NCECA Seattle

NCECA Installation in Seattle  

The human figure with the head of an animal is representative of the relationship between humans and the natural environment and its creatures.  This connection is fortified through the figural likeness to male and female human forms. The human likeness is a definitive reminder that we (humans) are no more than a species inhabiting the same planet as these creatures. 

The figurines are representative of native species which are part of the regional ecosystem; they stand juxtaposed to a human made object: concrete, glass, steel, vehicles, and humans; Seattle.   This can be viewed as a symbolic gesture suggesting the potential for an answer to the encroachment and plundering of humans upon the natural environment through technology and knowledge.  This juxtaposition is also a symbolic of an irony; that these objects are the very man-made objects and inventions which lead to the creature’s peril.

This relationship between the ceramic material from which the effigies are constructed and their ethereal counterpart, the environment, becomes apparent through their degradation by the erosive weathering processes of nature.  In this way the raw clay bodies show the fragility and vulnerability of species under the pressure of mankind.  In this way the effigies stand in gesture of submission to the surrounding metropolis. They are diminutive to further represent their present status in the current order of the industrial complex.

  This body of work focuses on the relationship between human impact on the landscape and the preceding environmental consequences beginning with the destruction and disappearance of the habitats of native animals.  This installation considers the present course of human evolution and its detrimental impacts upon the land and natural environments.

                                                                                                              Written by Karl Schwiesow
Creative Team

 Karl Schwiesow,  Amanda Dabel,  Bianca Del Cioppo,  Molly Allen,  Heath Pierson,  Marvin Blake,  Shannon O'leary,  Flor Widmar  and  Evan Cook

Faculty members: Rick Parsons and Sheri Leigh O’Connor

 

Waiting to leave Tahoe and start our long journey. 

The first site we stopped to find clay, no luck here. 

At the bottom of a hill we found some useable clay, at site two.  

                                               

Clay, sand, and lots of other stuff. 

Better clay just up the hill and through the blackberry forest.  

Mt St Hellens clay.

Heath and his 200lb bag of clay.  

We picked the bigger people in the club to load the trailer. 

Finally we arrive at the installation site. Pier 62/63 Seattle WA 

Organizing our materials before we start building.  

Molly and Flor putting one of the sculptures together.  

Heath and Marvin working on a kneeling sculpture.

Found trash and wood with a little chicken wire to hold the clay. 

Evan securing a sculpture to it's frame.  

The whole club working hard from sun up until sundown.

Large half human half elk sculpture.  

Elk

Lynx 

Albatross 

Gray wolf

Grizzly Bear 

After a few days in the rain the clay started to crack and melt off. 

Turtle 

The trash core exposed. 

Time to clean up

Shannon and Karl at the dump. The trash that we picked up along the way needed to be disposed of properly.   

Driving home