Linda Buckmaster

Of Cod and Communities

Exhibit Location: Stairwell Gallery

Funding support for this project comes from the Maine Arts Commission Artist Project Grant and is co-sponsored by Penobscot Marine Museum

Events

• Meet the Artist: Thursday, October 8 | 6:00-7:00 pm
• Writing Workshop: Saturday, November 2 | 10:00 am-12:00 pm [Registration required]

About This Project

“Of Cod and Communities” consists of eight 3’ x 5’ soft fabric banners adapted from my book, Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands, a hybrid of poetry, essay, imagery, and fiction. It is an engagement with geography that binds together both sides of the Atlantic— land, people, culture, time, the built environment, and the price of salt cod.

Before the pandemic, I was traveling in earnest to gather material for this concept of a literary project reflecting the North Atlantic Rim. I see the codfish as the connector among the cultures across the Atlantic, and I focused on  salt cod because I was attracted to the lives of those who labored in its catching and production as well as its connection to West Indian sugar plantations.

I had a specific visual and textual book that wanted to be done as I envisioned it. I admired the work of Portland designer Lori Harley and what she did with text-and-image creative projects. We brought the book out in April 2022 and  went on to create the banners project.

“Of Cod and Communities” is visiting five Maine libraries over the year. My interest is to move the book “off the page” and make it accessible to a larger audience.”

From Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands by Linda Buckmaster:

“My interest in the North is not the ‘Far North’ of year-round snow and ice, but rather those places above 44 ° latitude to below the Arctic Circle —the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, southern Labrador, the western Scottish islands. The call is from rocks and sky and a heavier sea than the Gulf Stream of Florida where I grew up. It is wildflowers and impenetrable brush and ghosts. The call has something to do with fortitude, persevering in spite of adversity, and stomping into a warm house from the cold. At 44.4259 ° North, my home of Belfast, Maine has some of that, but it’s not north enough. Farther are the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes, and Iceland.”

More at https://lindabuckmaster.com/