My Blue Bucket Bucket of Gold - Flipbook

MY BLUE BUCKET OF GOLD




My Blue Bucket of Gold
The Art of Katrina Stock
In this work Stock remodels the imagined space of her father’s story – replete with his belongings, found objects, imagined spaces, colour, and texture, and loose threads that trail off into the cavern of the unknown. She has mined into the stories, pictures, and memories and presents here what is simultaneously a factual remembering and a mythological creation. Her retelling is a room: a space that works to actualize her memories, a space that attempts to bring the unknown into the known. My Blue Bucket of Gold explores themes of longing, grief, childhood, memory, storytelling and family identity.
by Christina Wells
Installation: August 4th- 28th, 2015




An Artist Statement
There is a place where all red roads lead to him. Here, I take his old blue knapsack down from the shelf and inspect each sedimentary layer I have uncovered: his letters, his bracelet, my grandmother's watch. This is all I've ever had – all I've ever known. I work to weave together scraps, archive notebooks, send out codes into the other dimension and attempt to piece together a map. I go to this place, to these shelves of memories, to listen, to come to know. But the closer I get the further away, from this living urn, he seems to be. He is my treasure hunt with no x, my myth, my ghost. He is My Blue Bucket of Gold.
by Katrina Stock




Blue Bucket of Gold
1. A treasure that one has only heard of and can hardly imagine.
a. The Lost Blue Bucket Mine, rumoured to be located in the Oregon wilderness, is a legend tracing back to 1845, several years before the Gold Rush. Supposedly, the gold or copper there was so abundant you could fill a blue bucket with it.
2. Blue Bucket of Gold: A song by Sufjan Stevens.
a. "My blue bucket of gold Friend, why don’t you love me? Once the myth has been told The lens deforms it as lightning"


Am I your living urn?
Ash enclosed in flesh? The bearer of your code? Your place of final rest?


But I do not have the key.
All you left are these blue eyes. They only see what's out,
they can not look inside.


If I click my heels three times, did I have it all along?
Do your ashes form a map?
Do they point the way back home? Or are you the Wizard himself, hiding behind the screen?
I want what I can't have.
I want your dust to breath.
Living Urn, K.M. Stock, Fall 2013




Mining ideas at a quarter past late- sifting, collecting, weaving away.


Go ahead,
turn on that headlamp.
Trek into those deep dark crevasses.
Excavate those long forgotten scraps,
lining the bottom of grey matter and knapsack.
Mining, K.M. Stock, 2012




You can't pin down the wind, or the sand,
or the dust.
Excerpt from Pinning Down the Dust, K. M. Stock, 2013


I tried to unthaw you-
Holding your letters to the light. Peering into your backpack- faded blue. Searching, wishing, digging,
for some missing clue.


If I climb this forsaken mountain, and get tired can we meet halfway? I’ll wear your silver bracelet, binoculars and blue eyes.
I'll bring your envelopes and blueprints.
What was yours is now mine.




It’s like a treasure hunt- with no gold.
Sailing the high seas, nauseas and brave.
I don’t want to be brave anymore.
I wanted you to leave me a note too.
I want to find that x.
I want to go there every second day of the tenth month.
I want a place to put down these wilted flowers and roots. I want to feel that frozen soil underneath my nails instead, of all these tired thoughts still wandering in my head.
Voyages, K.M.Stock, 2012




Pre-winged worm
Sticky
Clinging
Suspended by branch Healing
Held
Woven
Peeling
Excerpt from Growing Pains, K.M. Stock, 2012


On this
island
I am Joey’s daughter.
Here-
all red roads lead to that cabin lined with moss,
and
memories.


On this island
I am Joey’s daughter.
That white church standing tall.
This living urn
now walking where you walked,
Mary Maude, Angeline, Emma, Angelique. I came back Great Grandmothers-
I came back.




On this island
I am Joey’s daughter.
Here-
everybody knows I am yours
-but me.




On this island
I am that spot marked with a double x. Shedding skins cells and salt water
to mingle with red dust.
I brought you home,
Joey,
I brought you home.
On This Island, K.M. Stock, 2015


The Artist Would Like To Thank
Britannia Mine for the lending of objects from their Education Collection, Avital Cline, Christina Wells, MAWA, The Cheeky Proletariat, East Van Roasters, the DTES community and the Almon family.
The artist gratefully acknowledges inspiration from Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell and Bonnie Devine’s Writing Home.
Photography: Andrew Stock
katrinastock.com wordandwire.com