Prairie
Starfish / Glacial Epoch
Performance kiln/furnace,
20 ft. (6.1 m) diameter, steel,
ceramic fiber blanket, propane, earth, borax, Qu’Appelle
River Valley, Saskatchewan,
Canada
1980.
Left: kiln,
post-firing; middle: night firing of kiln; right: fused state,
kiln removed.
Prairie
Starfish/Glacial Epoch was developed in response to
an invitation by the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, University
of Regina, Regina Saskatchewan in 1980 to produce a kiln-based
site work. The project involved geologic and research of
the central Canadian plains, that focused on the Pleistoscene
paleo-climate/paleo-geography of that area. Numerous episodes
of Ice Age glaciation with episodic advancement and retreat
of ice sheets often over a mile in thickness, characterized
this time period and terrain, the starfish imagry, referring
to this "sea" of ice and mythical inhabitants
of that impossble sea. This research
and project became a precursor to the Lahontan
Group I-III,
1985-87, with its focus on the Pleistocene climate of
the northern Great Basin of what is now Nevada, eastern California
and south-eastern
Oregon. |
This
work also echoed sculptures of the Exile
Series and related
works of the 1970's that employed out-of-scale
bio/zoogenic imagery to consider issues of geologic time,
geologic processes and the language of mythology. Sited on
glacially-deposited
loess sediment of the Qu’Appelle River Valley, outside
of Craven, Sasketechewan, the alluvium beneath the kiln was
treated with the flux: borax, green colorant
and a dusting of kaolin to react to the firing to create
a 3-4 in. deep glassified starfish image with
floating
islands of dryer material mimicing exposures of native rock
outcrops encrusted with lichen. The engagement of the fire
with the starfish-shaped kiln during the firing, had the
effect
of
a form of conjuring, the fire becoming a primal vitalization
of the form, playing with the border between myth and inorganic
life.
|
A twenty one
minute video, John Roloff, A Project for Regina, an Outdoor
Firing, was produced by the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery,
September, 1980, documenting the building, firing and aftermath
of the project.
Furnace
Projects, Constance
Lewallan;
Kiln
Projects: Material and Process Experiments in/of the Landscape, John
Roloff
