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:

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.

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.

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.

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!)