Wings

I am working with Cleveland, Ohio artist Kathy Skerritt as her supervisor for her work on the Ashridge Doctorate in Organisational Change.

Kathy is working within Deep Ecology and Eco-feminism, using her artistic process as the basis for questions into her relationship with the environment. On her doorstep in Ohio is Lake Erie where Kathy has been working on a programme to re-orientate the stewardship of the Great Lakes towards a commons framework rooted in the wisdom of the ancient, Indigenous communities.

In her field diaries, she describes a trip to the lakeside where she observes the gulls, hoping perhaps, for the gift of a feather which might become a focus for an artistic offering. Later she finds the remains of a gull where there is absolutely nothing left but the wings, the surgical amputation performed perhaps by one of the hawks that make a home in nearby skyscrapers.

I found this image of Kathy's work, with all of it's archetypal associations with water and air, modestly placed among the pages of the diaries she offered as part of our supervision conversations.

It took my breath away.