Rehab Residency

The tendonitis in my left arm is getting better. I'm still feeling it. And I wear wrist braces all night and much of the day. Wearing wrist braces might not make immediate sense when the problem is with my elbows. But the braces keep me from hyperextending the tendons all the way up the arm -- giving them a chance to rest and heal.

After months of not rowing, I began this year spending some time on the erg. I started slowly. Really just stretching, not even working up a sweat. Five minutes every two or three days.

By the end of January, I decided to begin increasing my efforts. I spent February and March at an artists residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire (an amazing place!). I spent most of my time drawing. But rehabilitating and traning for my row was equally important during my time at the residency. I set up a video camera and recorded my training every day. Who knows how much of this documentation will make it into the final video that I edit when I'm done with this project. But some of the footage is quite nice. Thank you to T Kira Madden for assisting me on the day that I did naked erging amid the piles of snow (I never saw the ground during my two, freezing months up there).

The good news is that I went from 1000K every other day during my first week to 5000K near the end (I actually was up to 6000K but then a sledding misadventure set me back a couple of weeks).

Anyway, I am mildly optimistic that I can be on track to row across Buzzards Bay in July. Here are some video stills grabbed from the footage I shot a MacDowell:

The Boat Comes Together

As the summer progressed and the daylight decreased, my work hours increased. I was spending up to 14 hours a day with the wood-burning pen clutched in my hand, copying text onto the wood that would become my boat. I couldn't work fewer hours because I was scheduled to go up to Brooklin, Maine and work with master boatbuilder Geoff Kerr and my next opportunity to work with him wouldn't be until April. I finished burning the text with one day to spare (which I used to ride in the Transportation Alternatives NYC Century -- I really know how to relax).

The boat that I'm building for my voyage across Buzzards Bay is an Annapolis Wherry. Its design calls for planks of okoume plywood. It's lighter and stronger than using traditional planks. And part of my decision making process for this project is to use all the technical innovations available to ensure that I don't share the fate of my great-great-great-great grandfather, who died in a rowboat in the middle of the bay.

Plywood is not the most receptive of surfaces for wood-burning. In all, I spent four and a half months copying text onto the wood. As the hours of labor added up, my anxiety mounted as well. I knew that the boat's design called for sections of the hull to be reinforced with fiberglass. In other words, I would be covering my tiny, handwritten text. Before I started the project, I spoke with Geoff, who assured me that the layer of fiberglass would be absolutely transparent. But my text is so small that it's barely readable to begin with. Even the slightest blurring of the text could ruin the effect, my efforts, and the boat as a conceptual object.

I arrived in Brooklin on Sunday, September 15. I was able to afford working with Geoff because he was simultaneously helping ten other people who were also building Annapolis Wherries at the Wooden Boat School. And the entire process of building the boat was squeezed into a single week. On Sunday, Geoff got a head start on the undertaking, by doing the first step on everybody else's boats -- which was to glue the shorter lengths of planks together into the seventeen and a half foot lenghts necessary for the boat. I met him there and watched him glue together the first couple of planks -- and then glued mine together. Here's a picture of the building where we worked.

On Monday, I drilled holes in my planks at six inch intervals (nobody else working with Geoff had to do this because their planks had been pre-drilled), and then I tied the planks together with copper wire.

On Tuesday, I was really grateful to have ten other people in the shop. We all paired up and had a partner gather together the front of our boat, wiring the bow together. I drilled holes in the transom (the board across the back of the boat, and I was again grateful to have help holding the springy, unwieldy boards together while I wired it into place too. What's interesting is that all the wire is just there temporarily. It holds everything in place wile the boat is glued together with epoxy. The rest of the day was spent mixing small batches of epoxy and using a pastry bag to squeeze it in between the planks.

Wednesday, we removed all the wires and cleaned up some of the epoxy that dripped and squeezed out to places where it didn't belong. Then came the moment I'd been dreading: The fiberglass. Fiberglass comes in sheets that look like heavy white cloth. It is opaque. But once saturated with epoxy, it disappears. Imagine a microscopic glass fiber suspended in clear plastic. This is what my boat looked like by the end of the day wednesday:

You can still see the white edges of the fiberglass cloth that needed to be trimmed. But the text was visually unhindered. I had been worrying about this moment since I had decided to use the design for the Annapolis Wherry in the Spring of 2012. I left the shop giddy with relief. Though I did sneak back in right before going to bed to check that it really did look okay.

On Thursday we trimmed the edges of the cloth, continued to epoxy, and glued the rails onto the boat -- another job for which I was grateful to have help. I suppose one could rig up some system of clips to get the rails on with just one other person helping, But, really, three people are necessary to avoid unreasonable stress. With so many people in the shop, we used five people to carefully glue, hold, and clamp the rails into place. And five people did not feel excessive for the job -- especially when the epoxy started to cure mid-install and we had to put twice as many clamps (and a few strategic c-clamps) on my boat.

On Friday, we installed the decks over the air-chambers (which prevent the boat from sinking if it over-turns) and continued to epoxy. A lot of the work we did on Thursday and Friday would have been best spread out over four or five days so that epoxy could have cured between steps. And I was often dragging through gummy, partially-cured epoxy. The epoxy job is really rough as a result. But by the end of the day Friday, the boat was assembled. If I'd tried to build this boat without Geoff's expertise, I would have taken months. It will take me months to sand, re-sand, re-sand, and re-sand the ten coats of epoxy, paint, and varnish that I need for the finished boat. But I have a boat. And my months of labor putting text onto the wood worked just as I'd hoped. I am still experiencing aftershocks of relief and joy.

Tennis Elbow

After I've built my boat, after I've drifted with the currents of Buzzards Bay, after I've tested water and pumped out poop and greeted visitors for the Buzzards Bay Coalition, and after I've spent two years rowing with the New Bedford Community Rowers -- Then I will go to the spot where my great-great-great-great grandfather's body was found and row across Buzzards Bay to his home town.

This will be a huge undertaking. And one of the biggest challenges is building the physicality necessary. It has been and continues to be a very slow process. Last fall, I dealt with tendonitis in my right elbow. Now it's struck in my left. I slowed down my rowing work-outs to twice a week. Then, last week, I reduced them to zero. Again, this week, I can not row.

Unfortunately, my bargain health insurance does not cover physical therapy. So I am using internet research to find exercises that will get me back on track. I have less than a year until my big row. So I am feeling some urgency. These look good:
Rehab For Tennis Elbow: The Super 7 The "super 7” exercises are an important part of treatment for tennis elbow. They are designed to strengthen the muscles in the forearm and increase flexibility through stretching. In most cases te these exercises will help relieve elbow pain in about 4 to 6 week Each stretching exercise is held for 15 seconds and repeated 2 or 3 times. This pattern is repeated 5 times a day.
Exercise 1. Stretching the muscles that extend the wrist (extensor muscles): Straighten the arm out fully and push the palm of the hand down so you feel a stretch across the top of the forearm.
Exercise 2. Stretching the muscles that flex the wrist (flexor muscles): straighten the arm out fully (palm side up), and push the palm downward to stretch. Strengthening exercises are performed twice a day following the stretching exercises. To perform these exercises, the patient sits in a chair with the elbow supported on the edge of a table or on the arm of the chair the wrist hanging over the edge. Use a light weight such as a hammer or soup can when performing the strengthening exercises. Repeat the exercises 30 to 50 times, twice a day, but do not push yourself beyond the point of pain.
Exercise 3. Strengthening wrist extensor muscles: Hold the weight in the hand with the palm facing down. Extend the wrist upward so that it is pulled back. Hold this position for 2 seconds and then lower slowly.
Exercise 4. Strengthening wrist flexor muscles: Hold the weight in the hand with the palm up. Pull the wrist up, hold for 2 seconds and lower slowly.
Exercise 5. Strengthening the muscles that move the wrist from side to side (deviator muscles): Hold the weight in the hand with the thumb pointing up. Move the wrist up and down, much like hammering a nail. All motion should occur at the wrist.
Exercise 6. Strengthening the muscles that twist the wrist (pronator and supinator muscles): Hold the weight in the hand with the thumb pointing up. Turn the wrist inward as far as possible and then outward as far as possible. Hold for 2 seconds and repeat as much as pain allows, up to 50 repetitions.
Exercise 7. Massage is performed over the area of soreness. Apply firm pressure using 2 fingers on the area of pain and rub for 5 minutes. 
If exercise aggravates any of your symptoms, contact a physician or physical therapist These exercises can be used to prevent or rehabilitate injuries in people who play sports or in those who do repetitive forearm work.
Tim L. Uhl, P.T., A.T.,C.

Fundraising

I bought a $20 pair of sneakers last week. And that is probably my shoe budget for 2013. My five-year-old boots will have to last until 2014. My frugality has a missionary zeal because I know that I can get this rowing project done by not spending money on anything but my art. Even so, this project will cost a lot. I've applied for several grants to help me cover the costs. But, so far, I have been turned down by all of them. One of the frustrating things about fundraising is that no one wants to be first. What if no one else funds a project, the budget isn't met, and the project doesn't happen? Then that first funder has wasted money. The second frustrating thing is that as much faith as I have in myself, this project is much bigger than anything I've done before, so I can understand why my proposal has been a difficult sell.

But I have come up with a solution to those two problems. I have broken this large rowing project down into several smaller projects. The scope of each component project is comparable to the scope of a previous project. And I decided to approach USA Projects, a non-profit that helps artists crowd-source funding. I figure that if I can get enough small funders to help me fund the current stage (a.k.a. a smaller project), then I'll have a much better chance of getting the attention of foundations and government agencies when I need funding for the next phase.

So right now I have narrowed my focus. Right now I am just building my boat. That's the project. I am trying to raise enough money to build an eighteen foot wherry, the surface of which I will inscribe with hundreds of pages of tiny, handwritten text. This beautiful, fast, light boat will be a sculptural memorial to my great-great-great-great grandfather, Gideon Dexter.

With the help of USA projects, I have come up with a budget. I need a minimum of $8,000. to get this boat made and to take it for a test run on the water. That will cover boat plans, wood, fiberglass, woodworking tools, woodburning tools, studio rent, the trailer that I'll need to transport the boat, the fees I need to pay for help from a professional boat builder (yes, this boat needs to float and be safe on the water), and updated video editing software. It's a super efficient budget. I'm hoping that I can raise a bit more to help pay for crew and to update my camera -- and to pay for renting a safety boat to use when I get this project out on the water. But $8,000. will get me there and will have the measurable result of a real boat being built.

USA Projects is a non-profit and they have vetted me and my project -- and they've concluded that it's doable and in keeping with their mission. They will require final reports and documentation from me that I have actually spent the money on the project as I said I would. This oversight also means that all donations through USA Projects are tax deductible.

Of course, funders of this project will get more than just a good feeling. I'm making several perqs  to give to people that donate funds, including a video and three new limited edition prints. Everyone who donates at least $25 will be invited to a reception at the first launch of the boat and will be able to download a new video work, along with a certificate of authenticity and exhibition privileges. Donors who give $75 will, in addition, receive a signed and numbered catalog from my recent show (only 25 are signed and numbered). The next three levels of support are invited to the reception, get the video download, and get a framed, signed print. Here's a preview of the prints:

Donors who give $150. will receive the above signed, framed print of a fisherman's knot: Acknowledgments (The New Industrial State, part 2). 2013. pigment on paper, paper size: 5"x5" edition of 25.

Donors who give $500. will receive the above signed, framed print showing a close-up of some lace: Foreward (The New Industrial State, part 1). 2013. pigment on paper, paper size: 8.25"x8.25" edition of 12.

Donors who give $2,000. will receive the above signed, framed print of a Bowen unknot: Change and the Industrial System (The New Industrial State, part 3). 2013. pigment on paper, paper size: 13"x13" edition of 5.

The text in all of these pieces is taken from John Kenneth Galbraith's The New Industrial State. Here are some details so you can see the words clearer:

 detail from Acknowledgments (The New Industrial State, part 2). 2013.

 detail from Foreward (The New Industrial State, part 1). 2013.

detail from Change and the Industrial System (The New Industrial State, part 3). 2013.

Donations of any amount are really appreciated. And, if you're in Southeastern Massachusetts and can volunteer to help me when I launch the boat, that will be appreciated as well!

Here's a link to the fundraising page on the USA Projects website:
http://www.usaprojects.org/project/the_conventional_wisdom

ARTnews

I got a copy of the May issue of ARTnews today. I've been excitedly waiting for the issue because it has a review of my January show. The show presented work that is a prequel to my 2014 row. The writer, Elisabeth Kley, did a great job explaining the show and its relationship to the larger project -- not an easy task. I won't try to put into words how supported I feel when reading a (good) review of my work. All I will say is thank you Ms. Kley and ARTnews.

ARTnews MAY 2013, page 100.

reviews: new york 

Michael Waugh

Winkleman

     Michael Waugh's dense and absorbing exhibition was dominated by a delicate series of representational drawings created entirely out of tiny flowing texts copied from Adam Smith's 1776 The Wealth of Nations. The largest, a triptych, featuring a sinking steamboat engulfed by enormous waves, took nearly 1,200 hours to complete. Other images here included idyllic scenes of rowers in front of country mansions and portraits of handsome young oarsmen. All were visually airy and evanescent in spite of the labor they required. 

     The show was intended as a fundraising prequel to Rowing Back, a future performance inspired by the 1827 death of Waugh's ancestor Gideon Dexter, who froze in a rowboat while attempting to recover his employer's drifting sloop. Waugh plans to hand-build a boat he will row from the place where Dexter died to the site from which he departed, reversing the journey to symbolically recuperate his life. 

     The Invisible Hands (2012), a video documenting Waugh's preparations for this project, was projected on a wall monitor hung over a pair of handmade oars. Shot from a camera attached to the handle of a rowing machine, the film shows Waugh's body moving toward and away from the lens as he trains, with an almost uncomfortable intimacy. Footage of the oars' creation is also included, along with documentation of the unsuccessful maiden voyage in a [racing shell] that immediately capsized, plunging [Waugh] into the water. 

     Another video records one of Waugh's eight-hour readings of Smith's book. Audible fragments of economic theories float in and out of the viewers' consciousness while they look at the rest of the work, enabling Waugh's romanticized Arcadias to dissolve into Smith's impersonal phrases. The arbitrary masochism of Waugh's entire artistic enterprise underscores capitalism's human cost.

- Elisabeth Kley

Michael Waugh, Money as a Particular Branch of Society (The Wealth of Nations, part 17). 2012, ink on mylar, 22" x 28". Winkleman.

On the Water

Today was the first time that NBCR was back on the water for 2013. Tendinitis in my shoulder is keeping me from helping to carry the boat down to the water. I should have brought this problem up last season because I continually aggravated my shoulder carrying the boat. This is part of the learning process here. As an independent studio artist, I'm used to being responsible for doing everything myself. It's a constant effort to remember that I'm not responsible here. I can ask the coaches to decide or help solve a problem. And they will. It's kind of a new experience for me.

Out of Storage

NBCR stored a lot of stuff in the barn this winter. On Saturday, a bunch of members came by and we unloaded everything. The biggest thing was the launch, a small, pontoon motorboat. We had ten people lifting it and carrying it out and walking it onto a flat-bed trailer.

The oars were all tucked up between the pontoons and a small dingy was loaded onto another truck. We get back on the water Tuesday. I'm a little worried because my shoulder has been bothering me. But I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Iced

For the past week and a half, I've been afraid that I was going to have to abandon my rowing project. I had finally bought myself an indoor rower (an erg) so that I could train daily without having to go to the gym or get onto the water. No Excuses. It was a big, one-time investment. But it's actually cheaper than a year and a half of gym memberships. However, about a week after getting the machine, I had a problem.

20 years ago, I was diagnosed with bursitis in my right hip. I got a steroid shot and had to give up jogging. Having a doctor tell me that, in fact, I was not as robust as the average person fed into all my gay-boy insecurities. But one moves on. The bursitis has flared up from time to time. But for the past ten years, the flare-ups have been minor. But after using my new erg, the flare-up in my hip was as bad as it has ever been. When it started, it was as if a sword was inserted at my hip and driven down my leg towards my knee.

I immediately started icing the hip twice a day (Ace bandages are a great fashion accessory, no?) and taking naproxin. I limited my walking (bad because the problem coincided with Art Week in New York). I had to miss the most active week for contemporary art. Two weeks later, the popping of my hip and the pain had decreased enough for me to get on the erg for an easy 2000m. It was a moment of truth. If the motion of the erg set my hip off, then the project would be over.

Of course, there was no logic to thinking that the erg had caused the problem. It was the same model as I had used at the gym. The motion is the same as I learned last summer on the water with New Bedford Community Rowing. And I had only used the new erg a few times. Really, I had not increased my rowing activity significantly. But I care deeply about this project; I've invested a year into it; I've got another year and a half to two years before it's completed. And I'm not as robust as the average person. Who wouldn't worry.

The easy work out did not cause any problem. No popping. No pain. So I started to think more logically about what might have caused the problem. And I remembered that on the day the shooting pain started, I'd been having some trouble walking. And, yes, maybe that trouble had been coming on slowly. But walking hasn't been easy for 20 years, so I tend to ignore minor aches.

This winter, when the weather started getting nasty, I had looked around for a pair of boots. I found a pair that my dad had bought a few months before he got sick. He'd never worn them. They fit me. Problem solved. Of course these were $20 boots from Wal-Mart. Great for keeping snow off the feet. Bad for walking all over New York -- or anywhere. One's feet kind of roll side-to-side instead of front to back. The voice of my friend Bob, who is a physical therapist, came back to me, "make sure you keep your feet straight and push off from your second toe."

I put on the boots and walked across the room. It was impossible to push off from the second toe. They rolled such that I was pushing off from the ball of my foot and my whole body was rocking. I had been wearing these as my primary shoes since mid December. They are now in the trash.

I still need to take it easy on the erg until my hip feels stable. But the story isn't over -- though it is for those boots.

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.

Water Everywhere

Superstorm Sandy has put a pre-mature end to this year's on-water rowing practice. I shot the above video a couple of weeks before the storm hit. And I'd hoped to get out there some more. I only got to row a single twice. The video is of my second time sculling. I'm pretty rough. I don't hold the oars even. I can't feather them. I haven't figured out how to get even power. But it was a beautiful day and I rowed the perimeter of New Bedford Harbor, which took about an hour (rowing inside the hurricane barrier and excluding the superfund, clean-up site).

Last week, I wrote on this blog that I would post photos of my recently completed large drawing. I should have been in New York during Sandy getting the drawing photographed. Instead, I stayed up in Massachusetts to help keep watch on my mom's house.  I did have to get up on a barn roof during the hurricane and staple down a strip of roofing that blew off. But, otherwise, things were pretty light.

At New Bedford Community Rowing, all the boats were taken off their outdoor rack, shrink wrapped, and staked to the ground. Today, I went over to help unwrap some and re-rig them. Unfortunately, the single that I rowed in the video seems to have been taken off site, stowed away for the winter. So I may have to wait until next Spring to work on my technique.

I'll be heading home to Brooklyn Sunday or Monday so that I can vote on Tuesday. And I hope to get my work Photographed soon. I'll also get a chance to help my friends who've been effected by the storm. I fear that at least one of my drawings was destroyed by Sandy*; it was at the gallery where my January show is scheduled. The gallery suffered heavy flooding -- Kind of ironic considering that the two central pieces of that show will (hopefully!) be 1) a drawing of a ship getting subsumed by a storm -- and 2) the pair of wooden oars that I've been working on since August. Oars aren't much use against a storm, especially without a boat.

(* update 11/4/12: the drawing survived!)

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.