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Approaching Biocenology: Meditations
on the Wild and the Sacred
A Statement
We have some technologies for aiding
our quest toward consciousness, toward life-death-life cycle affirmation.
These are the technologies of symbol making, experiencing community
as spirit, infusing wildness with cultivation, blending the natural
and the cultural with conscience.
These technologies make each of us everyday artists.
I like to explore different landscape
representations to express my personal experiences and cultural
interactions with geography. I am interested in the conflicts which
arise from our expectations about land use, expectations shaped
by idealized art and design images and our vernacular urban setting.
By employing the approach of pattern and decoration, I would like
to create a different language referring to many traditions including
maps, Roman and Byzantine mosaics, Japanese decorative art, textile
design, indigenous Australian paintings and shrine technologies
of many cultures. I like to use the term biocenology in this interface
of cultural and natural systems because it is the study of communities
and member interactions in nature; it is an exploration of systems,
part of the science of ecology.
Much of my work over the past twenty
years expresses the theme Land Use: An Alchemical Treatise
to explore the connections between our belief systems about society
and how we treat the planet, each other. In the current series,
The Hazel Tree Mother, I wanted to expand the notion of syndicalism
developed by the labor movement to include the planet's environmental
systems, exploring symbiosis, especially in the care of offspring
and loved ones during fearful times.
Currently I work with acrylic, encaustic,
mixed media and printmaking approaches. Some paintings feature topographic
maps which I photocopy onto handmade paper. Others incorporate images
or formal structures. Upon this layer, I lay acrylic or encaustic
washes; sometimes more than one to build luminosity and relate to
the landscape. Then I add stamped images of animals such as fish,
birds and eggs and seeds, using brilliantly colored and iridescent
pigments derived from mica. With these techniques, I am trying to
express the complexity of overlapping multiplicity and the tendency
of natural processes to pursue cycles of life.
In its relentless desire for control, the Western landscape tradition
distances the viewer from the outdoors and people. Visual traditions
and themes create a kind of language that exerts a powerful effect
on social consciousness. Artists choose particular traditions and
themes to explore and alter these ranges of expression. I want to
create new narratives that reaffirm our ties to where we live, the
planet, nature and its cycles.
Alice Dubiel January 2009
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