22 ~ Friday, April 2. 1999 - North Shore News

Michael Becker

News Editor

IF you like to hike, and you’ve spent any time at all in the North Shore woods, you’ve bumped up against a big tree or two along the way.

Artist Mary Jewell is cap- turing the essence of the old- growth giants looming in the forest.

The Vancouver artist is rubbing the trees the right way. Jewell calis the process bark art.

3arking up the first are

this decade. “T was a technical writer at the time wating com- puter manuals. As the vears went by ] became more and more frustrated with office work, My true love was visual art,” says Jewell.

She immersed herself in art history and graphic design at UBC. In her spare time she studied silk screen design at the Vancouver School of Art and photography at Langara. She’s produced large format acrylic paintings and has worked with computer gener- ated imag>-.

Rark art takes her back to

wih trees

Mary Jewell makes art from living history

> yok " P4 a ia 4 NS \ a 2 1 ae

The artistic process is in the tradition of surrealist predeces- sors,

The method of pressing paper against the texture of organic materials such as bark and then transferring images with pigment was favoured by Mex Ernst.

Jewell also echoes the spirit of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. “They moved paper around every which way and created an image — not just from one position.”

She eredits Audrey Doray, a local painter, as her contem- porary mentor.

Jewell works with oil-based pastels and 100% cotton-based papers. Her consideration of colour tends to vary with existing lighting conditions and the seasen at hand. Other conditions may apply. “It also depends on how cold Iam, how stiff my fingers are,” she offers with a Jaugh.

Rather than fixing it in place, Jewell holds her paper against a tree. “E might hold it in one position and keep it sta- tionary on that part of the tree or | might move it around. It depends on how furrowed the bark is and how big the piece of paper is. If the bark is

MARY Jewell shows some bark art. it’s created by rubbing old-growth tree bark with paper and pastels.

deeply furrowed I might want to move the paper around io

While working as an editor- ial assistant for a daily newspa- per in the 1980s Jewell was given a complimentary copy of Randy Stoltmann’s book Record Trees of British Columbia.” She showed the book to her friend Ralf Kelman, a big-tree enthusiast.

The pair embarked upon a “srumpology project” at Pacific Spirit Park. They docu- mented the many large old- growth stumps left behind from the logging of the Vancouver forest. “It’s amaz- ing how big some of those stumps were. It progressed from there,” says Jewell.

her roots — pastels.

She finds her subjects with the assistance of Kelman, who has introduced her to many of the massive cedars and firs hid- den away in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve.

She sees her arr as func- tioning on two levels: an esthetic pursuit and a means to raise public awareness of old- growth trees. Says Jewell, “Bark is the creation of a living entity that can take hundreds of years to evolve, It’s a mani- festation of time and the phys- ical forces of water and gravity. ] attempt to map the slow movement of the tree as a liv-

fill the area on the paper,” she says.

When she returns from the woods she gathers information about the tree, for example the location, the type of tee, cle- vation, circumference and height, an estimated age of the tree, elevation, the guide she went along with to find the tree and the materials used to create the work.

“One of my concerns with bark art is that there are some rare ecological sites located in the Seymour forest. Where even one tree is cut down for so-called safety reasons, it

Photo Ralf Ket ARTIST Mary Jewell produces bark art with one of the giant old-growth tre located in the North Shore forests.

destroys the entire integrity of the ecological area,” says Jewell.

The Western Canada Wilderness Commitice (WCWC) has commissioned 20 of her bark art pieces. Individuals who donate $100 to WCWC will be given an original bark art in return for the donation. Contact the artist at 669-1285.

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The creative notion for bark art came to her carlicr

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