I have always lived near the ocean- so close that I could always see it when I walked out my front door. I don’t think I could ever live far from its shores. In 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was lucky to be able to take daily walks by the Atlantic Ocean. I continue to be lucky to be able to take these walks as the global pandemic continues.

This body of collages, entitled The Sea Hates A Coward, was conceived and created during the pandemic. I started to create them in January 2021 and finished the series in early 2022. The series draws from my mapping projects, Crossings: Massachusetts- Malta (2009-2019), and Crossings: Emerson was Here (Boston).  Ralph Waldo Emerson on Dec 25, 1832 boarded the cargo ship Jasper in Boston Harbor and set sail for Europe. He landed in Malta on Feb 2, 1833. This was the trip that transformed Emerson into the “Emerson” the world knows. 

Emerson traveled from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Ocean. In the 1800’s there was no guarantee one would survive such a journey at sea. All of the collages either have a photographic image I took in January 2021 of the Atlantic Ocean in Boston or an image of the Mediterranean Ocean that I took in Valletta in February 2019 during my residency in Malta with Valletta Contemporary. The Mediterranean continues to claim the lives of countless migrants trying to make their way to Europe and historically many lives have been lost in the Atlantic Ocean. The photographic images in the collages are different sizes – sometimes it is clear it is an ocean image and in some of the works there is only a small sliver of a photographic image of the sea.

The white frames were all sourced during the pandemic and almost all are from local second hand stores. Each work is made for the specific frame it is in (they are frame-specific works). Each work is also made for a specific foreboding literary quote about the sea/ocean. I am working with 15 quotes in total and the quotes are from such writers as Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, Langston Hughes, and Samuel Beckett. The name of this series is a quote from Eugene O'Neill’s 1931 play, Mourning becomes Electra.

I was also thinking about William Turner’s paintings of sea storms when creating these collages. Those paintings are incredibly beautiful and full of energy, but they often mask the fear and horror of being caught in a storm while at sea on a ship. These works are small scale visual odes to the power and terror of the ocean.