Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild

BLACKFOOT PATHWAYS: SCULPTURE IN THE WILD

A Place is a place is a place (2019)

A Place is place is a place… is a site-specific sculpture created specifically for Blackfoot Pathway Sculpture in the Wild, September 2019. This multilayered artworks objective is to create a depth of vision, generating a characteristic structural “carving” reminiscent in many of my artworks. In this way, the sculptures always possess a form for estrangement that allow the artwork to contain a proximity, similarity and continuation as found within the evolvement of the natural world. This characteristic method for “deconstruction” contributes to the breakdown and ultimate alienation of the given form. In this instance a form, proportionate to an original local Montanan homestead.

The artworks multi-layered form by way of structural “carvings” evolved from a locally found object, a two-man antique crosscut saw. This relic/reference found at the ghost town, Garnet near Missoula, could be seen to symbolize humanity’s impact upon an environment - to ravage or to cultivate?

Stuart’s production as a whole is characterised by the interest for the physical character of the natural-objects, their specific place within their specific environment and their relationship to culture, myths and history. It is with this perspective in mind that he creates his work. Constantly wandering, Stuart searches for laces where the impact of the forces of nature can be most strongly felt. He has travelled from one extreme geographical end ecological-to the other: from Central America’s green and luxuriant vegetation and sunburnt planes, to Scandinavia’s ice- and snow- covered mountain landscapes. In all of those places that he has been he has quite deliberately used those local materials available: spruce bark from Black Forest, bracken from “Forest of Dean”, ice from Finland, papyrus and pelican feathers from Peru, goose feathers from Canada, willow from Denmark, Giant Hogweed from the north of Norway and cork and feathers from Portugal. Frost works also directly in the landscape where he lets the work spring out of the material and environment, later letting nature take its natural course.