Gill Bowry - Land Art

Land Art - Jawline 7

LOCATION: METCALF BEACH, ROBERT�S CREEK, SUNSHINE COAST, B. C. CANADA
DATE OF CREATION: 23 JUNE 2011
TIME: 3 P.M.
WEATHER: PACIFIC OCEAN BREEZE, BLUE SKY, WHITE AND FLOATING CLOUD.

I walk down to the beach through woodland and across the clear, salmon creek as she runs on her journey to meet the shoreline. I emerge into the vast and fluid oceanic openness.
On my left sits a humungous tree root; worn to smoothness and bleached white by the play of sun, salt and wind. She offers up solidity and form, and an opening gape into her centre. She is perched at an angle, both caught and supported by a boulder. She is dislocation.
Her aura holds questions about a journey; about place; about origin, about time. Where was it that the roots were alive, and embedding themselves deep into the earth? For how many years did she stand and grow into her majesty, along these Salish shores?
Three persons linking arms could embrace the circumference to feel hundreds of years of history vibrating in their bones. The tides, storms, winds and rains bring her to this moment of stillness. They are markers of the cycles, of the seasons circling around us, and now, in this one moment, we engage with one another: tree root and artist.
I set pearls of stone along the jaw-line. The smooth, rounded lip is like the baby�s gum-line, softness ready to hold stone.
I sort through white pebbles along the beach � each one rounded and embedded with specks of a black and shining mineral.
I mark perimeter, boundary, and edge �the point from which the pebble would fall into a deep chasm.
The transience and delicacy of this land art contrasts with the steadiness, longevity and slow, enduring time-shifts of the wood.

GILL BOWRY 2011.