Grand Mother Moon

– Marginal Aesthetics from the Edge –

2017 Mount Tsukuba Artist in Residence Program

Ever present in the night skies, the moon is an ever-changing phenomenon, seen by our ancestors as readily as it is today. A synchronous relationship between the menstrual cycle and lunar rhythm is well known. As the sea is influenced by the moon’s phases, so women’s’ menstrual; cycles are affected by the sea’s tides.

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And like our old, old grandmother the eternal moon influences us seemingly invisibly. The moon changes what happens, but not visibly, and its force is it silence, its subtlety. The ocean tides rise and fall, come and go, in accordance with the pull of the moon. And we may in our lives move in a certain direction in part because of the invisible pull of our grand mother’s culture, her wisdom, or her experience… These are signs and events that change our lives. The science of the physical universe, and the cultural memory of human experience merge, fuse, and intertwine in unique and unusual ways affecting us. Chance and chance play a role.

For the 5th International Artists’ Residence Program’s each participating artist approached this theme Grand Mother Moon in his or her own individual way, responding to the hilly, wooded, and stream variations of the landscape. Embodying a natural and cultural meeting place where aspects of sustainability intertwine at Mount Tsukuba. The results are edifying examples of human and natural coexistence in the environment… The moon embodies an unusual inter-activity invisible and unusual, just as these artists from Denmark, Estonia, Poland, France, Canada, Japan, Spain, South Korea, the Netherlands and Sweden enact a range of approaches and sensibilities to the nature culture paradigm. 

                                                                                                                      John K. Grande