Canadian artist Shirley Wiebe was invited to
create a site-specific installation as part of her ‘Environmental Art’ residency at I-Park in eastern
Connecticut, in 2007. With Appearances, Wiebe created a delicate and sublime mesh
construction that sways in the wind, creating a vertigo-like sensation.
INMYX:
When you came up with your concept, what were your material choices and why?
Shirley
Wiebe: As the only artist from Canada, I chose to bring along a material made in Canada – a woven copper
mesh designed for gardening use, to repel slugs and snails. I wanted to play with its intended use and
to make use of its rich color in relation to the autumn at hand. I was hopeful the mesh would also function
as a collector for organic matter and insect life – a suspended record of time passing.
INMYX:
What do you want the onlooker to see/experience?
Wiebe: I want to create the sense
of an apparition or vision, a fleeting shadow that might be real or imagined. My intention is to heighten
a sense of awareness of ‘place’, not so much to draw attention to what has been placed there. Because
the materials I choose frequently respond to light, there are moments where an installation is brilliantly
aglow and highly visible; and then just as quickly, it drops back into quietude. This ability of light
to create form and then to dissolve away again intrigues me greatly.
Over
the past years, Shirley Wiebe has created a wide-ranging array of installations both indoors and outdoors.
INMYX:
In terms of the materials you use, they actually seem to blend in with their respective environments
(indoors/outdoors).
Wiebe: I work a great deal with translucency. It reveals what
is already present in an environment, so the work can appear chameleon like. I prefer to create a sense
of uncertain space that is as much about perception and how we see, as it is about what we see.
INMYX:
Do you prefer any one environment?
Wiebe: No, I prefer to work in and respond
to a variety of environments and contexts: wilderness, urban streetscape, public and residential interior
space, gallery settings – both intimate and large scale.
INMYX:
How do you make the installations speak to the different audiences?
Wiebe: The
site, the material, what is going on with me and the collaboration with nature – all these elements
speak to people in different ways. It is my hope that the viewer will be ‘reawakened’ to something within
them. I want the work to act as a trigger.
Link:
www.wooloo.org/wiebe
