These panels are the result of a collaboration between two artists who layered images and information on circular substrates to represent movement between temporal and spatial experiences. Emotive experiences are combined with daily observations in the “field” where we worked with GPS devices to track movement and record features of the landscape. The geographic locations are Casco Bay and South Greenland. There is a play between internal neurological systems and external information systems and between the ephemeral and physical touch.
Paula Gerstenblatt and Jan Piribeck, Locating Collecting Firing (middle panel), mixed media on wood panel, 36 x 36 x 2 in., 2022.
The piece constructs a complex narrative about the principles of interdependence and impermanence as related to socio-environmental concerns, which by their nature, can be unbalanced and destabilizing. The theme of balance is addressed by efforts on the part of the collaborators to strike a balance between the past, the present, and the future—between intellectual pursuits (head in the sky) and somatic responses to the landscape (feet on the ground) and between autonomy and connection.
Jan Piribeck, Locating Collecting Firing (right panel), mixed media on wood panel, 36 x 36 x 2 in., 2022.
Meaning-making is individual and informed by social, cultural, and familial influence. To preserve individual perspectives, each artist created a panel, then both artists created the middle panel to represent aesthetic convergence.
Paula Gerstenblatt and Jan Piribeck, Locating Collecting Firing, mixed media on wood panels, 36 x 144 x 2 in. , 2022.
Image at top: Paula Gerstenblatt, Locating Collecting Firing (left panel), mixed media on wood panel, 36 x 36 x 2 in., 2022.