Jeanette Stevenson “Quadrant tilt: cold summer” |
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 "When the World was young" |
Scattered about on the shoulder of the road are sun bloated occasionally flattened beer cans, stained paper coffee cups, tiny liquor bottles, crumpled burger bags etc- the usual detritus where the forest meets this road. One collects litter here only to find another casual spew the following day. As I walk home along one such road I turn the scene into an exercise upon which to make art from. The alien shriek of metal on redwood mulch and a queer twist of plastic floating along a rivulet become ideas beyond slovenly commuters…Noting the arrangement of a plastic diaper beside a spray of broken glass in juxtaposition to a sodden, cardboard box and torn metallic candy wrapper, I work on composition. The strewn trash is a strange contrast to the red-brown pine needles and dark soil: as I stride along it’s as though I’m in a streaming figure/ground video. I had wept along with an environmental icon of the day - http://tinyurl.com/bya3e2a – but was not yet numb from the barrage of atrocities such as gaping ozone wounds, mercury in the seas, near complete forest decimation and... My work takes me beyond bitterness and grief as I seek to interpret the tragic beauty in the fallout of a ravaged natural world on this cold cold day in the middle of summer. |
