Nicole Dextras, Environmental & Ephemeral Artist
Ice, Grass, Flowers & Leaves – Dextras' Media Changes Seasonally
May 29, 2009
For years, Canadian ephemeral and environmental artist, Nicole Dextras was moved by the work of masters like Andy Goldsworthy or Robert Smithson, but her own inspiration, expression and style eluded her. She was a successful artist in her own right, and had exhibited her well-received photographs and photo wall assemblages at museums throughout North America. Her work experiences also included costume design, but her heart was stirred by art which, not only drew upon nature as the direct source of the most beautiful materials, but one which had to be approached with the lightest, most deft of touches.
Dextras wondered how to go about stimulating that same sense of care for the environment in others, but not in a false way.
“Fear, the tactic which environmentalists seemed to use most, produced jaded, cynical and hopeless reactions.” Dextras explained during her artist’s talk on April 2nd, 2009, at the Touchstones Museum in Nelson, BC, Canada. Sentimentality, the cute pictures of ducklings and aesthetic autumn walks, the projection of nature anthropomorphed into human qualities, produced a backlash against animals or elemental forces which are negatively judged. “Anyone can get behind saving a whale or cute baby seal. It isn’t so easy to rally support for saving mosquitoes, no matter how crucial they are in the grand scheme.”
Dextras’ art is made out of things found in nature: ice, grass, flowers and leaves. As such, they melt, crack, rot, disintegrate and return to their original composite elements. This process is taken into account when she creates pieces.
Frozen Forms
One day, while washing a red satin garment in the bathtub, Dextras noticed how the light filtered through the folds and waves of the fabric, so that some areas glowed and others receded into shades. The winter in Vancouver that year was unusually cold, so she thought to freeze old dresses in blocks of ice and photograph the sunlight gleaming through them. The process was trickier than it seemed since the dresses still appeared to float, as though flash-frozen while they shifted in the currents.
Dextras’ 2005-2006 artist’s residency at the Banff Centre took those ice block sculptures with garments, and introduced words frozen in them out formed from tinted preset ice block lettering. At the Gibraltar Art Centre in Toronto, the words shifted from tiny ones captured in the blocks, to her Frozen Typography series: massive frozen letters on the pier of Toronto Island. In the city, smaller letters comprised words and passages from The Municipal Mind, by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, poet laureate of Toronto, who wrote about how people negotiate their space within the city. Dextras’ impromptu ice letter sculptures would be set up and photographed, and disappear very quickly.
The gigantic Legacy sculpture assembled on the Yukon River of ice-letters formed in 7 feet high plywood moulds tested the limits of this media. When the arctic weather drops to -50 degrees, Dextras found that everything fails. Her helpers hibernated because their equipment and trucks started breaking apart. The letters froze, sure enough, but in the thaw which immediately followed, massive fissures formed. She barely had time to photograph the blocks before they fell into ruins.
The media of ice was also limited by the seasons. Dextras was still inspired by words and letters and language, but wanted to express them through the warmer months as well.
Green Works and Growing Things
Near her studio on Vancouver’s Granville Island, under the Burrard Street bridge in 2007 during a city workers’ strike, she discovered a secret haven which offered the outdoor elements of the region as her canvas. The property under the bridge on the Kitsilano side is now owned by the Squamish band, although for many years, it was cut into strips owned by the city and the CPR, a place which far enough off the beaten track that it remained fairly isolated through the day even in the midst of the big city. There, she created a variety of organic installations that included:
- words grown from grass in letter shaped planters
- mandala arrangements of petals, buds, seeds and twigs culled from the area’s wild plants;
- woven twig and bough sculptures eerily reminiscent of the primitive cage immortalized in the 1973 Robin Hardy Movie “The Wicker Man” (although Dextras claims no such antecedent);
- eco-costumes formed on frames woven from pliant tree boughs on which leaves and flowers are stitched with hawthorns.
Her 2009 word-art installation “Poem” was one of the three set pieces in the Touchstones Nelson Exhibition, Salt: the Distillation of Matter, guest curated by Deborah Thompson. Wheat grass was grown in a cursive letter mould until its roots became bound. Then it was inverted to expose these root clumps, and left outside to disintegrate in the elements. The choice of word connects to culture and its ephemerality.
Dextras wanted to introduce more of an improvised performance modality into her work, and her flower-dresses and eco-costumes gave her the perfect set-up. The series began during her residency at the Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver, in 2007, using the branches, leaves and clippings which the gardeners would discard. The costumes were nothing short of spectacular.
On frames woven from flexible boughs, Dextras would layer sturdy plant materials such as yucca and eucalyptus leaves, stitched to the frames with hawthorn ‘pins’. Professional actors brought the costumes to life, improvising on themes of nature, such as Jordi Sancho’s memorable “Eco-Man” or Nita Bowerman’s “Ivy” from the 2009 “Invasive Species” Show. Afterwards the costumes were brought to Dextras’ back yard where the process of disintegration began.
Dextras has meticulously photographed all her pieces and the performances, which may be viewed at her flickerstream gallery or on her website.
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