It's Oh So Quiet
In 2013, Iceland’s Supreme Court halted a major roads project near Reykjavik because it would interfere with a rock formation long believed to serve as a chapel for Huldufolk — the “hidden folk” of legend. This year, with the blessing of a seer, the roads commission relocated the 70-ton church-rock within vicinity of other known elf dwellings. To Americans, this might seem silly, but in Iceland — where hot springs rise out of filigrees of ice, and the smell of sulfur hints at fires smoldering underground — the natural world has a substantial supernatural presence. It’s unsurprising that when Icelandic artist Pordis A. Siguroardottir welcomed six American artists to use her studio — a remote, spartan farmhouse pressed by nature on all sides — the works created for the exhibit “A Studio in Iceland” (abstract paintings, photography, sculpture, woodblock carving and printing, writing, drawing, and assemblage) came to reflect the environment, both geographical and mythic.
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