Pots and pans, utensils, glasses, plates, bowls, and cutlery were all cast from paper pulp to inhabit the kitchen installation in my storefront studio.
3 frying pans
kitchen detail cake pan
dutch oven, coffee pot, utensils on stove top
serving bowl
place setting
detail of plate and bowl
cast paper place settings
detail of cutlery and plate edge
cutlery casting in progress
pie pan
cast paper plates, bowls, glasses,cutlery
detail of glass
loaf pan
detail of cutlery
Canadian Art featured an article by Maeve Hanna. Here is an excerpt
Pulp Frictions: 5 Artists’ Takes on the Forestry Industry
APRIL 18, 2016
All highways into Prince George, the “capital of the north” of British Columbia, lead travellers past some form of the forestry industry. From the east, the Canfor pulp mill sits at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, emitting chemical plumes. From the south sprawls a wasteland of trucking companies, such as Peterbilt and Lomak. At the inland port, freight-train cars full of pulp chips and two-by-fours wait to be shipped, in time moving across the river and along the cutbanks.
These aspects of the forestry industry appear, to many, to be seamless in the landscape, integrating themselves into the city’s consciousness. And they mark a dichotomous identity of success and struggle. The forestry industry has been a driving force behind BC’s economic growth for many decades, but in recent years it’s experienced significant bust cycles as the mountain pine beetle epidemic swept across the northern and central regions of BC, wiping out great stands of trees (some say up to 70 per cent) and leaving what many came to see as devastation.
It is not surprising that artists of northern BC and nearby Alberta, then, would be drawn to focusing on aspects of the forestry industry, whether materially or thematically. Here are five area creators who explore aspects of this complex—and often contradictory—force, with resonances relevant across a nation that (knowledge-economy fanfare notwithstanding) remains largely dependent on natural resources.
Susan Barton-Tait: Casting the Everyday
Susan Barton-Tait, originally from Ontario, has worked with handmade paper during most of her artistic practice.
After relocating to Prince George 12 years ago, Barton-Tait began using pulp board, a byproduct of logging pine-beetle-kill trees. Many such trees were put through a chipper and then processed into pulp board.
As a result, pulp board is available in plentiful supply here, for if there are any flaws in the product, it cannot be shipped out. Thus it became a natural choice of material for Barton-Tait, and she began building a body of work around it.
Much of Barton-Tait’s work focuses on casting prosaic objects, which she displays in her studio window in downtown Prince George. Simple, straightforward, using a palette of only white, Barton-Tait’s cast walls, fruit, vegetables, tables and chairs are compelling.
Barton-Tait has cast firewood and large-scale rocks that hang weightlessly from the ceiling. The work is ghostly, standing guard in the window for passersby to witness. Her pieces, made from the byproduct of trees long dead and stemming from an industry that is in a constant state of flux, acknowledge and honour the death of trees, as well as the industry that provided the material from which her work was born.
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This is so cool Susan! I love all the detail images.
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Oh good, I wondered if I should just have the finished pieces but decided it might be good to show some process, since I am all about the process.
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You sure are! That’s part of why I think your art is so good!
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