OBSERVATORY ARCHIVE
COSMOS DAILY #1, May 002022, free and open to the public, viewable 24/7.
ARCHIVED PAGE FOR OBSERVATORY’S PROGRAMMING DURING YEAR 00001 (002022)
_____________________
PRESS:
Interview with Jamie Kruse about the Tea Hut at OBSERVATORY, Arigato Travel (AUGUST 002023)
“Art Gone Wild” brings mini art residencies to Maine trails, Penobscot Bay Pilot (JUNE 002023)
Completing the Circle, Republican Journal (NOVEMBER 002022)
Playing the Long Game, Republican Journal (JULY 002022)
PREVIOUS EVENTS
TEA HUT OF MIRACULOUS POWERS:
A WAYSTOP ALONG THE PATH OF PLANETARY TRANSFORMATION
in collaboration with Waterfall Arts and Coastal Mountains Land Trust. JULY 14TH 4-7PM AND JULY 15TH 8-10AM
A performative inhabitation of Shed of Tides, Head of Tide Preserve, 91 Doak Road, Belfast.
For our micro-residency at Shed of Tides, we reimagined the Head of Tide Trail as an itinerary along the path of planetary transformation. And we activated the Shed of Tides as a tea hut waystop along that path. We welcomed visitors walking along the path to pause and—in the midst of the vast planetary transformations taking place—experience the “miraculous” within the everyday: the brewing, sipping, and sharing of a simple cup of tea.
Our inspiration and point of departure for the project was a ninth century Zen story called: The Old Woman’s Miraculous Powers. In the story, a woman invites traveling monks to her tea hut beside the road. She challenges them to show her their “miraculous powers.” When they fail to respond, she offers them the “miracle” that she experiences everyday in her tea hut: brewing and pouring cups of tea.
Pop-up micro-production: ONE THING: FALL SHINCHA
MARCH 16, 002023
Against the backdrop of spare winter days, we offer guests a context to slowly and quietly taste the warm green of spring in a cup of Fall Shincha/秋新茶.
This slow observation event sets the stage for pausing and savoring flavor, temperature, color, seasonality.
Attuning our senses and actions to the material realities of our lives on Earth can enrich our experiences of being alive. It can also help us navigate planetary-scale changes currently underway. At the conclusion of each tasting, participants will have an opportunity to make an optional, creative response.
MARCH 11, 002023 2-3:30PM
OBSERVATORY’s TEA HUT provided tea for A Father’s Kaddish, screening at The Parsonage, Searsport, ME. In collaboration with the Maine Jewish Film Festival, Maine Jewish Museum & The Parsonage. At the event, there was a one day limited exhibition of Kaddish Chawans (Japanese tea bowls), with all proceeds benefiting the Pediatric Cancer Community.
EARLY WINTER TEA-WITH-THE-DAO READING SALON
Wild Mind, Wild Earth, Our Place in the Sixth Extinction
At the first meeting, we introduced the book and share tea. Two weeks later, we met a second time to discuss the book and share thoughts, again, over tea.
November 17 + December 1, 002022, 6-7:30PM
Limited to 8 people, $35: includes cost of book and two tea salons
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
In Wild Mind, Wild Earth, David Hinton explores modes of seeing and being that could save the planet by reestablishing a deep kinship between human and earth: the insights of primal cultures and those of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism of ancient China. He also shows how these insights have become well-established in the West over the last two hundred years through the work of poets, philosophers, and scientists. This offers marvelous hope and beauty—but like so many of us, Hinton recognizes that the sixth extinction is now an inexorable and perhaps unstoppable tragedy. And he reveals how those primal and Zen insights enable us to inhabit even the unfurling catastrophe as a profound kind of liberation. Wild Mind, Wild Earth is a remarkable and revitalizing journey.
SUNLIGHT MOONLIGHT SAME THING
an autumnal moon viewing and tea experience at Steamboat Landing Gazebo, Belfast Harbor, Friday, September 9th, 002022.
The micro-production, staged to coincide with the rising of September's Harvest Moon, will begin at 7pm and conclude by 8:30pm.
We will share an experience of the cosmological force of light as it intimately shapes life on Earth. We will sip tea under the sun’s flood of photons as they stream past Earth, over our heads, through the so-called “dark” night sky. And we will celebrate those relatively few photons that reflect brilliantly off the full moon, back to Earth, to fill our eyes/minds with “Harvest Moon.”
Our tea will be a special Japanese hojicha—an autumnally toasty, warm, low caffeine tea. Traditionally, Harvest Moon events in Japan invite participants to reflect upon and express their experience by composing a short poem while sipping tea and moon viewing. We invite you to bring paper and your favorite writing instrument, and to share any poems that might emerge.
OBSERVING 94,500,000 MILES OF LIGHT: APHELION TEA + FIELD OUTING
JULY 3, 002022, 2-3:30PM
Earth reaches its farthest point in its wide ellipse around the Sun at 3:10am on July 4, 002022. Join us for a local field outing to observe this remarkable time in the solar year.
We’ll start at OBSERVATORY’s TEA HUT for an 8 minute and 27 second cold brew of green tea and then move outside for a free-form, independent notation/sketching practice focused on observing the continuous arrival of the sun's photons in Belfast after they have traveled their longest distance to Earth of the year — 94,509,598 miles.
Prompts for being at home within continuously changing conditions in our local/global planetary environment will be offered to participants as we observe solar light interact with architecture, clouds, water, objects, and people. We will then regroup 45 minutes later to share observations.
*participants should bring their favorite media for creating observations (camera, sketchbook, notebook etc.)
PROJECT ARCHIVE
GRASS DRIFTS FOR PLANET WATCHERS
LONG-TERM INSTALLATION IN OBSERVATORY’S OUTDOOR SIDEWALK SPACE (002022 SEASON):
“Fluttering drifts of green-gold grass encounter the wind that blows past OBSERVATORY. They are here to help you watch that wind, to pay attention to its movements, its directions, its cadence. This wind, like all things, is a planetary force, small and specific when it encounters the local, always local, matter of the world, and part of the accumulative whole that is the planet. The wind-realm works like this, nothing bounded, always moving, everything in relation to everything. In paying close attention to how the wind, this wind, exactly here, exactly now, behaves, you are watching the planet.” — Lisa Hirmer
This work is a long-term seasonal, slowly developing site-specific installation created for OBSERVATORY by Canadian artist Lisa Hirmer. Stay tuned for further additions and activations.
*installation included Hakonechloa macra/ Japanese Forest Grass and Cares oshinenesis/Japanese Sedge
Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist working in visual media, especially photography; social practice; performance; and occasionally writing. Her work is focussed on collective relationships—that which exists between things rather than simply within them—both in human communities and in human relationships with the more-than-human world. Much of her recent work wrestles with what it means to be living inside the climate emergency, on the edge of planetary collapse.
COSMOS DAILY
#21 11.002023 Banff, tea w/interior outcropping
#20 10.002023 Pemaquid, cup reserved for non-humans
#19 9.002023 Pemaquid polaroid
#18 8.002023 Baisao and Swan Island tea
#17 7.002023 sunrise tea at Schoodic
#16 6.002023 proof of the turning planet
#15 5.002023 guest artist Durl Kruse
#14 3.002023 always belong to the change
#13 1.002023 unrecognizable
#12 12.002022 winter solstice 23° tilt-spin
#11 11.002022 the mirror-deep eye
#10 10.002022 guest artist: Ayano Matsumae
#9 10.002022 guest artists: L. Harris + R. Grenier
#8 9.002022 awareness incites aliveness
#7 9.002022 emerald tea, spinning eastward
#6 8.002022 sunlight moonlight samething
#5 8.002022 hand broom 192 years
#4 7.002022 aluminum + heavy stars
#3 6.002022 8 minute old light
#2 6.002022 15h 32min 30sec of light
#1 5.002022 all coming from away
MAIN EXHIBITION SPACE
June 30-Dec 30, 002023, PROOF OF THE TURNING PLANET, group exhibition
Nov. 26 - Dec. 17, 002022
IT’S A WONDERFUL PLANET,
smudge studio
October 24-November 19, 002022
・ ◯ TeN eN, Ayano Matsumae
Sept. 9 - Oct. 22, 002022
Test draft, FROM FRACTURED GEOLOGIC SHARDS, UNDER THE VAULTED SKY, AS TIDE CRASHES UPON STONE — PULLED BY THE MOON (anthropocene observation #00001, “walking pemaquid”), smudge studio
August 5 - ongoing, 002022
LONG LIFE DESIGNS JAPAN
July 15 - Sept. 3 002022
OBSERVING THE LONG LIVES of NYC’s Material Stream, Jamie Kruse
June 17- July 2, 002022
SHODO TERRA The Yellow River, Miranda Maher
MAY 27 - June 11, 002022
STARTING WITH THE TILT OF THE EARTH
smudge studio
ERRATIC OBSERVATIONS
August 5 - September 3,002022
SLOWLY, SLOWLY, STITCH BY STITCH, Amy Tingle
June 17 - July 30 002022
TWO RUMFORDS, Steve Norton & N.B. Aldrich
MAY 27 -June 11 002022
PLASTIVORE, Oliver Kellhammer