Ellen McMahon

Letterpress on Rives BFK, Marbled paper cut outs, 29"× 93"  2009

For four months I was in solitary retreat, residing in a moldy studio built into a dune on the shore of the Gulf of California in Sonora, Mexico. I arrived with armloads of books to read and a box of scraps left over from previous projects to make into new work. Every afternoon I swam suspended in the warm hyper-saline water, peering through goggles. As the days stacked up behind me, my eyes recalibrated to the stingrays hidden just underneath the surface of the sand, the tiny fish camouflaged against the rocky reef, and the subtle markings distinguishing Sanderlings from the Sandpipers as they ran by on invisible legs. If I sat on the beach motionless for long enough, the shorebirds would look right at me with their bright yellow eyes. The mutual recognition I imagined between us provided comfort and relief from the struggle to communicate in Spanish.