In 2005, I drove from Vancouver to Castlegar in BC’s interior for an art show. It seems a lifetime away now: before Covid, before Donald Trump was more than a joke, before my kidney failure was diagnosed. But the trip is still vivid in my gut. Driving through mile after mile after mile of dead forest, rusted pines turning the mountainsides red. Mile after mile after mile. It was the height of the mountain pine beetle outbreak that devastated forests in BC and Alberta. A natural, cyclical occurrence turned catastrophic by climate change.
Years later the image was still with me, just under the surface as climate change revved its engines around us. My art had centred on disability for decades, but then it just changed, and those red mountains were all I could see. My mixed media wood construction became more complex, with groups instead of individuals, joined in despair, hope, anger, resistance. Beetle killed pine joined the other woods I carved.
I saw my own internal climate denial: turning off the workshop radio (too scary) when climate news came on, even as I made these figures. I saw the privilege that lets me turn the radio off, even as my home province, and the world, are ravaged. All this is part of Speak No (emergency), along with the dead trees and animals, wild fires and smoke sunsets, heat and cold and flood waters. I don’t think this work is going to teach anyone anything new about the climate disaster, or change minds or conditions. It’s just art, another small tool in the box. Maybe you can see yourself, your community, in the groups of raging, bleak, denying, defiant figures. Maybe that helps for a day, a minute, a second. That would be good.
This was Persimmon Blackbridge‘s exhibition in GatherTown during the Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Justice conference held from January 20 – 22, 2022
See the exhibition in GatherTown (password: ps2022):
- Go to Gallery, Tangled & Crip Ritual, room Cedar South
All the pieces in the Speak No (emergency) series are based on a similar format. Doll-sized human figures made of a wide variety of materials appear to float in front of a painted gray wood plank. The plank is about 1 ½ feet (45 cm) across and 7 feet (215 cm) high. The figures are attached to the plank with hidden rods, which makes them appear to float just in front of it. Some figures are positioned with their legs straight down, as if floating in a standing position. Others have bent legs as if floating on invisible chairs.
The figures range in size from around 6 inches (15 cm) tall to 2 feet (60 cm) tall and are arranged from the largest, near the bottom of the plank, to the smallest, near the top of the plank. The figures are not realistic, and take their shapes from the interplay of carved wood and found objects. The figures appear to be naked as many have details of vulva, vaginal openings, or penises. There are several unseen lights shining at all different angles on the figures, giving each several shadows at different angles and light qualities. The shadows create a visual “studder” or shudder alluding to the figures’ movements in a static work of art.
Beetlekill
The second figure and third figures are both rough wood, yellow streaked with grey, with a number of holes, both plugged and unplugged. They’re both in standing postures. One has legs made from unformed sticks, riddled with tiny beetle holes. The other’s chest is a similar stick, and it has pink doll feet. One figure has both arms raised and the other has long white wire arms by its sides.
The highest figure is smooth grey wood with around 10 small unplugged holes. Its arms are long and thin, raised over its head. It’s cut in half at the waist, and reattached with a short brass rod. It has rudimentary carved hands and no feet.
The first figure at the left is carved wood, sanded smooth, with thin arms reaching up, strongly curved breasts and hips, with a small slot like a vulva between the legs, and no head. It’s sawn in half at the waist and reattached.
The middle figure is rough wood with a shaped metal plate screwed into its face and neck, and wire hair like a crew cut. Its arms are lifted up, one made of wood with a metal rod for a hand, and the other a doll’s arm. Its lower legs are steel rods and it has a small nail placed like a penis.
The third figure is also rough wood. It has no arms and the top of its head is cut off and reattached. It has doll’s feet and ankles. One of the holes has a wood plug in it, and there’s a thin dark streak from the shoulder to the vulva.
The figure at the bottom of the frame is rough wood with arms raised. The top half is attached to the pelvis with a square metal plate.
Extincture
The figures range from the size of a standard Barbie doll to a couple of feet tall. They’re mostly made of carved wood and bones, with bits of other materials such as brass rods, a crushed can, sinew and feathers. Two figures have pink dolls’ legs, three figures have black birds’ wings. The predominate colours throughout are black, white and many shades of brown. Half the floating figures are positioned as if standing and the others as sitting. Their faces are mostly smooth and blank, looking down. One has a long-beaked bird skull for a head and another has no head, but a tiny bird skull is attached to the plank beside it.
The first figure to the left is in a seated position. The head is a white bird skull with large round eyes sockets and a long black beak. It’s attached with a brass rod to the torso, which is a wide bone (the sacrum of a small seal) about 6 inches (15 cm.) long, with three large round holes along each side of it. The round hips are carved from mid brown mahogany, and taper to thinner thighs and knees. The lower legs are long, thin, hollow bones, with tiny toes carved into the ends. Attached to the plank behind the shoulders, coming down like arms are two black feathered wings, spread wide, with pale yellow markings.
The other figure is carved from smoothly sanded, dark brown walnut wood. The head and shoulders are a separate piece of walnut, attached to the rest of the figure with a brass rod. The head featureless and facing upwards. The body is strongly figured, with horizontal curl lines resembling ribs. There’s a large hole forming the interior of the pelvis, where a knot in the wood once was, and the legs continur from there in a standing position. There are no feet. Attached to the shoulders are small black feathered wings with pale yellow markings, folded and hanging down like arms at the sides.
The figure at the bottom of the frame is the same yellow maple one described in Extincture (detail 1).
Speak No
Whereas the faces in the other panels were mostly just smooth and blank, the faces here have a wide variety features. Some have carved eyes, some have holes for eyes, some have added objects as eyes, some have no eyes. All the mouths are in some way blocked or obstructed. Some are stitched shut with wire or cord or staples. Some are covered with metal plates or wire mesh or Plexiglas. Some are covered in deep scratches, and one has no mouth.
The wood varies in colour from red to cream to dark brown to golden, and most of it is strongly figured. Bark inclusions and other wood “flaws” help define the faces. Three heads are based in metal and one in Plexiglas. Three heads come from dolls originally and the plastic is drawn on and carved into.
Near the top is a smooth, long necked head carved from dark brown walnut wood. Its eyes are tiny holes drilled though the wood. The mouth is a slot sawn through the side of the face. Three holes are drilled above and below the mouth and stark white nylon string sews the mouth shut.
Next to it is a smooth, golden brown walnut head. The grain of the wood suggests an eye, while most of the face is obscured by a rough edges scrap of window screen. At the right edge is a small, rough face. The mouth is a simple saw cut across the face, with a slotted metal fixture stapled across it.
In the center is a round, cream coloured doll’s head. Its neck is a worn wooden stick, like a sawn off broom handle. The hair is thin, sparce an unruly. Made of messy stands of brownish orange fibre. The eyes are scribbled over with white oil pastel and the mouth is scribbled over with graphite. Next to it is a smooth head made of red wood, with a contorted red metal moth and eyes made from electrical connectors.
At the bottom of the photo is a face of smooth purple heart wood with a long neck. The top of the head is cut off below the eyes. The mouth is a simple oval with pointed ends carved into to flat surface of the face. Four black wires stitch the mouth shut.
The last head is fabricated from old fashioned printing plates – thin silver metal sheets with words in black and red type all over it. The sheets are cut, bent and riveted together ro form a 3D shape. The eyes are electrical connectors and the mouth is a tear in the metal, with many messy holes drilled around it and red wire here and there joining the holes. Hair is indicated by spikey triangles sticking out to the sides and top.
Wired
The second figure is positioned as if sitting. It’s raised arms, upper torso and neck are from a small doll, painted dark red. A plastic skull of a similar red is attached to the neck. The waist is a tarnished silver fixture: a small cylinder coming out of a larger cylinder, held with a screw. It attached the hips and legs, which are carved from a rough piece of split purpleheart wood. The calves and feet are yellowish pink doll legs, rubbed with streaky graphite. A smaller wire runs diagonally to the right from a hole in the middle of the chest to a hole in the plank, close to where the centre of the wire from the other figure comes.
The second figure is positioned as if sitting. It’s raised arms, upper torso and neck are from a small doll, painted dark red. A plastic skull of a similar red is attached to the neck. The waist is a tarnished silver fixture: a small cylinder coming out of a larger cylinder, held with a screw. It attached the hips and legs, which are carved from a rough piece of split purpleheart wood. The calves and feet are yellowish pink doll legs, rubbed with streaky graphite. A smaller wire runs diagonally to the right from a hole in the middle of the chest to a hole in the plank, close to where the centre of the wire from the other figure comes.
The first figure in the main group is made of three pieces of smoothly sanded wood. The head is round and dark red. The torso is a flat piece of brown lacewood with strong tan markings, cut in a long triangle. The wide hips and pointy legs are from a piece of flat, dark red wood, cut in a silhouette. The head is attached with a steel rod, and the hips are attached with an exposed piece of dark brown dowel. The arms are long and extremely thin bones, dyed red and attached with red electrical connectors. A thin, black wire comes from a hole in the chest, hangs down to knee height and then loops up to a hole in the plank on the other side of the middle figure. A second wire loops from a hole in the hip and runs to a hole in the hip of the second figure.
The middle figure is smaller and made from a flat piece of medium brown wood cut in a silhouette with a wide curve of hip on one side. The surface of the wood is smoothly rippled: the natural texture where bark has been removed. Its face is indicated by an oval of thin metal printing plate with red writing and shapes still visible. The arms are translucent bone dyed red. A black wire runs from a hole in the waist to the chest of the third figure.
The third figure is about twice as tall as the centre one. Its body and head are cut from a flat piece of red wood and the face is indicated by an oval silhouette cut from red skateboard material. The arms are long, reddish brown, knobbly twigs. One stuck in a hole in the shoulder, one attached with curved staples. The legs are thick black wire coming out of brass fixtures, the left coming from a hole in the wood and the right nailed on. The end of a threaded rod is visible, screwed in from behind the chest. Next to it, a corroded electrical fixture attaches a black wire to the figure, where it hangs down along the leg with the other end not attached to anything.
The Red Forest (Castlegar, 2005)
The figures are in multiple styles and many different materials. Near the top, one figure is made of a Barbie doll head and shoulders, dyed deep purple red, with upraised arms cut off short and a body made only of a section of copper pipe. Next to it, the figure has a carved wooden torso, stained reddish brown, with wire arms, one bone leg and one carved wood leg, and a round head with a carved mouth open to show clenched white teeth. Other figures combine carved wood sections with uncarved, the raw edges and textures delineating the human form.
Next to it is a partially dismembered Barbie doll in an awkwardly seated position, painted a darker, shinier red. Its hair is stiff with white paint, with a thin sheen of red over it, rising in a messy tangle over the head. The arms are missing, with the ends of the plastic joints visible at the shoulders. One leg has been removed and replaced with a different Barbie leg that has a mechanical knee. The other leg has been replaced by a think plastic tube. The calf is formed by a piece of red insulated wire, with splayed strands at the end indicating a foot.
The third figure is a matt, orangey red. Its head and neck are formed from a broken piece of wood where a knot at one side shapes a face, and the torn grain structure at the other side indicates hair. It has no arms. The chest is a short piece of black water hose, with a brass connecting fixture at the bottom. The hips and legs are carved from cherry wood, with red insulated wire as ankles and exposed copper wire indicating feet. A small bullet with a copper tip is attached between the legs like a penis.
At the bottom of the frame, a silhouetted figure is constructed from pieces of purplish red and brownish red wood. A thin strip of enameled red metal joins the top and bottom halves with a broken red reflector attached at the chest. The last partial figure is the head and upper chest of a matt orangey figure of carved wood.
