Clare Attwell lives in Victoria British Columbia and shares with us the process behind her piece Surging Tides of Consequences that is on display in the Shifting Tides Regional Exhibit. Shifting Tides is showing at the Pratt Museum in Kachemak Bay Alaska from October 9 to November 28, 2020.
To view the Shifting Tides catalogue online click here.
Here is Clare's artist statement:
Milton Freidman famously used the manufacture of a classic yellow pencil as an illustration for free market economics. Yet Friedman's pencil metaphor meant many important but difficult to measure variables were not considered. The social and environmental consequences of this approach are now everywhere, from climate chaos to mass human migration and species extinctions. As though we are facing The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Hokusai's iconic wood cut print, there is a growing sense that life on earth is on an ominous precipice, driven by a system incapable of valuing what really matters.
The result of playing with a wheat paste texturing process – initially I was just interested in creating texture, water – and then added some salmon drawing studies.
Creating & assembling the parts.
- I
got a box of yellow pencils, broke them into pieces and then photographed them,
before printing those photos onto cloth.
I then overpainted those photo images.
A design mock-up
with several overlays stuck onto transparency sheets
Designing my over-quilting pattern: the inspiration came from The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (1829-33).
Surging Tides of Consequences Detail - Clare Attwell
