Sculpture and Drawing, 2000

Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB Canada

In this exhibition I had the opportunity two work with two independent spaces. One room was used for the large-scale drawings, the other one for the series of the Red Shields. It was for me a very ideal way of exhibiting drawings and sculpture as two different spaces of experience.

Red Shields: 3 elements, plaster over wire, pigment;

shield 1: 59” x 6” x 64” (150 x 15 x 163 cm);

shield 2: 61” x 59” x 17” (156 x 150 x 43 cm);

shield 3: 62” x 31” x 33” (157 x 78 x 85 cm)

Shields for Humans: Graphite on paper, each 59" x 85" (150 x 215 cm)

In Red Shields, 1999, I worked with a rich red-brown color. I used the shape of the shields in order to define objects that have the sense of the corporal, but have an organic directness. Red Shields is a work that consists of three elements - sculptural forms that are constructed out of plaster over wire. The surface is finished with an application of iron oxide powder. The three objects are based on earlier investigations of the shape of a sand-dollar. See also: White Shield, 1998.

As drawings, the Shields for Humans series, 2000 works on a similar level as the "black shields" series does. Here I emphasize the frontality and mass of an imaginary shield-like form. The drawings confront a person as a massive, yet at the same time almost fragile form. Various layers of graphite powder are worked and incised by pencil and eraser-lines. As drawings they build up a tension that plays with the viewer's physicality.

See also: Esssay by Ray Cronin “Being Here: The Sculpture of Vanessa Paschakarnis" (Publication by the gallery.)

See also: Review in Sculpture Magazine, by Ray Cronin