Vicki Gunter
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Picture







​When Our Ship Comes In?
​Canary & Elephant Series 8

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While walking the Berkeley Marina with my love, Peter, I saw a huge white and blue block, floating in the San Francisco Bay. It triggered memories of the faces of Alaskan glaciers and their calved icebergs.

When he told me it was a car carrier ship, I 'saw' this sculpture; an arctic iceberg slammed up to the side of a car carrying ship.  These weird looking ships carry 13 stories of 5,500 climate-changing vehicles into the bay area, weekly.

This is a kinetic sculpture, using simple technology— melting ice-cubes & gravity. As the ‘iceberg’ slowly melts it floods the Americana scene of little red school house, corn field, white picket fence & American Gothics with apple pie & pitch fork. As the waters rise little messages in a bottle float. The yellow, cautionary, canary sits atop the American flag. 

Floods, fires and starvation have destroyed & ended many lives. This is happening now, time is running out, no more waiting for $-Our-Ship-to-Come-in-$. Our beautiful earth is the only ship that matters.

Melting Glaciers = Canary-in-the-Coal-Mine for Earth. 
Fossil Fuels + Corporate Profit = Elephant-in-the-Room.

As a native of California, the clay state, I love turning clay to stone. My intention is to share work that stirs the visceral will to face our many challenges, with hope & joy, in the beauty that is in us and all other life. Beauty, that is under our feet and setting sail at our backs.


I feel an urgency to create art in this revolutionary time and value clay’s infinite potential − mirroring our own.

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