Artist Statement

The Inherent Legacy

My current work is an ongoing investigation of wool, a renewable resource juxtaposed with the permanence of man-made materials.By combining elements such as felted wool, porcelain and discarded objects, I create assemblages to explore the role of cultural debris as an inherent part of the environment, presenting an alternate reality of what has been observed in my day to day life. Fascinated with the delicacy and strength of wool, my process includes both wet felting and needle felting as a means of tangling and meshing together individual fibres into a cohesive material. Multiple variations of hybridized sculptures explore the innovations of biological adaptation and response. Nature is the platform; a stepping stone to present the exploration of the cycle from inception to decomposition and the complexities of that journey.

Within this framework, I also consider the role of an object and the attachments of history, tradition and obligations of inheritance. I deconstruct and repurpose commonplace items incorporating the sustainable, nurturing properties of felt as a metaphor of nature’s resilience. My work is a narrative of transformation and change, responding to our shifting bonds of emotional and sentimental attachment to an object through time; in particular, when affection and burden intersect. The assemblages I create are meant to evoke memories and experiences in the viewer, challenging them to consider their own role in the changing ecological landscape.

Kimberly Tucker

 

 

A selection of assemblage work, each of which are an individual response to my environment, social climate, and history. In much of this work there is a narrative or story being told through the assemblage of disparate objects.  Working with found items relays the potential for any singular thing to be in itself a piece of art or an element of an art piece and the power of interpretation lies in the viewer.

 

Artist Statement

Immersed in material explorations of cork, I manipulate and explore its inherent properties. During the process of cutting, slicing, sanding, breaking down the material I’ve realized cork has an obstinate ability to grip, withstand compression, and to respond to destruction with resilience much like the cork tree itself which over its 200 year life has its bark stripped and harvested every 9 years and each time, it responds to the damage and regenerates with a remarkable capacity.
Because of these observations and working with cork as a material, I began to realize parallels between my work and the greater world where consumerism/capitalism/humanity has a prevailing resolve to harvest resources from earth.
In my explorations of cork and the integration of wool & metal, I am considering the relationship between injury, resilience and regeneration. I am inspired by our environment and its regenerative qualities which informs my process as I examine the idea of regeneration as often seen in organic living things such as the protective barrier of a chrysalis or growth of ubiquitous spines.

 

Artist Statement

I am examining our connection to the land through a series of work using collage of black and white aerial and familial photographs.
The aerial photograph is a commonplace article with a given function. It reveals the marks we make building shelter, planting and fracturing the surface with roadways, a record of a given moment in time. My collages transform the content of the photos, telling the story of people and land, an interconnection both lifelong and temporary.
I am interested in our relationship with the land and explore this idea by integrating pieces of photographs of people, roadways, fields and buildings into a collage, often combining aerial and elevation perspective together into one image. Land and people are unified through the absence of colour to express our close bond. I explore visual impact by shifting back and forth between large contrasts in scale and value of the imagery. I fracture faces, bodies and reform them around the roadways and landscape. My family history inspires me. By reassembling the subject of the photos, I create a narrative of my heritage as it relates to the lives of my ancestors and their assimilation of land. I explore the subtle integration of imagery by matching clothing texture to land where it is difficult to distinguish the difference between land and human. Parts of bodies are revealed while others remain concealed; I am exploring where people and land intersect.

Kimberly Tucker