Marcia Grubb

Abandoned Bird’s Nest
wood box, bird’s nest, rock, rope

Vanishing Footprint
plaster, beach sand, shell, rock, flip-flop shoe print

Both of my residents are on beaches, so I take walks along the beaches and observe Nature in all its glory. I observe the water, the shoreline; plants, footprints in the sand left by animals (deer, birds, raccoons, coyote, fox, man). The footprints interest me because they will eventually disappear. They are not permanent and quickly disappear by the changing conditions of the weather. Footprints observed one day will be gone the next?

An artist’s constant frustration is “How do I capture a natural moment in time and freeze it for the observer to experience?” We make art to make a connection with another human being. It’s a way of communicating and having a mutual “A hah! Moment” with another person. I deal with the constant struggle of trying to capture nature so that the observer can dream about a similar experience, smell the same smells, see the same colors, feel the same textures.

The “Abandoned Bird’s Nest” piece is about trying to harness nature.
When you find an abandoned bird’s nest in a tree or hedge, you wonder if a Mother and her chicks actually lived there? Other than the carefully constructed nest, you wonder if the mother successfully had laid eggs and they hatched, or if the Mother left the nest before having the chicks to build another nest because she sensed danger? Like an abandoned apartment, we can only imagine the stories of the former residents. In this piece I have tried to harness the moment in nature by throwing a rope around the egg in the nest, holding the egg in place with the weight of a rock, freezing the fleeting moment.

“Vanishing Footprint” is about that moment we have observing a footprint on the beach. We wonder is it a shoe belonging to a man or woman? Is the person someone like me? Is the person soaking up the beauty of the surrounding nature or just a person trying to get exercise? Do they have a family or are they alone? Maybe there is a dog print running along-side the shoe print? Soon there will be no evidence that anyone was here at all.

© Marcia Grubb