Drawing from Conversations in Tilting

Currently, I am going out to the heritage town of Tilting to see who I bump into. I am a stranger to this community but since the locals are so friendly, it makes conversation all the more likely, despite there being only 248 people residing here. These incidental conversations inform my drawing and I hope to somehow map out how one conversation leads to another in quick succession. Given the close-knit nature of this community, I am intrigued by how my movement through space is born out of Tilting's topography and neighborhood society.

Using aspects of what I discover in the topography and geology (rocks, land formation) of Fogo Island as well as the conversations I have with the Tilting community (subsistence, hunting and gathering, homestead farming, sealing and fishing) informs how I draw or interpret the place. Haphazard though these conversations may be, I integrate drawings I take from the physical environment with the directions I can get from locals about how to navigate their place, their community, and their heritage.

The subject matter of these conversations emerge from a shared activity: for example eating "Fish and Brewis" together, reading the book "Of Fish and Family" together, watching DVD's together, walking the gardens around Oliver's Cove together. The concept of stand-alone observer is not a familiar one here. For centuries the people of Tilting have been busy surviving so rather than sit around and talk; they involve you in the chore itself, which I find refreshing! This selection of photographs depicts some of the conversational points: