Artwork copyright Gwen Curry. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Artwork copyright Gwen Curry. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Inventory, 1992

Gwen Curry
(Canadian, born 1950)

Location: The Evergreen State College, Olympia

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Gwen Curry composed Inventory as a group of twenty unique charcoal drawings. The graphic forms are silhouettes of twenty different wildflowers native to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The base of each drawing features a screen-printed dot pattern. Curry based this pattern on a charcoal drawing of a bird, which she scanned and manipulated digitally. She notes, "The bottom overlay dot pattern serves to call up the civilized and non-wild world. But the juxtaposition of soft silhouette and mechanical dot pattern is not a simple depiction of opposites. It is also about how we perceive images. The soft focus silhouettes do not give us much information (i.e.: no color or details). They seem generic yet if we knew our wildflowers, we would have no hesitation in naming them even on such scant infor­mation. The dot pattern is purposely enlarged to the point where we cannot identify what this image is yet we make sense of these types of images daily, (as in newspapers)."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Methow Valley School District and The Evergreen State College.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Canadian artist Gwen Curry explores the natural environment. Her artworks focus on plants and animals, both living and extinct. She has worked in a wide range of media including installation, works on paper, sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, public commissions, and design.
Curry was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Victoria in 1974. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in 1978. She was an Associate Professor of art at the University of Victoria from 1978 to 1994, before turning full time to her artistic practice. She is based on Vancouver Island.