E C O S Y S T E M S
This group exhibition combines the work of 13 contemporary visual artists who live and work in Alberta. Together we explore ideas of natural landscape and urban environment.
Cities first grow upon a foundation of natural landscape. Over time they evolve and eventually deteriorate, becoming in their turn foundations for newly evolving natural landscapes. More time passes, another city is built over that landscape, and another landscape eventually grows over that city. One day our present cities will be just another layer in this cycle of environments built and grown - consciously constructed and naturally evolved - a cycle that moves backward and forward through time.
My artistic practice involves stitching layers of canvas and other materials, in effect building cities with my sewing machine. My hope in working collaboratively with landscape-oriented artists was to elicit a variety of visceral responses to my stitched canvases, while creating a body of works which might give a sense of the fluidity of time: who can say whether the city emerges from or recedes into the landscape? They are inextricably part of one another.
Verna Vogel, 2011