Environments

I love you, Mount Everest, and I believe you love me back. You certainly spared me in so many ways. We are biologically programed to love and admire you from afar: at altitudes above 22,000 feet human cells die. That is science, not heart, the way nature made us.

During the 12 days of my swift ascent I witnessed people stumbling down from your peak, filled with wonder, shock and sadness. You took so many lives that week. I followed the trail we ALL leave behind, the trash, the dead bodies, the oxygen tanks, the human waste running against your flanks: frozen landfills of environmental hazards.

For millennia artists have recounted to the world the beauty and power of Mount Vesuvius. I wish I could have shown a formidable volcano wrapped in ecological diversity by its incredible Fauna and Flora. The Earth Protectors who guided me through this desolation call it Our Mountain. It is Our Mountain and this is what Our Mountain has become.

Upon my arrival I walked out from my room onto the naturally manicured beach of the hotel. There were two plastic bottles floating off in the sunset. For the next five days we collected the new plastic visitors traveling in with the tides, my tourist neighbors oblivious to the tragedy unfolding. I was the only one looking for them and I was the only one to see them. On the last day we briefly put the bottles back into their new kingdom and created this TimeShrine.

A volcanic Lake. Hundreds of circles of raw beauty and intense feelings, a ring of violent love and heightened senses. A life and death spiral. They arrived, as Tom promised, a noisy arrow of pink in the rising sun. They landed into a single straight line to avoid bumping into each other. I captured that second of perfect stillness before they started feeding. A line to protect the circle.

The first time I saw Stromboli I felt I had reached a final destination, the end of the world. A place of peace and contemplation, a giant womb. A perfect secret. There are fumaroles breathing on the beach of Cala Calcara surrounded by circles of stones, they feel like ancient rituals. I placed some painted stones at the feet of my TimeShrine and then made sure to put them back exactly where I found them. I want you to know this place exists.

It felt already dark that morning, a breathable darkness of a pink shade of grey, feeling soft and surreal and muting the sounds. We all wore masks, our muffled exchanges reduced to the essential. By the time I finished my installation it was 4 pm and the city already needed artificial light. I placed a few peonies and breathing masques in the foreground and then decided to rip them all to shreds.

I did not expect to stumble upon such a resilient pod of natural life in my Shanghai roofing expedition. Strong enough to honor the powerful secret of the lotus flower, its roots planted deep in the soil yet floating on water and openly embracing the grey sky. I added the power of a sculpted dragon in the TimeShrine and joined the four elements in One.

They said I was the first foreigner to arrive here. I had travelled very far to find a primary forest and sense its magic. A place that makes our life on earth possible, where trees converse freely and can become old and wise. A place where humans don’t belong but can sometime feel welcomed.