Wow!

It's unbelievable how far we've come! Last night's session was "on fire"! What an explosion of creativity and vitality coming from all participants. The energy is really mounting for our debut performance on April 20th! How exhilarating to be immersed in the sounds, sights, and sensations of all 35 of us expressing!

Next week is our last week - dress rehearsal!

Nicole

Confidence and Commitment

Hi all!

Here are some pictures from our last 3 sessions. It is very exciting that we are coming closer to our performance dates. I am actually feeling a bit nervous about it all - but the process is very rewarding. I can't help but feel that all the time we took in exploration and working in groups and getting to know one another, has helped to make these final sessions run smoothly in terms of collaborating and bringing the pieces together. I know for myself, it's challenging to let go of control and to trust in the process and to follow and shape the emerging images. It's almost like our community group has reached a point where we are confident in our abilities without sacrificing the emotional intent of the peice that is developing. I feel like the work that we have created so far is very touching and is filled with deep commitment and caring. It has been such a joy to work with you all.

Nicole

Excitement building as the project grows

There was a hiatus in posting here through the week of March break, when we did not gather at the Conservatory for our usual evening of collaboration. From some of the emails being exchanged after last week's regrouping to work on the project, it's obvious that it was an exhilarating evening. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend. One of the many hats I'm wearing these days had dominated my life -- the great big storyteller hat that is completely preoccupied now by the 30th Toronto Festival of Storytelling that begins Friday March 28 and continues through to Sunday April 6 all over the city and where I'll be telling environmental stories in a set called "Tales of the Blue Planet."

In that mid-project lull over March break it seems as if people came back to the next gathering inspired by the anticipation of spring despite the continuation of wintry weather. The feeling of powerful connection with the earth and all its elements has proven to work as both an individual and collective creative force, with everybody's art, music, and drama interacting in truly fruitful ways. One participant, inspired by the positive energy of the collaboration last week, afterward sent out messages to others with the idea of naming our performance "Eco Loco: The voice of Gaya Emerging" and quoting the poet Rumi: "Let the beauty we love, be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. "

I recognize that the people participating in this project are self-selected through their existing concern about and care for the health of the planet where we share our lives, and that no doubt the enthusiasm and creativity that are blossoming on these evenings at the Conservatory are exceptional, are not the "norm", are not reflective of the entire population. Yet when individuals who have been involved with the ecological artmaking for only about 6 weeks have responded by sending this message: "I love the way exploring and expressing the arts" can inspire people about the environment.

Now there's the very real possibility that those who see the perfomance on Earth Day and at the Green Living Show might be infected by the energetic creativity and passionate involvement of our group proclaiming our devotion to planet care.

Tonight I will be with everyone there again, and will report on what we're working on -- in other words, telling the story of how to live well and wisely and creatively on the earth.

Starting to Emerge

Here are some photos of our explorations from Day 4. We are starting to accumulate lots of material that is related to each of the 4 elements and within each arts modality. Our next task is to fold in the local environmental issues that we feel strongly about. Our group energy has a lovely creative feel as we are getting to know one another better and are feeling more comfortable working together creatively. It's wonderful seeing the images emerge as we come together at the end of each session to share what each group has created.

Day Four: Collaborating modes of expression

It's difficult to know how else to describe last Thursday evening's gathering. After a series of vocal and body warm-up exercises from Heather Dick, we again formed three groups. People wanting to work in drama and spoken word went with Heather, others wanting to do visual art went with Nicole -- with Andrea to arrive later -- leaving the large room with all the musical instruments for eleven others to improvise with Rick on a couple of soundscapes.

Having been reading David Rothenberg's book on music and nature, and explored a site on "experimental musical instruments", I opted this time to try collaborating on a soundscape.

Rick led the entire group in a brief session of improvising with a variety of simple small hand-held instruments (none of them as grand -- or wet! -- as in this brief video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=8p1QMEOK50I) before dividing us into two groups. Each group was to take as a theme an element and compose a short piece evoking the actions of that element -- in our case an illustration of a riddle for the sounds of the wind. With about a half -hour time limit to create a soundscape to present to the entire group, the process was an intensely involving blend of spontaneity, experimentation, and collaboration that all somehow came together very effectively.

When all three groups convened and presented what we'd worked on, it seemed as if the components of a larger piece were actually starting to take shape. The performance piece inspired by the element of Earth was charged with energy. The visual constructions are still exploratory, for they require a lot more time to make, but what has been built to date indicates that the visuals will be responsive, as will the music, to the voice and movement of the drama group, and that the drama group in turn will be able to incorporate the other modes of expression into what they've begun to develop.

Given that only six more weeks remain to create the ultimate piece, we are each to select a modality (soundscape, drama, visual art) to focus on for the rest of the project. My initial notion was to work with voice and drama, since they relate to my storytelling. However, the soundscape session completely captured my curiosity. I'd never before attempted anything like the experience of shaping sounds in a group: it's exciting and engages not only close listening but a connection with body and imagination I hadn't anticipated.

Day Three: "It was an amazing evening"

The third gathering of the group for ecological artmaking was one week ago, February 21, so this posting is late indeed. A persistent flu virus has kept me cloistered indoors for nearly two weeks, and though tonight's forecast of extremely cold weather is daunting, I don't want to miss this evening's activities.

The morning after the third gathering I had an email from one of the participants:

"We missed you this evening, it was an amazing evening similar to last week as we spent the first little bit creating a thunderstorm with percussion, and then broke off for forty five minutes to various medias and elements. Once again reuniting at the end to bring together the process and discuss ideas."

The creative energy of the people involved in this project is one of the best antidotes I know to the creeping despair that can settle into one's soul after reading about the damage being done to the planet. I try to balance my reading between the "factual" material from writers who are keeping tabs on the current state of the world, and those who, while acknowledging the crisis, make it their task to make a deeper connection with the natural world and find creative ways to engage with issues.

The thought of that percussive thunderstorm last week has remained with me for the promise that such sounds offer of rain and wind for a thirsty earth. For all that our winter of heavy snow has seemed endless, all that white stuff will soon be water. Since only 2% of the earth's water is not saline, we have treasure heaped up outdoors in the form of snow banks.

Much of my reading the past couple of weeks has been generally about environmental art, and more specifically about water and our increasing need for it to be clean, healthy and abundant.

David Rothenberg's Book of Music and Nature is not expressly about water as an element but recognizes the musical qualities of moving water and the world's largest creatures -- the whales -- who live in that element and make their music there. In his introduction Rothenberg writes, "With only a little effort, the whole world can be heard as music." Even stones -- Icelandic composer Elias Davidsson has explored the sounds of stones gathered at different geographical locations.

The soundscape component of our eco-art making is proving to be a way of pulling together all the other creations inspired by the four elements we'll be focused on.

Day Two explorations: words, soundscape, visual

The photographs taken by Nicole and posted for Day Two (our second week of getting together) capture some of the collaborations resulting from our first time focusing on particular elements.

Andrea set up fabrics and paints in the large room for one group to create visual responses to Water. In the same room Rick worked with another group to put together a soundscape evocative of Fire. I was in yet another group in a nearby small room with Nicole to create word and voice impressions of Earth and Air and their effect on us.

Nicole provided us with basic materials -- coloured paper, scissors, and markers -- and in our two smaller groupings of two people coming up with words we associate with Air, and three of us doing the same with Earth, we each created simple small cut-paper patches of words/phrases expressing our impressions of these elements. These we laid out and composed, quilt-like, on the floor as a text that we then played with, arranged and rearranged into a piece lending itself to voicing and performance. After a couple of run-throughs of each brief performance of Air and Earth, we rejoined the others in the big room . . . . and walked into a space brilliantly transformed visually and filled with sound.

The people working with fabric had, in the space of barely an hour, created a vast blue fabric net with green/blue strips suspended from it so that the entire construction could be lifted in our hands and set in motion. Others had painted fabric with giant fish that are to become part of this Waterscape.

The group working with Rick had put together a soundscape of percussion and didgeridoo capturing the crackling and movement of flame. When the sound and visuals were put together, it seemed to many of us that the dynamics of the soundscape composition, with some adaptations, could in many ways easily accompany the movement of water.

The five of us who had prepared the "patchwork" texts performed our compositions: Air alive with movement, and Earth . . . .more earthbound, more grounded, evoking connection and fertility.

This was the first experience of small group collaboration coming together at the end of the evening with promise of further developments. Most amazing was how swiftly and intently everything had come together so far. I went home on the subway reflecting on the ability of a newly formed and diverse batch of people coming together with such inspired enthusiasm and, even at such an early stage, such exciting pieces to offer.

Next week -- week three -- Heather will join us and work with a group focusing this time on Fire and Water. Andrea will set up a visual arts area for working on aspects of Air, and Rick's soundscape will be for Earth.

So much of my reading on environmental and ecological art has been about projects that are more a response to a particular environmental issue, or landscape, often initiated by individual artists, or groups of citizens, who motivate and involve the community associated with that issue or landscape. The artist(s) and community explore creative ways to make a positive change to the state of the environment they are concerned with or to raise public awareness about the issue. Such activities often occur out-of-doors in some sort of natural setting, or if in an urban setting, are intended to evoke or reclaim nature. I wondered how this project at the Conservatory would compare with such projects, for we are undertaking an ecological artmaking experience in a large plain room, in an old school of standard, bleak institutional/educational design, which is in turn situated in a densely populated urbanized neighbourhood across the street from a huge shopping mall. I couldn't imagine this project having any effect on its immediate environment.

Yet if that "immediate environment" in that old building comes alive so vibrantly after one hour of creative work by a group of people committed to exploring their response to ecological issues, then maybe what we're seeing is the power of the imagination to transform where we actually are at that moment and expressive of what we care about on this planet.