Fall to Centre (2024)
FALL TO CENTRE
September 14 – December 14, 2024
Aird Gallery
Visit Gallery Website | Online catalogue coming soon
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Of settler descent from Treaty 7 area in Southern Alberta, now living in the Whitchurch-Highlands, D’Andrea Bowie is at home working outdoors…. Through proximity to her surroundings of field and forest influenced her work. Bowie explores the origins of extracted materials by delving into the notion of hot particles mixing with light and energy (in kilns or glass furnaces) that often replicate the seismic rumblings of terraforming processes. She aims to uncover hidden truths and understand the graceful flow of substances, likening her process-driven practice to water running through rock. According to Bowie, art affects intuitive secrets between the material world, the creator, and the viewer. The artist is interested in the effects of heat application and the implications of changeability on surfaces. Her work also reflects her fascination with the metaphysical and physical concept of aggregates. For example, she explores the properties of glass, blown or cast created by heating silica (quartz/sand), lime, and sodium in various temperatures and then introduced to copper, a compatible element. During a studio visit, one may observe the artist working on multiples in anticipation of loss and as a way of growing her knowledge. Working between glass, rocks, and ceramics she evokes deep time perception, effectively decentering human involvement, aligning with Object Oriented Ontology theory. Bowie draws inspiration from art movements such as Arte Povera, whose artists challenged traditional gallery values by using unconventional processes and the remnants of ‘world-building’ materials. She could be described as a type of contemporary alchemist, someone interested in the transformation of matter in an attempt to find a universal mixture. We argue the artist’s work is not so much about process… It is a process… that is where the magic is.
~ Carla Garnet, Director, Curator, Aird Gallery
ARTIST STATEMENT
How to write and talk about work when it is in a constant state of evolving seems like a Sisyphean task, an upward grind of an immense stone. Give me a few winters of walking and perhaps I may burnish my thoughts eloquently and speak to intentions with careful words, but time doesn’t work that way and so here we are in an adjustable time lag. I enter the studio daily always working, playing, learning- a retreat to the solace that being with the elemental brings. A need to be in their presence, awestruck and humbled, making, touching, feeling what our collaboration may bring- what might we achieve together? Just as I retreat to the forest, I feel safe and loved in this process, something that was missing throughout my childhood. Watching children be bombed and starved in real time this past year has shaken my faith and triggered deep hurts. Wanting to speak up and protect those being harmed but feeling frozen and helpless- I turn to my art, my family, and my more than human community in surrounding fields and forest. The business of making, hands and mind occupied; washing buckets, floors, a fall to center, turtling within to a place where I am capable and known.
This past spring through the generous gift of a Chalmers Professional Development grant I had the opportunity to travel to the PNW and work with molten hot glass at the Pilchuck School of Glass. I learned to gather hot glass on a steel rod, constant turning and
responding to the material is needed so it doesn’t fall apart, the voice of my generous and caring instructor, Jennifer Bueno reminding me to ‘fall to center’ has become a needed mantra.
In this exhibition, I invite you to a sacred space that may resemble a studio, a forest, a laboratory- a sliver of an inner world, a passage to an elemental word, a safe place created to deal with grief, pain, and hope. A fall to center, a prayer I make with my hands.
During the fall season as the leaves change, I will be activating the gallery as a container periodically, noticing the shift and changes that may come with proximity.
Deep gratitude to Carla Garnet and Aird Gallery for this opportunity.
The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.