“Gales of November Remembered”

2024
12″ x 9″ x 0.75″ (felt on canvas in black floating frame)
Status: Sivertson Gallery, Grand Marais, MN

Inspired by a lyric in Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” I created this piece to be featured on the final day of my Split Rock Lighthouse exhibit, which was the day of their annual Beacon Lighting Ceremony. The ceremony commemorates the 29 sailors who lost their lives during a violent storm on November 10, 1975.

My husband suggested I make a felting of stormy waters to add to my Split Rock Lighthouse exhibit. I loved the idea. My typical process takes far more time than I had. Still, I threw caution to the wind (apropos, given the context of November gales), researched dark, stormy, turbulent seas to better understand high wind wave formation, characteristics, and coloration, and found a color palette that moved me and dove in (no pun intended).

I spent a lot of time refining and shaping each wave and cloud formation, contemplating the meaning of the upcoming ceremony as I went. I finished the piece on the eve of Tuesday, November 5. Turbulent, deep waters seemed appropriate for how I was feeling in the early morning hours of November 6 as the United States Presidential election results became clear. I struggled to put my feelings into words, but a wicked November gale and the ominous foreboding I wanted to portray in this piece were timely.

Lake Superior is considered an inland sea because of its size and similar characteristics. It’s the largest and deepest of the five Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake by area in the world—the size of Austria or South Carolina. Large, violent storms are common in autumn due to low atmospheric pressure that pulls cold air from the north and collides with warm air from the south. The storms are known as November gales or Witches of November. Hurricane-force winds and 25-35 foot waves were reported on November 10, 1975. I can’t even imagine…