À propos

In this work, I am exploring and expanding on the idea of works of art being reliquaries that preserve connection between humans and the environment, as well as the past and the present.

“Scorched Earth” is a military term describing a war strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful when retreating from a position. This is a body of work that explores the ravages of progress and the advancement of time on the natural world.

Over a year, I harvested the dead trees from local bluffs and fields around my rural home and transformed them into shrines. The trees, scorched, polished with bees’ wax, and embedded with objects, stand as symbols of loss and devotion. The process of searing, sanding and burnishing the wood harnessed my mourning and transformed the trees into mementos of what I see is being lost in the environment surrounding me. The objects “preserved” in the wood in various stages of death, decay and fading act as ceremonial reminders.

The glass work is also an act of preservation. Using a plaster/silica mixture, I made molds of the surface bark of each tree compartment. I then created the convex glass windows by slumping glass over the molds in a kiln, ensuring that each window is a direct impression of the wood that I bored away. The organic impressions of flora were created by delicately pressing flowers and leaves into wet clay, making a plaster/silica mold of the impression, and casting glass into the open-faced molds. For the glass vessels, I used the pate de verre (glass paste) technique, which is one of the oldest known forms of glass dating back to the early 2nd millennium in Ancient Mesopotamia. I mixed fine glass granules (frit) with water and Gum Arabic to create a paste, which I packed in subsequent layers into plaster/silica molds. I then fired the molds in a glass kiln.

These objects, exhibited together, create a journey of remembrance of a fading landscape.

Profils liés

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Catégories de métiers d’art

• Verre
• Techniques mixtes
• Sculpture
• Bois

Ce que disent les gens