Statement

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