Transcience
Jan Kabatoff
August 27 – October 29
Opening – August 26 at 7 pm
Artist Talk – September 24 at 2 pm
Artist Statement
As an interdisciplinary artist with a passion for wild plants and flowers, I have been thinking about this kind of project for many years. Living in a rural setting during a pandemic, in relative isolation, has allowed me to discover what my natural surroundings have to offer, and to reflect more deeply on our existential vulnerability and notions of nature and identity.
Nature has always informed my work and wild plants and flowers have played a special role in my investigations as an artist. The multi-media works I have created are process-oriented and comprised of: three large-scale, site-specific installations of pressed plant material gathered on my property; a series of wild-flower paintings; mixed-media works and a time-lapse video of plants through the different stages of life, death and decay.
I am attracted to the shapes, patterns and textures found in nature and the process of carefully selecting, pressing, and painting the plants, then attaching each plant to the wall or creating an object, allows for a meditative, yet calculated direct experience. My choice of the colour black, can suggest a post-fire occurrence or the long history of black drawings from cave paintings, to early botanical prints, to contemporary art. Like the plants that last a season, so too, these particular wall installations might only last for the duration of the exhibit, creating a dialogue between the temporal and the ephemeral.
Historically, wildflowers and plants played a subordinate role to the domesticated showy varieties as fillers in bouquets and paintings. And yet, not only have native plants served as national and provincial emblems of identity, they are vitally important to the pollinators that agriculture relies on. Scientists are now telling us that native plants are at risk due to climate change, as they are slower than non-native plants to adapt to rising global temperatures.
Of particular influence are botanical artists such as British Mary Delany (1700’s), whose life work began at the age of 72 when she started doing botanical paper collages, and the eight women of the Clifford family (1800’s), who sketched and painted water-colours of wildflowers and plants on their estate. Perhaps influenced by the Romantic era of the time, which judged art not by prescribed rules but according to the sensibility of the individual, and a free handling of materials, these women found their own unique expression within the botanical genre.
My project is reminiscent of the rich botanical history that has informed artists throughout the ages, while at the same time it will reflect on the fragility and transience of life and the times we’re living in now.
Artist Biography
I was born and raised in the Kootenays but spent most of my adult life in Alberta where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1996 at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) in Calgary, now the Alberta University of the Arts.
I was a self-directed multi-media artist at the Banff Centre from 2000-2011, where my inter-disciplinary practice included painting, print-making, paper-making, installation, photography, video and textiles. I moved back to the Kootenays in 2011 and began working out of my home studio in Krestova.
My practice has always included themes on the natural environment, which has played an important role in my life as a source of inspiration, contemplation and spiritual renewal. For the past thirty years I’ve been concerned about the impact of human activity on the natural environment, and in more recent years, the effects of global warming on glaciers.
Since 2005 I have trekked to seven glaciers on three different continents collecting data in the form of mould impressions, frottage, photography and sound recordings. This culminated in a multi-media exhibit which showed in British Columbia, Alberta and Newfoundland, and was endorsed by the United Nations Water for Life Decade (2005-2015), supported by Dr. Shawn Marshall, Earth Sciences, University of Calgary and Dr. Mike Demuth, Natural Resources of Canada in Ottawa.
Since moving back to the Kootenays I’ve become increasingly concerned about the increase in wildfires and the impact of climate change on the forests of the Kootenay Mountains, which I’m now addressing in my current work.
