NCECA 2012

NCECA INSTALLATION IN SEATTLE  

The human figure with the head of an animal is representative of the relationship between humans and the natural environment and its creatures.  This connection is fortified through the figural likeness to male and female human forms. The human likeness is a definitive reminder that we (humans) are no more than a species inhabiting the same planet as these creatures. 

The figurines are representative of native species which are part of the regional ecosystem; they stand juxtaposed to a human made object: concrete, glass, steel, vehicles, and humans; Seattle.   This can be viewed as a symbolic gesture suggesting the potential for an answer to the encroachment and plundering of humans upon the natural environment through technology and knowledge.  This juxtaposition is also a symbolic of an irony; that these objects are the very man-made objects and inventions which lead to the creature’s peril.

This relationship between the ceramic material from which the effigies are constructed and their ethereal counterpart, the environment, becomes apparent through their degradation by the erosive weathering processes of nature.  In this way the raw clay bodies show the fragility and vulnerability of species under the pressure of mankind.  In this way the effigies stand in gesture of submission to the surrounding metropolis. They are diminutive to further represent their present status in the current order of the industrial complex.

  This body of work focuses on the relationship between human impact on the landscape and the preceding environmental consequences beginning with the destruction and disappearance of the habitats of native animals.  This installation considers the present course of human evolution and its detrimental impacts upon the land and natural environments.

                                                                                                          Written by Karl Schwiesow
Creative Team 

 Karl Schwiesow,  Amanda Dabel,  Bianca Del Cioppo,  Molly Allen,  Heath Pierson,  Marvin Blake,  Shannon O'leary,  Flor Widmar  and  Evan Cook