Vermont Studio Center Work

Work produced during my residency at the Vermont Studio Center in May, 2013.

Video piece: Anthesis, Stop motion animation & sculpture, 1 min 13 sec to be played on a loop, 2013

An·the·sis: The period during which a flower is fully open and functional. It may also refer to the onset of that period. Anthesis of flowers is sequential within an inflorescence, so when the style and perianth are different colours, the result is a striking colour change that gradually sweeps along the inflorescence.

Excerpt about 'Anthesis' from my article written for ARC Magazine about the residency experience:

"...The flower-like form of the object straddled organic and man-made imagery...My practice has always been heavily grounded in my environment, foreign or familiar, and being in Vermont during May meant I was surrounded by the (temperamental) spring season. This brought to mind flowers opening, as seen in the pastel coloured blooms covering the trees, but it still felt impersonal to me...There is no anticipation of budding life escaping the clutches of winter in the Caribbean, and so spring did not feel as natural to me as its connotations would suggest. The mechanical unfurling of a ‘metal flower’ made more sense to me under those conditions, as well as the desire to activate and give value to a seemingly innocuous utensil..."

Photographs by Katherine Kennedy and Caleb Cole

1/23

Excerpt about from my article written for ARC Magazine about the residency experience:

“...Alongside the experimental process I went through to create the video, I was working on other sculptural projects, taking inspiration from discarded clothes I was finding at thrift and charity shops in the area...the more shops I searched, the more I discovered many articles of clothing with tropical prints. Palms, hibiscuses, orchids – the prints were relatable and yet made unnatural in their garish conversion to clothing items; items which had been dismissed and were no longer valued by their previous owners. I began shredding the clothes and wrapping the strips around pieces of wire, creating multi-coloured stalks which referenced the tropical imagery, but distorted it enough to reinvent it... I wanted to install the stalks into the scenery around VSC, implanting them and seeing how they would ‘take root’ in that setting.”