We Are All Surrounded Islands is a single edition hand-made book about going to the inaugural event at the Perez Art Museum of Miami for its Surrounded Islands documentary show where Christo was present to discuss the project. It was October 4, 2018. I made the book in October 2020.
The book's 42 pages measured 14.8' when laid flat and unfurled and before assembled as one continuous strip. Assembled and closed, the book measures 4.5" x 6".
The book's 42 pages measured 14.8' when laid flat and unfurled and before assembled as one continuous strip. Assembled and closed, the book measures 4.5" x 6".
We Are All Surrounded Islands is a meditation on art, kindness, and human generosity of spirit. It’s about how we treat each other. It's also about paradox. About reckoning with contradiction and incongruity. In the book, I contrast my experience of Christo that night with a phone conversation I had earlier in the same day with another very high profile artist (referred to as “the other” in the book). The 6th paragraph sets up my reflections:
Idols fall, I’m told. And though I don’t idolize Christo and the other, I admire their work. In their practice I see propositions for engagement, viewpoints about how we might live amidst each other together here on earth in ways that enable joy and hope and optimism, commonality and connection, mutuality and relationship, community and building community. These things matter to me. So, intentionally or not, I look for congruency between work and words — which also matters to me — and a rupture between the two, a breach in integrity, is telling, though I can’t quite tell you exactly what it tells me.
Before the main event with Christo, which PAMM located outdoors on the edge of Biscayne Bay where the 11 islands had been wrapped all those years ago, I spent hours at the show inside. It was magnificent. I was spellbound. I lived very close to the 3 northern-most islands, and had I lived in Miami in 1983 I would have seen them from my kitchen and bedroom windows and from the balcony. At the event, still spellbound, I mustered up the courage to ask Christo a question. I’m still dazzled (7 years on and counting) and am so glad I overcame my inhibitions to speak up and engage. A life lesson to hold on to.
I made an outfit for the event — a skirt, a jacket, and an embellished shirt — each piece an homage to my experience of Surrounded Islands across time and place.
I made an outfit for the event — a skirt, a jacket, and an embellished shirt — each piece an homage to my experience of Surrounded Islands across time and place.
The book is designed so it can be shaped to the contours of the islands. I frequently change its configuration in the display case where it sits in my living room.
The book concludes this way.
In May (as it happens, twenty-one days before Christo died), a piece by Andrew Solomon appeared in the New Yorker. It’s an elegy for Solomon’s psychotherapist, Dr. F, a man of extraordinary insight, Solomon tells us, who died suddenly. In the piece, Solomon remembers an interaction with Dr. F in which he describes himself as someone who sees people in rigid contrasts, trying to sort them as good or bad. Solomon writes, “While I tried to achieve singular revelations that would expose someone’s whole character, Dr. F would say, repeatedly, ‘You’re talking about a person. People aren’t simple. They are full of nuance and contradiction.’” In that story, I saw in Solomon someone who sounds a bit like me.
What surrounds me is like me. What surrounds me may even share parts with me. This liberates me. It grows me up. Little by little, I fill my own shoes—by imagining myself walking in someone else’s I more fully walk in my own. We are all surrounded, and we are all islands. We are all surrounded islands.
In May (as it happens, twenty-one days before Christo died), a piece by Andrew Solomon appeared in the New Yorker. It’s an elegy for Solomon’s psychotherapist, Dr. F, a man of extraordinary insight, Solomon tells us, who died suddenly. In the piece, Solomon remembers an interaction with Dr. F in which he describes himself as someone who sees people in rigid contrasts, trying to sort them as good or bad. Solomon writes, “While I tried to achieve singular revelations that would expose someone’s whole character, Dr. F would say, repeatedly, ‘You’re talking about a person. People aren’t simple. They are full of nuance and contradiction.’” In that story, I saw in Solomon someone who sounds a bit like me.
What surrounds me is like me. What surrounds me may even share parts with me. This liberates me. It grows me up. Little by little, I fill my own shoes—by imagining myself walking in someone else’s I more fully walk in my own. We are all surrounded, and we are all islands. We are all surrounded islands.
The outift I made. A skirt. A jacket. An embellished shirt.
THE JACKET
I selected this fabric for its surface design, meant to honor the mountains in Vancouver, where I lived when Surrounded Islands was completed
I was in Miami visiting my family before the installation began and after it was over. A disappointment I have find difficult to reconcile.
THE TOP
A work colleague had gone to Paris the summer before the PAMM show and I asked her to bring me back, something. Anything. And gave her $20. She brought me back buttons.
I sewed 11 buttons (blue with white edges) onto a shirt using pink thread. The buttons are arranged in the pattern of the islands in Biscayne Bay. (Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris, so there's that connection too.)
THE SKIRT
I selected this fabric for its surface design, meant to honor Miami, where Surrounded Islands occurred and where I lived when Christo came to town.
The event at PAMM.
At the time, I lived very close to the northern-most 3 islands.
Me asking Christo a question. Him answering. (Thanks to my friend Yucef for taking the photo.)
A few months later while leading a student zine workshop at work, I explained Surrounded Islands to one of the kids.