fleeting as a life....

Peter von Tiesenhausen. Island. Video still. 2014
Photo from www.tiesenhausen.net.

Artist Peter von Tiesenhausen once made a boat out of ice. He carved it into or out of the existing ice on a slough on his property in rural northern Alberta.

(Ice is something we have a lot of here.)

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He lay down in the boat, and could see right through it. See the life in the water beneath him, all around him. In the dead of winter.

(There’s a reason they call it “dead.”)

Lying down in it, it fit him like a coffin. Like a vessel to hold body or soul. Like a vehicle to transport him on a solitary journey to another place/time. Another world.

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Recently, he has reprised this motif of the ice boat. In Iceland. Or "Island," as it is spelled in some languages. 

There he cut a boat from the existing ice, and set it free on the shores of the ocean. Creating another island. Another ice berg. Another chunk of fresh water to melt in our growing oceans; our rising seas. On our warming planet. Our changing world.

(A temporary island; fleeting as a life.)

Peter von Tiesenhausen. Island. Video still. 2014.
Photo from www.probertsongallery.com.