Arctic Spring | 2009-2013
In the liquid of the Arctic Spring preservation is at risk. While spring suggests new life (and hope), in this locale it is also menacing. Long-buried creatures float to the surface, sleds morph into boats and barges. The Arctic Joker (2012) exposes his toes.
The Arctic Spring series continues investigations into two and three dimensions with felt and with paper along with cutout shapes of grey and white archival corrugated cardboard. I entomb things such as hazelnuts and cuttlebones in thin strips of paper in combination with wooden ice cream spoons, toothpicks, fish bowls, and books, recalling my work with such materials in earlier drawings, sculpture and installation work.
I think of the white paper-coated hazelnuts as miniature (preserved) snowballs. In fact, they are seeds. Each one requires a great deal of my attention. When grouped, they form patches of tundra, a fort, or a snowball that 'packs heat'—both playful and dangerous. The hazelnuts and strips of white translucent Japanese mending papers can also evoke white felt yurts on a snowy field. In all instances, there are a great many layers of paper. The more layers, the whiter the snow. The more snow, the longer the resulting forms will be preserved. Because I think of these images as the last of their kind, they are of necessity contained—or will be—within glass boxes. Cabinets of curiosities.
The objects and materials used and the images, letters, words, and phrases that emerge are actors in an ever-evolving narrative. As a play uses actors in different roles, my 'actors' play different parts without losing their own inherent meaning or individual identity.
Images of a selection of these works comprise Arctic Spring, 2013, an artist book. Individual works have been included in group shows at Lesley Heller Gallery, New York, in 2012, and at Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, in 2011. A grouping of works from this series was included in the failed utopian & Other Stories, a solo exhibition at FiveMyles, Brooklyn, in 2018.