It was the sense of movement that inspired Jacqui Palmer.
A potter, Palmer chose to interpret a photo of a cascading waterfall by Ronan Redel for the exhibit Five Times Five, which opened at the Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre last Friday and is on display until September. 22.
What she came up with was a work that showed an eagle swooping down on a school of fish.
“I liked the way there was movement in the picture. Right away I saw the eagle,” she said.
The eagle is the most striking element of her work. It’s not in the photo, but Palmer saw it emerging from the top of the cascade.
“I’ve seen a lot of wildlife in the forest and it’s always kind of there. You really have to stare at it to see it,” she said. “That’s just how the wildlife appears to me — it’s always there, but you have to look carefully. I saw that eagle almost immediately when I saw that picture.”
Palmer created her piece using paper clay, a new form created in New Zealand. She used broken pieces of pottery to form the shapes, and some broken bowls to create flower dishes at the bottom that are planted with orchids.
The Five Times Five exhibit pairs up five photographers with 25 artists. The artists all met together and selected their most inspiring of the five images, then set about creating a work of art. Photos were contributed by Mas Matsushita, Agathe Bernard, Natalie Harris, Jason Keerak and Redel.
Matshushita’s photo was of a sand dollar he found on a beach in Cuba. He placed it on a black shirt and used the natural sunlight coming through his window to illuminate the subject. The result is part of the sand dollar is hidden in the shadows.
“I really like the interpretations that people did — everything from the cloth to the pottery. I think they did a great job,” he said. “That’s the one nice thing about the Five Times Five — it’s open to whatever you think, whatever the image inspires you to do.”
Pauline Hunt based her contribution on a photo of a motion-blurred Prairie scene by Agathe Bernard. Using Photoshop, she created a multi-layered digital image evoking the bison that used to roam on the prairies in the millions.
“When I saw the photo and it was blurred, it seemed like it was a small piece of time, so that was my interpretation,” said Hunt. “I wanted to choose a piece of time on the prairies that was significant. I thought about how terrible it was, the eradication of the bison. There was millions of them, and now they’re down to the hundreds. I wanted to show that process time.”
Five Times Five is on display at the Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre until September 22. Also showing are exhibits by Sarah Windsor, Trish Hartwick and the Revelstoke Potters Guild.
