Notes from a Moving Line
These pieces were generated from my daily walking route along a creek that runs through the land where I live. A walk in the morning is often a completely different experience than one in the evening. This landscape is always in flux. The creek’s surface changes in color all the time — bright white, sunset pink, acid green and yellow, a deep red-orange, and muddy browns that reflect the sky and surrounding landscape. There is sound and motion of breakup and runoff, and the slow settling and stilling of freeze-up, the almost incomprehensible surge of mosquitoes in mid-summer. From a distance, it’s a small, unremarkable, possibly unappealing landscape. On closer view and with attention, it is a wonderland. There’s also action and noise, even in the coldest seasons. Overflow ice surges down the creek, the backup alarm for heavy equipment at a nearby mine duets with a woodpecker, dogs’ voices split the cold, a chainsaw calls, trees crack and fall in a windstorm. I am aware of things that are ancient and modern, wild and trampled, natural beauty and profound human impact. Marquetry, a woodworking technique where images are created by precisely cutting and fitting together pieces of wood veneer, affords the opportunity to build a piece with many parts. I stretch traditional marquetry methods to incorporate printmaking, carving, and layering, experimenting with the material in a less precious, less predictable way. I invite momentum into the work, sometimes conflict. As I shape and fit disparate elements into a singular piece — a process containing its own soundtrack of sander, scrollsaw, and vacuum press — I give my attention to the beautiful friction where opposing things bump up against each other. How do I express my interest in and love of the wild aspects of my daily life without falling into the inaccurate “wilderness” tropes about Alaska? Can an artwork contain the imprints of overlapping memories? Is there anything in life that’s not a contradiction? I’m still very much in the middle of this work, still learning what this technique can do, still surprised by how these pieces can fit together in new ways.
Sara Tabbert
These pieces were generated from my daily walking route along a creek that runs through the land where I live. A walk in the morning is often a completely different experience than one in the evening. This landscape is always in flux. The creek’s surface changes in color all the time — bright white, sunset pink, acid green and yellow, a deep red-orange, and muddy browns that reflect the sky and surrounding landscape. There is sound and motion of breakup and runoff, and the slow settling and stilling of freeze-up, the almost incomprehensible surge of mosquitoes in mid-summer. From a distance, it’s a small, unremarkable, possibly unappealing landscape. On closer view and with attention, it is a wonderland. There’s also action and noise, even in the coldest seasons. Overflow ice surges down the creek, the backup alarm for heavy equipment at a nearby mine duets with a woodpecker, dogs’ voices split the cold, a chainsaw calls, trees crack and fall in a windstorm. I am aware of things that are ancient and modern, wild and trampled, natural beauty and profound human impact. Marquetry, a woodworking technique where images are created by precisely cutting and fitting together pieces of wood veneer, affords the opportunity to build a piece with many parts. I stretch traditional marquetry methods to incorporate printmaking, carving, and layering, experimenting with the material in a less precious, less predictable way. I invite momentum into the work, sometimes conflict. As I shape and fit disparate elements into a singular piece — a process containing its own soundtrack of sander, scrollsaw, and vacuum press — I give my attention to the beautiful friction where opposing things bump up against each other. How do I express my interest in and love of the wild aspects of my daily life without falling into the inaccurate “wilderness” tropes about Alaska? Can an artwork contain the imprints of overlapping memories? Is there anything in life that’s not a contradiction? I’m still very much in the middle of this work, still learning what this technique can do, still surprised by how these pieces can fit together in new ways.
Sara Tabbert
