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Thinking about water

All three sculptures are turned and carved from maple and colored using transparent aniline dyes and guilders pastes. The first is mounted on a walnut burl, the second and third feature pyrography and india ink embellishments.
Water has become an obsession. I strive to understand the dynamics of sustainability in an area with an 11″ average rainfall per year. ” Intelligence” was the first completed sculpture and was created in January 2019 in response to a call to artists by the Tubac Presidio which, in turn, was sponsoring the Smithsonian Water Ways traveling exhibit. It introduces the up-thrusting hand reaching for the last raindrop. The caption on the base is a quote from Piaget: “Intelligence is not what we know, but what we do when we don’t know”.
“Consesquences” is the second work . It was made in response to a call to artists from the Lowe House, in Tubac. As an artist-in-residence destination, the Lowe House featured themed exhibits related to history of Tubac. In this case the theme was “shared River/Rio Compartido”
This desert area of Southern Arizona has been home to mankind since the beginning of the Holocene, the time of man, approximately 12,000 years. In “Consequences”, a basket weave illusion of the Tohono O’odham labyrinth, commonly referred to as the “Man in the Maze”, is used to represent the time line of peoples who have left indications of their presence upon the land. A representation of the Tubac section of the Santa Cruz river is superimposed on the labyrinth. A second watercourse depicts the irrigation channel dug by Juan Bautista De Anza in the late 1760’s. The water was used to support the settlement and irrigate local crops and enclosed the Tubac settlement. The uplifting hand grasping the last raindrop represents contemporary man’s now voracious quest for water while the hand thrusting below into the ground is grasping minerals laid bare by open pit mines that now characterize this area.
“Faith” is the third in the series. It was created in response to a call to artists for the Members’ juried show at the Tubac Center for the Arts. In this piece, the petro-dollar is floating on a magic carpet. Humanity is striving to keep the artifact afloat and in turn maintain our creative and consumptive life styles where water is used in mineral and fossil fuel extraction that in turn enables our power grid, planes, trains, cars, plastics, garbage, pollution and subsidence. While we strive on, alternative currencies are emerging. The blue hand is tattooed with a flag that conceals “in what we trust”.

Goblets as canvass

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I use my turned maple goblets as a canvas to capture my emerging understanding of the Southwest desert beauty around me.

I moved to the Tucson area for a little over 4 years after leaving Quebec, Canada where I lived for 20 years. During those 20 years, maple trees were an important part of my life. My husband and I harvested maple syrup, The maple forest shaded our home in the summer and the bare bark and branches created stark contrasts against the snow of winter. We burned maple to keep our house warm and used it to construct decorative elements in our home. Now, here in Arizona I put Southwest motifs on Maple to communicate my perspectives as an Easter Canadian trying to understand the strangeness and beauty of the Southwest.

The maple I use is selected to have a very straight grain that I feel complements, rather than competes with the design work. I burn the designs into the wood using a hot knife (pyrography) and sometimes use the hot blade to burn texture as well. The vibrant colors of the India inks help me to capture the stark color contrasts found under our Southwest sun. I often use the round goblet form to create “dialog” within the piece by concealing aspects of the imagery on the other side of the goblet.

Possibility

“Possibility” emerged subconsciously. The confluence of exploring the possibilities of inside/outside turning, my own emotional transition into “singlehood” and a serene experience while swimming in a pool and seeing my own shadow image in the pool resulted in a vision of my female forms emerging, phoenix like, from the old, incomplete world supporting a new hollow world order that is yet to be defined.Possibility1