I’ve been working on the piece “Field Gaze” for the upcoming exhibition “Disturbances in the Field” (click on title for link to exhibition website) coming up in a couple of weeks.  It’s nearly done, just putting together the final components.

I have been really savouring how it’s coming together.  I love the juxtaposition of the sculpture with decayed rustic and natural elements —  there is contrast to, and also a connection of, the form to the rural structures. Beginning on the ground with analogous features – the hacked firewood – and building up from there into something entirely odd to find out in its environs.  Described by curator Caitlin Chaisson as an intriguing scarecrow/bird feeder — so bright in colours that it can be both a curious attraction and a guardian warning. I also think of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and an echo of historical constructivsm — an update on some modernist tendencies, with rural sensibilities, and an exploration of the complicated relationship of humans and nature, as Caitlin points out.
The lumber I used in this work is salvaged from scrap piles around the Bulkley Valley: construction sites, school shop class, carpenter discards, and my own farm property pile.
The top photo is of the main structure on the firewood rounds, with the ‘head’ resting on the ground underneath.
The photo below is a studio shot of making the head.
I will be working next on suspending the head inside the structure and getting the suet/seed substance inside that.