Harvest Baskets

Cultural Capital of Canada Project 2012

Niagara has been designated a cultural capital of Canada, along with Calgary.  I am a participant in two Niagara projects affiliated with this program. Both projects were an open-juried competition for Niagara artists.

The first is “Harvest Baskets”, a mixed media project by a group of artists, from different parts of the Niagara Region, working in different media.

The project is based on large photos of the escarpment, divided into panels, with each artist interpreting a section of the panel in their own medium.  These panels will then form two large murals for the Regional Headquarters in St Catharines.  As well as the two mixed media murals, there will be five individual panels dealing with Harvest and Niagara’s Bounty.

My panel is based on a photo taken of a collection of discarded, broken, wooden fruit baskets. 

 My medium is porcelain mosaic.  I treated the subject by pressing and stamping different dates, months, and words such as Apples, Cherries, Pears, etc., along with small icons of the same into thin sheets of porcelain. I then applied Iron Chromate to the sheets of porcelain and wiped them like an etching plate, leaving black printing. 

 The sheets were then fired in a kiln, fractured, and set as mosaic pieces to fit the design of the baskets. 

  I used a black grout to give the overall effect of a drawing.