July 7 – July 21, 2022
Rice Polak Gallery
Provincetown, MA
Above: Arctic Fix VII, 2022, photograph, vellum, thread, 11 x 14 inches (framed)
‘Arctic Fix’, my exhibition at Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown, MA, was created in my basement studio in my home as I am between studios. It’s a truism that you make work to fit your space. In my practice I welcome this kind of limitation as it can give me a fresh perspective. Had I been in my old studio, I would never have created this body of work.
This body of multimedia work focuses on the frustration and inability to impact change each of us feels as individuals in the face of global warming. Images of receding ice sheets in the Arctic and wildfires in the media left me feeling helpless but also struck by the uplifting beauty of those icy, white landscapes. Snapping images from my television screen, I printed them noticed the beautiful radial lines you get when you take a photo from a screen – they looked like stitching to me. I like to think I had my mother and grandmother (both prolific sewers) on each shoulder as I headed down to the basement and started stitching them together with my in a fit of frustration to hold those ice sheets together. They lead to this body of work that recognizes that while she couldn’t fix the problem of climate change alone, I could harness the beauty to make work that sparks concern and conversation.
‘Arctic Flow’ is an installation on the opposite wall that included 6 drawings of melting ice sheets overlaid with a video projection of a slowly moving ice flow. At the base there is a phrase that appears as the ice moves over the words: “I imagined you would come…and here you are.”
The projector is on the floor so as viewers approach the work, shadows of their legs are cast onto the piece – their actual footprint – making them part of the work, the problem and the solution.
