Catherine Redmond

Big Baby Social Distancing, 2020, Archival Digital Print

It is the Independence Day Weekend and we are in so much trouble the holiday feels particularly unkind in our bruised nation. The very significant Good is that the epiphany caused by the George Floyd murder.  It marks a hopeful change in consciousness which may lead to true changes and fairness. Perhaps that’s more important, more profoundly important than all the other entropic markers we witness now.

Flowers from The Backyard, 2020, Archival Digital Print

The tornado of events continues. The murder of George Floyd was the catalyst for this evil stew set a’bubbling by the gouging out of our institutions and the Trump Administration’s utter inability to handle Covid-19 as any First World Country would have been expected to do.  Most of the way things are now, our systems, justice, education, health, labor, banking, have been built from the very beginning on racial injustice and abuse.  Black People knew this, but Whites kept their heads averted.  Until that video.

This is a pivotal moment and we must all work for change and demand that we bring about fairness for all.  We must vote in November but more than that we must make each other and our representatives accountable. These systems must begin anew, no patches, no re-forms, just total change from the ground up.

I am especially grateful to all the students over the years who have enlightened me, raised my conscience, fed my awareness, engaged with me in the most thoughtful conversations, and been patient with my ignorance. Thank you.

Zachariah, 2020, Archival Digital Photo

My proud Pilgrim Gander, Zach, has just fathered a son, Burdock. Pilgrim Geese are doting parents and Zach watches his boy attentively at all times. It is being able to know and observe these beings that balances the horror of the national scene I read about and the ugliness, from the Minnesota murder of a man whose crime was being Black, to the milestone of deaths from Covid-19 that we just passed.

Nightmare, 2020, Archival Digital Print

Life is surreal now, I live in what is my Eden, a magical piece of land which is so beautiful  and so serene that I think I’m in a dream and against that the news I follow which is the upside down, and so mean and brutal with this living Evil in the Oval Office, that it is hard to know what or where is The Real.

Sketchbook Page, 2020, gouache, cut papers

We are learning how this virus and its attendant restrictions effect us.  I find I lose concentration easily so am going from one thing to another faster than is customary in the studio.  Just pay attention.  That’s the rule.

Ruthie’s Daughters

Hatched on Sunday and Monday, these perfect little Pilgrim goslings joined us on the Homestead, tiny and ready for a good Goose life.  Given all the darkness of this virus and the calamity of the current bumbling administration and the needless loss of life, Nature reminds us of the miracles around us.

Perfection, 2020, Archival Digital Print

The new documentary is not for the fainthearted. Planet of the Humans is free on YouTube. See it at your own peril. You won’t get through it without being changed and sobered.  And very saddened. Don’t watch it alone.  You’ll need comfort after it’s over.

Now that I live on the land, I am more sensitive to the sacredness of the planet.  I expect if we continue our greedy consumption and yearning for more and more, we will just be killed off. Fairly quickly, too.  This may be only the first of more coming pandemics as we destroy swaths of forests and deserts and gobble up more and more for our energy needs.  In the big picture, humans just aren’t worth it.  We are too greedy, out of balance and let’s face it, too destructive.

Good Friday, 2020, Archival Digital Print

It’s an overcast day, the green of the grass is intense and deep in this steely light. Yesterday was the same with very high winds and an eeriness because of the knowledge of Covid-19’s destruction of lives and its forever effect on families.  Looking for the Good may be a challenge now in an age of so much confusion, but reach for it we must.