Clare Jorgensen: Artist in Residence in the Milwaukee River Greenway

September 27, 2024  |  Topics: featured artist

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The Natural Realm presents Clare Jorgensen, who is among 12 artists participating in a year-long residency program called ARTservancy, now in its fifth year. ARTservancy is a collaboration between Gallery 224 in Port Washington and the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, River Revitalization Foundation, Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy, Tall Pines Conservancy, and Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. The mission of ARTservancy is to promote the visionary work of both the artists and conservationists. Each artist has selected a preserve to spend time in and to engage with.

Reflections from the Artist

By Clare Jorgensen

When two things come together, a third thing happens. Something new emerges and comes into existence. It becomes a greater whole than the two entities by themselves.

The landscape of North County Mayo in Ireland holds a “gravitational pull” that has launched me upon a path investigating the amalgam of ground and water—and the third entity that is created when the two come together, which can be quite different at every turn. Sometimes it is hard-edged and bombastic and sometimes it is soft, undefined and comes with a whisper. Since my first visit there in the Fall of 2018, I was introduced to the “Wild Atlantic Way” and the coastline that was once described to me as a landscape of extremes: raw beauty and tragedy. With each visit to the north Mayo coast, I have become increasing familiar with the works of many Irish poets and writers who use this as a metaphor for our human existence. One poet whose work I have grown to love is that of Seamus Heaney—most particularly Heaney’s poem, “The Peninsula.” 

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you’re in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.

The poem unfolds with a drive describing what is unfurled while leaving the peninsula and the experiences of what we see ahead and what is no longer visible behind us. It ends with no resolution for the lack of words, but with a fundamental understanding of forms and elements— “water and ground in their extremity.” (The emphasis above is my own.)

As an artist-in-residence with the ARTservancy project and the River Revitalization Foundation (RRF) on the west shore of the Milwaukee River Greenway, which includes the “Beerline,” I have had a remarkable experience. I am fortunate to live along the Milwaukee River, a bit south—where the river opens to a wider life. The sights and sounds of the river near my home are filled with colorful kayaks and boaters, runners and walkers, the cacophony of traffic, and other street noise. The river takes on various colors and textures in the water and on it. 

When along the river in the midst of the Beerline, the city sounds are muted and give way to sounds of our own thinking and the experience of inhabiting the space. It is not just scenery; my time in the space brings a quieting of the mind. It allows the landscape to speak. That’s what landscape is to me.  I love being there to listen to what it is telling me about the passage of time, color, form, and the layers of its history.

The experiences that drew me in the most were those spent at the very edge of the river: the meeting of “water and ground in their extremity.” How the water moves and how the terrain meets it hold a real fascination. Sometimes the meeting is gentle and sometimes it is harsh and lethal. This coming together changes both ground and water and new entities and experiences arrive before me. I have endeavored to find the feelings and a visual language for all these experiences in the work I am creating as part of my artist-in-residence year. 

The idea that you can be in a densely populated area with so many sounds and sights of a busy city, and still find quiet both amazes and delights. Seeing a great blue heron fishing in the late afternoon right across the river from several people also fishing about fifty yards away is phenomenal. The sounds of traffic, laughter, talking, and ambient music all fall away. The sound of gurgling and rushing water take center stage and a transformation occurs. It is a kind of music and visual experience happening simultaneously.

In my experiences as a lifelong musician, I’ve found that musical notes and chords have a color to them. Colors have a sound and frequency that can be felt. Weaving these two art forms together has found a home in my work inspired by time in this landscape. There’s an energy in the alchemy of painting, drawing, printmaking, just as I found as a singer and instrumentalist. There is a joy in layering of marks. Sometimes with ink, sometimes with paint or printing, I build layers of transparency, opacity, and mark making. It all combines in a palimpsest: like a musical score, layer upon layer building not just an image, but a feeling through a cacophony of sound and emotion. It becomes a new expression.

The work I am creating as a response to these moments, has a physicality in making; whether I am in the Greenway or in my studio. It is energized by the labor: light touch or heavy, organic or inorganic, unpredictable and predictable qualities. Layering. Concealing. Revealing. Just like the landscape, marks become gestures; shadows become remembrances. A shadow or gesture recedes from the surface yet is still present. These marks support the elements like a soaring musical line, supported and enriched by the textures of harmonies beneath. There is consonance and dissonance. Rough and smooth. Homophonic and polyphonic. Clear and obscured. When combined, these elements have become that greater whole. It becomes an underpinning of new elements that ride above it. They create a new force that comes forth as a new entity that thrives on its own. 

These are the forces that speak to me as I inhabit this rich landscape along the Milwaukee River and respond to it through my work. There is a simultaneity to it that I work to honor, not just as “water and ground” but also those feelings we experience, standing in this natural environment, hidden from the city while still occupying the city. It is my hope that each viewer will be experience a personal transformation and become lost in the work; each in their imagination of what is seen, heard and felt. These are the experiences I have each time I visit the “Beerline” along the Milwaukee River.

Gallery

This residency is sponsored by River Revitalization Foundation. To learn more about the Milwaukee River Greenway go to our Find-a-Park page.

Related stories:

Benjamin Pollock: Artist in Residence in the Milwaukee River Greenway

Brian Hibbard: Artist in Residence in the Milwaukee River Greenway

Meghan Burke McGrath: Artist in Residence in the Milwaukee River Greenway

There are numerous other stories related to the Milwaukee River Greenway in The Natural Realm; a complete list is available on our Find-a-Park page.

This is the latest in our series of featured artists, which is intended to showcase the work of photographers, artists, writers and other creative individuals in our community whose subjects or themes relate in some broad sense to nature, urban nature, people in nature, etc. To see a list of previously featured artists, click here. The work of the 2022-2023 ARTservancy artists in residence is currently being exhibited monthly at Gallery 224. To meet the other ARTservancy artists in residence, click here.

All images courtesy of the artist, except as noted. The featured photo at the top of Clare Jorgensen next to the Milwaukee River is by Eddee Daniel. River Revitalization Foundation is a project partner of A Wealth of Nature.

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