The Canaries & Elephants series reference the sayings: The-Canary-In-The-Coal-Mine and The-Elephant-In-The-Room.
The yellow Canary is a cautionary alert of ecojustice issues.
The challenge— how to remove the fossil-fueled, corporate Elephants from the Room.
Trading Places? – Canaries & Elephants 2 – Following the the use of wooden slat cages some coal miner’s used resuscitation cages for their canaries. This is a clay rendition of a resuscitation cage in reverse. Canaries were used by coal miner's until 1987. Humanity is inside represented by a woman, man & child, “made” of smoldering coal. The canary atop the oxygen tank warns us we may be the next ‘canaries’ if we don’t make revolutionary changes.
I believe in nature. I believe it can be a guide by its responses to our actions.
I am a native Californian and feel a strong kinship with her plants, animals and geology, both in wild places and where I've lived since 1971 in East Oakland. I believe in the power of art, democracy and people’s basic need to cooperate. I do not believe that Profit (a BIG ELEPHANT) over life is a guide that brings us in balance with nature.
I love working with clay as a base material from the earth, pushing its limits and revealing its innate qualities. Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. My work draws from the knowledge that everything…food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ‘clay’ of the earth and the hope that we will remember to grow, gather & consume leaving the smallest fingerprint.
The yellow Canary is a cautionary alert of ecojustice issues.
The challenge— how to remove the fossil-fueled, corporate Elephants from the Room.
Trading Places? – Canaries & Elephants 2 – Following the the use of wooden slat cages some coal miner’s used resuscitation cages for their canaries. This is a clay rendition of a resuscitation cage in reverse. Canaries were used by coal miner's until 1987. Humanity is inside represented by a woman, man & child, “made” of smoldering coal. The canary atop the oxygen tank warns us we may be the next ‘canaries’ if we don’t make revolutionary changes.
I believe in nature. I believe it can be a guide by its responses to our actions.
I am a native Californian and feel a strong kinship with her plants, animals and geology, both in wild places and where I've lived since 1971 in East Oakland. I believe in the power of art, democracy and people’s basic need to cooperate. I do not believe that Profit (a BIG ELEPHANT) over life is a guide that brings us in balance with nature.
I love working with clay as a base material from the earth, pushing its limits and revealing its innate qualities. Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. My work draws from the knowledge that everything…food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ‘clay’ of the earth and the hope that we will remember to grow, gather & consume leaving the smallest fingerprint.
© Vicki Gunter 2002-2016