one clip that is an hour long to 5 minutes.

The hour long clip is footage of me using a rowing machine (an erg) at the YMCA, working on developing the stamina that I'll need for my big row. The hour wore me out. But the footage is kind of great. I mounted my camera on the handle of the machine, so I am constantly pushing the camera away from myself -- and then pulling it up to my chest. The wide-angle of the lens makes my chest swell to womanish proportions with every stroke. It's good, old-fashioned queering. And it helps to add dimension to the drawings in the show that have the most obvious queer content (such as the two crew-lovers in Restraint on Competition).

Tomorrow I'm packing up my computer and my editing drive and flying with them to my sister's house in Texas for a holiday with my family. I hope I can de-stress enough to be good company!

The Shortest Voyage

Last Friday, I finished burning text onto the oars that I started making last August. They're beautiful -- and, perhaps, useful. Over the weekend, they got a single coat of varnish. That's not enough for a long voyage. But I had nothing to worry about.

I decided to christen the oars today by attempting to row a racing shell. I tried this once before, with similar results. So I wasn't expecting to get far -- and didn't. About ten seconds into the voyage, it ended. Weather report: the water in New Bedford Harbor is currently 55 degrees. I am glad that I decided to make this attempt today. My original idea was to do it on January 31, the anniversary of Gideon Dexter's death (the event around which this whole project revolves).

I need to thank the four people who helped me today: Cheyenne Bayse, Carolyn Flynn, Sheilagh Flynn, and Calder Reardon. All the boats had been stored for the winter, so preparing for today's row and the safety precautions necessitated by the chilly water were not simple. Of course, I need to thank also New Bedford Community Rowing -- and assure all readers that novice rowers are not encouraged to get into elite boats like this. I was indulged because I wanted to experience exactly how far I have to go in learning and preparing for my row. I only got about 20 feet from the dock. So my question has been answered.

Prequel Images

I finally have professional images of the drawings that will be part of my upcoming show. I've posted the whole series on my web site. The largest drawing, a triptych, is 84" tall and each panel is 42" wide. When framed and hanging, it spans about 12' of wall. As with my other large drawings, it is overwhelming in person, but the detail gets lost in a JPG. Here's a detail:

The first ten drawings in this series, portraits of Ivy League rowers, were part of my 2011 show at Schroeder Romero. I followed those portraits by making seven modestly-sized landscapes, the triptych, and then two more portraits. All of the drawings use rowing as subject matter. Like my previous drawings, these pieces use micrographic text to compose the images. The series uses the entirety of Adam Smith's *The Wealth of Nations.* All told, I copied by hand 507 pages of text. The largest, the triptych, used 265 pages of text:

I think of this large work as the anchor of the series. It shows the image of a steamship getting subsumed by a storm at sea. A single passenger, a woman, stands on deck, hands clasped, looking out for rescue. A single sculler rows towards the doomed ship.

Adam Smith's book is something of a Bible for economic conservatives. Smith famously refers to the economy as being guided by an "invisible hand." However, like the Bible, the text is vast -- so vast that it seems, at times, to contradict itself. In addition to arguing for the virtues of self-interest, Smith also notes that governments should probably not allow businessmen to guide legislation. Although he hails the division of labor as the cause of wealth, he also notes that it has dehumanized workers and led to moral degradation. His book is speculative, not necessarily prescriptive.

I have engaged with rowing imagery for a number of reasons. One of the most basic is that crew, in addition to being a favorite art historical subject, also brings with it an undeniable mark of class privilege. In 1776, when Smith published the book, notions of class were unformed. And crew isn't the only sport that announces the privilege of its participants; all sport takes skills developed for the purpose of survival and transforms those skills into autonomous activity. The first marathoner, Pheidippides, ran 26 miles to announce to Athens that the Persians had been defeated -- not to achieve a personal best.

The transition of boating from a necessary skill for fishing and transportation into a sport is neither simple nor is it clearly an evolutionary improvement. Sport in itself calls into question the idea of progress. The Wealth of Nations continually makes the case for modern economic systems being more evolved than what came before, even though Smith cites problems with that narrative.

It struck me while reading The Wealth of Nations that so much of what is foundational for modern economic theory is also foundational for scientific theory and for art theory -- and are recurring questions in our own lives. Finding meaning is never as straightforward as it first appears. How can one summarize the visceral experience of making these drawings, of copying a 507 page book, of standing in front of the record of that much labour.