...Moby Dick Save the Whales!...

charcoal with felled tree, harpoon branches,  112th St Bridge, Hudson River, Van Schaick Island, Earth/Cosmos

drawing area 4' x 6'

Herman Melville Home and Park

Troy NY

"The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard to catch actual albino whale Mocha Dick, and the ending is based on the sinking of the whaler Essex by a whale. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides."
"Yet Melville does not offer easy solutions. Ishmael and Queequeg's sensual friendship initiates a kind of racial harmony that is shattered when the crew's dancing erupts into racial conflict in "Midnight, Forecastle" (Ch. 40).^[13] Fifty chapters later, Pip suffers mental disintegration after he is reminded that as a slave he would be worth less money than a whale. Commodified and brutalized, "Pip becomes the ship's conscience. His views of property are another example of wrestling with moral choice. In Chapter 89, Ishmael expounds the concept of the fast-fish and the loose-fish, which gives right of ownership to those who take possession of an abandoned fish or ship, and observes that the British Empire took possession of American Indian lands in colonial times in just the way that whalers take possession of an unclaimed whale" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick



Shortly after the English conquered New Netherland, Van Schaick Island was purchased in 1665 by Goosen Gerritse Van Schaick and Philip Piertse Schuyler under the authority of New York Governor Richard Nicolls from the Mohicans Itamonet, Ahemhameth, and Kishocama. Van Schaick was but one island in the larger Halve Maan patent which included the other islands of the Mohawk delta and a strip of land along the northern shore of the Mohawk River (present-day Waterford). The island was referred to by the Native Americans as Quehemesicos in the Mohican languagewhile the Dutch called it Long Island.

Van Schaick Island was an important piece of the Continental Trail, the route from New York City through Albany north to Montreal, with the river road traversing the many islands at the mouth of the Mohawk River: Green Island, Van Schaick, Peebles, and then going on to Halfmoon Point (today the village of Waterford). Starting on August 8, 1777 the Continental Army with over 5,000 soldiers was camped on Van Schaick and Peebles islands, first under General Philip Schuyler and then General Horatio Gates. Governor George Clinton made the mansion the temporary state capitol from August 22–27. In September the army moved north to Bemis Heights and Stillwater where the Battle of Saratoga would be fought. - Wikipedia

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