Warm Snow presents a series of lithographs and sculptures linking ideas from science about the beginnings of the world, the natural world of experience and an intimate personal landscape. It is a continuation of my exploration with words and ideas concerning presence and absence. It is essentially the same exhibition as Neige noire, which was presented in Montreal.

I have always imagined words existing like a river or a current of air floating invisibly around me. Could the letters of the alphabet be like snowflakes? Or are they more like the invisible particles of light known as cosmic microwave background radiation, that echo of the Big Bang still present and visible as static between stations on the television screen? I was five years old when my parents brought home our first television. The nearest urban centre was far away and weather conditions always interfered with picture reception. My earliest images from the outside world shimmered in a beautiful black and white speckle and hiss called ‘snow.’ Visual references were often lost to the flickering materiality of the screen, but we strained our eyes to read the snow.

In one of the works, an entire edition of lithographs is hung together to create one large-scale composite mural. Here, an image of static captured from a television screen was transferred onto stone and printed on a variety of white and off-white, handmade sheets of paper. Another of the works, a video loop presents three separate walks taken on a huge pile of snow removed from airstrips at the Pierre Trudeau Airport in Montreal. Walking on the uppermost edge of this very, black, melting pile late in the month of May contributed to the idea and to the naming of this project.

Karen Trask

2008

Exhibition was shown as well in Edmonton under the title Warm Snow.

 I have always imagined words existing like a river or a current of air floating invisibly around me. Could the letters of the alphabet be like snowflakes? Or are they more like the invisible particles of light known as cosmic microwave background radiation, that echo of the Big Bang still present and visible as static between stations on the television screen? I was five years old when my parents brought home our first television. The nearest urban centre was far away and weather conditions always interfered with picture reception. My earliest images from the outside world shimmered in a beautiful black and white speckle and hiss called ‘snow.’ Visual references were often lost to the flickering materiality of the screen, but we strained our eyes to read the snow.

Warm Snow is a continuation of my exploration with words and ideas concerning presence and absence. As an installation of lithographs, sculpture and video each media contributes to an experience of snow as a natural winter phenomenon and as television static or white noise.

In one of the works, an entire edition of lithographs is hung together to create one large-scale composite mural. Here, an image of static captured from a television screen was transferred onto stone and printed on a variety of white and off-white, handmade sheets of paper. Another of the works, a video loop presents three separate walks taken on a huge pile of snow removed from airstrips at the Pierre Trudeau Airport in Montreal. Walking on the uppermost edge of this very, black, melting pile late in the month of May contributed to the idea and to the naming of this project.

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Notes au sujet de l’oeuvre : Neige noire

Dans l’oeuvre, Neige noire, la neige sous ces deux formes (la neige qui tombe du ciel en hiver et les points noirs scintillants sur fond blanc que l’on voit lors du passage entre deux chaînes de télévision) est présentée comme une métaphore du néant.

La durée moyenne d’un flacon de neige est environ une heure. La neige de télévision ou le bruit blanc, l’évidence matériel de la radiation de fond micro-onde est encore présent depuis le commencement de l’univers (Big-bang) il y a quelques 12 billions d’années.