Ingrid Koivukangas
Environmental Artist

Responding to sites around the world through works created in site specific installation, intervention, ephemeral sculpture, video, sound, web, permanent site-specific sculpture, photography, printmaking,painting & drawing.

Welcoming opportunities to work in different geographic regions & locations in the world, creating site-specific works in response to the land.

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Click on the photos below to get a closer look:

Tree • Stone • Echo

Sky: Earth: Water: Reliquary

Created for the Earth Reflections Exhibition
CityScape Gallery, North Vancouver, BC

As an environmental artist I work in response to sites in the natural world. I work intuitively at sites, with site energies - sometimes through dreams, impressions or waking dreams. Once the work emerges and is on its way to completion I will begin a site research based on local history, stories, and connections to the larger universe - celestial, botanical, animal and spiritual. Much of my work is an attempt to provide the viewer with a starting point to begin contemplating their own landscape and possibly their part in its preservation.

It is simply amazing to think that our physical bodies are made up of stardust, ancient dinosaur bones, trillions of cells that communicate with other cells, water that is controlled by the moon just as the tides are – water that is affected by our very thoughts. We breathe air that has been recirculating around the globe for millennia – we breathe the same air that our ancient ancestors once did. We are interwoven into the very fabric of the Earth – the Earth is interwoven into each of our physical beings. We also share these physical connections, and are further interwoven, with every other living being on this planet. We each carry genetic memories within us, for at one time all of our ancestors lived in harmony with the Earth and understood the delicate balance between what was seen and what was intuited

The new works created for the Earth Reflections exhibition are based on sites on the North Shore - from Deep Cove in North Vancouver to Whytecliffe Park in West Vancouver. I wanted to provide viewers with basic information on how they could access the sites I’d visited. With this in mind I overlaid a map (left) of the North Shore with an infinity symbol. The infinity symbol signifies the constantly evolving universe, the cycles of life including nature’s cycle of birth, death and regeneration. This line intersected many parks and nature areas, I chose to work at 12 of them: Bridgeman, Cates, Deep Cove, Seymour, Lynn Headwaters, Capilano, Dundareve, Lighthouse, Eagleridge, Whytecliffe, Cypress and Mahon Parks.

Numerology, a metaphysical system based on the esoteric relationships between numbers and physical objects or living beings, often enters my work. After contemplating many different numbers I decided to work with the number 12. There are 12 months in a calendar year, in China a 12 cycle system called Earthly Branches is used for time reckoning. The day is divided into two 12 hour sections, ancient measurement systems are based on 12. Astrology is based on time being divided into 12 zodiac signs and in China 12 animals. The bible has many references to including the 12 tribes of Israel, 12 Apostles and 12 Angels.

Tree-Stone Echo - is deeply connected to the Sky: Earth: Water: Reliquary and references a trip to Lynn Headwaters made last year with Joan. We came across a series of windblown trees, remnants of the windstorms of 2006, and under each of the giant root balls stones were coming free, falling to the ground, creating a pile of, what I call, stone-eggs. They are waiting to be reclaimed by another tree’s root system, where they will help anchor a new tree to the Earth. Stones are the oldest beings on Earth and have been here since the Earth was formed, it is said that they carry memories within them. Imagine being 96 million years old, like many of the rocks on the North Shore, and what you would remember.

For the installation I gathered 120 stones from each of the 12 sites. I patiently waited for the spring thaws to bring a tree-log down the river, but the waters were running far too swiftly to leave anything on the shores and instead took all their offerings to the waiting sea. A few days before the opening I had a feeling to go to Cates Park, where I finally found the tree-log on the beach. No doubt it had been brought down one of the North Shore rivers, joined the tide, and then been thrown back upon the shore. The tree-log pierces the gallery wall - the root ball hovers over the 1440 stones collected at the sites. Viewers are invited, and encouraged, to choose a stone to take with them and in return to leave a comment that will be taken back to the site, creating a circle, an echo. The comment can be a prayer or wish for the Earth, or just an acknowledgement of your knowing that you are connected to the Earth, the Sky, the Water.

Perhaps through this gesture you will become one of the memories stored within the stone.



Special thanks to Johnny Walker, Doug Phillips and Chané and

Amy, Matthew and Roland for the return of the log to the ocean.
 

©Ingrid Koivukangas 2008