Ding Darling in the studio (photo LS)
The night before our (very) local climate march (to coincide with the talks in Paris) finds the artists of our residency up late in Bob Rauschenberg’s mega studio in a confab of furious prop-building to the accompaniment of Ukrainian chaos-rock on someone’s iphone. Will shows Susan and Matt how to use the sewing machine to stitch the streamers. Lavinia and I hot-glue the home-made and hand-painted umbrellas to the poles that Bill painted in b/w stripes. LeBrie letters SUSTAINABLE on magenta-painted foam core with lemon yellow letters. Kate is painting, cutting, checking on costumes.
Our #climatemarch intends to enchant our audience—snowbirds on their last day of vacation on this luscious sub-tropical island and local Captivians with their ritual cocktail at sunset hoping for a green flash over the Gulf. We want to connect to voices in Paris and all over the world– and as well to remind all visitors here that the site of their adoration and pilgrimage, the beach itself, Captiva itself, will eventually be, as artist Buster Simpson points out, “a paradise lost to sea.”
off to the beach for the staging (photo: Matt Hall)
We are inspired by Bob Rauschenberg’s spirit of art in the service of activism, by the great conservationist Ding Darling, whose Fish House graces the Rauschenberg waterfront and whose prescient efforts on behalf of the wildlife and ecology of Captiva and beyond are on view at the Ding Darling Refuge nearby; by participants at last summer’s Rising Waters Confab here at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (especially Gretel Ehrlich and Mel Chin’s storyboard for a film/an action, poodles pulling Inuits from Greenland on sleds through Paris so that they can speak at the Climate Talks about the disappearance of their way of life in Greenland.) How can artists engage people’s attention about global ecological issues? How can we remind people that the Arctic is Captiva? The Arctic is Detroit? The Arctic is Beirut? Rising waters everywhere…
drawing by Mel Chin, collaborative project with Gretel Ehrlich
It’s our first collaborative group project and—after discussion– we decide to engage our local audience with humor, good will, with beauty. Will Cotton is a painter and his palette for our props and costumes are from pictures of Balinese rituals (and, though we didn’t realize it until afterwards, Fellini’s “Juliet of the Spirits.”)
People run up to take pictures. Some cheer. Some are puzzled. Some ask questions. When asked to join us, one man demurs, “…I would… but I paid for parking…” Another woman jumps into the surf to join us. We invite two pig-tailed sprites in hot pink two-piece suits to carry the poles with the streamers flowing behind. They’ll never forget this day. Bill explains that the stripes represents a way to measure “how high the water is rising.” LeBrie tells them, “we want there to be beautiful beaches like this for you when you grow up.”
photo: Matt Hall
When the sun goes down, we retreat to a near-by Mexican restaurant, sitting around a weathered green and red wooden table. Climate activism stimulates the appetite. The collaborative fervor further bonds us.
photo: Matt Hall
The walls of the café are oddly adorned with one dollar bills. Will is excited to see bananas growing in a palm above us. A charming waiter from Costa Rica brings plates of local blackened redfish and refried beans, too-sweet margaritas. Then we mount our blue bicycles and dart off into the night like a fleet of pelicans—new constellations above us, new projects ahead.
“Our Solo Round Star Squeezed Between the Sky and Sea,” painting by Lucinda Parker
The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog 