August 5th

Pam Posey is in Iceland

Here I am in Skagastrond, Iceland, at the Nes Artists residency for the month of August. You can learn about the program on their website http://neslist.is/.

This is my shadow at 9pm.

I arrived here after spending a few days in the southern region of Iceland. A highlight was the epic 15 hour drive from Reykjavik to the Iceberg Lagoon  Jökulsárlón (literally "glacial river lagoon") on the borders of Vatnajökull National Park.





Here I am at the foot of the glacier.

That was July 31st and it was good and cold. August first brought sun and warmer weather for the drive up to Skagastrond, which is a town of 500 on the Hunafloi bay. The town has no shortage of curiosities.

Tomorrow I will visit the "Museum" of folklore where you can also have your tarot cards read. The harbor has butch fishing boats and lots of industrial fishing buildings and in a week I have yet to see a boat in the water or a worker at the docks. In fact, I can't figure out what folks do here.  But everyone is very friendly and I'm sure I will get to know more as weeks progress. There is an abandoned house on the main street with I pass daily and take it's photo as a way to document the light during different weather and times of day.  Here it is at high noon.





The sun here is extraordinary and it has taken several days to figure out why it is so troubling. It is always right at eye level, always in your face, strobe light bright, not that warm, but entirely desirable. At high noon I cast a 4 foot shadow and at 11pm my shadow measures 35 feet.  It gets pretty dark by midnight but there is still light, kind of like the light in LA winter at 6pm. The night before last we saw the moon rise - almost full, and it too was almost as bright as the sun - so there was this white light on both sides of the horizon.

As for work, I'm settling in and continuing to make paintings of stones from one place and relocate them to a different environment.  One friend said I was introducing invasive species and another called my activity "lithic anarchy". I've traced a geological map of Iceland on vellum and inadvertently hung it upside down. Which I actually like because it is Iceland as seen from the north pole looking south. I plan to use it as a way to chart my stone activity.

 Here is my studio wall with maps and work, Day 6.

Here's a painting of a stone I found on Potami Beach in Samos, Greece, in July. Here's where I found it.

And I left it at the Iceberg Lagoon