on tying the knot

Wendy Stefansson. Back Story. Salt, string, vintage wedding dress. 2007.

Back Story is one of a series of works in which I have used salt as a medium. My process involved days of boiling up salt solutions in huge black canning pots, and letting it crystallize onto short strings. The strings were then tied together into long strands, and sewn to the waist of a wedding dress like a train. The quiet, repetitive action of tying the knots that linked these fragments together into a larger whole was at once meditative and metaphorical, speaking of the nature of marriage – not just “tying the knot” once, but continuing to tie it on a daily basis, over and over, remaking that connection against all the odds. That connection that is at once as fragile and ephemeral as salt and string; and yet strong enough to join two lives.

Wendy Stefansson. Back Story (detail).

To see my earlier salt works, see my post entitled "return" -- http://inno-particular-order.blogspot.ca/2014/01/return.html.

For more thoughts on the nature of marriage, see this post.

singed

You approach a volcanic pile of wood assembled for the night’s fire works. A work of fire.

The pyre is lit. The blaze begins; ravenously licking, crackling, snapping. 

As the initial energy is spent, you notice it: a lightless figure in the midst of the light. A black hole within the sun. Its pull is magnetic; gravitational. The shadow of a man, the darkness that fuels the fire. Charred, but not yet consumed. A human sacrifice, slowly smouldering.

For weeks, neither you nor the others who were there can think of anything else. Singed, none of you can make anything that does not contain fire. This fire.

In May 2007, visual artist Peter von Tiesenhausen hosted the artists and
mentors of Prairie North Creative Residency at his home in
Demmit, Alberta. After dinner and a tour of his land, on which
much of his most important work was completed and remains,
he lit a bonfire. Out of the fire emerged a figure, in the
tradition of his Watchers series. A self-portrait, burning
as if in effigy. Or perhaps rising from the flames like a phoenix.
Photos by Wendy Stefansson.

To see more of Peter von Tiesenhausen's work, go to http://www.tiesenhausen.net. Or click on any of the following links to posts on this blog: burning man; a book of days; or approaches.

without quotation marks

Carrie Klukas' beautiful Untitled Diptych
from the Prairie North Creative Residency, 2007. Acrylic on masonite.

I was talking with artist and friend Carrie Klukas yesterday, about our sense that a subtle shift is happening in the art world around us, within us. I’m writing poetry again, after about a 20 year hiatus. She’s submerging sonnets between layers of paint in her latest works, allowing bits of text to surface where they will. It seems like it’s okay to talk about love again without quotation marks. Without irony. Without cynicism.

Is it okay, then, to talk about beauty too? Is it okay to make artwork that reaches out to people on a human level, that seeks to make a connection with another human being? That tells a story? That evokes an emotional response, not just a cerebral one? That is visceral?

Art that doesn’t require an instruction manual because it speaks the language of the human heart?


See more of Carrie's art at http://www.carrieklukas.com.