Winding Ribbon

"Winding Ribbon" is a decorative piece with a deliberate historical subtext.  The patterned elements were chosen to reflect a moment in time, when what is now Seattle began a sudden transformation from a sparsely populated costal forest to a large city, trading tall trees for tall buildings.

The background pattern is reminiscent of nineteenth-century fabric design, with a repeat of branch elements.  The patterning is broken at several points to reveal large, realistic crab apple branches wound through with ribbon-an image of human presence winding its  way inexorably through the natural world.

Scattered among the pattern of background branches are a rich variety of native plants: cedar, vine maple, madrona, camas, salal, honeysuckle, ocean spray, current, and snowberry, among others.  All plant specimens in the artwork were collected by the British naturalist David Douglas during his Pacific Northwest sojourn, and by his predecessor, Archibald Menzies.  Their work served  to  identify and disseminate local plant species worldwide, enriching scientific knowledge while inadvertently encouraging the drastic depletion of resources that followed.

Overlaid at various points on the artwork appear etched portions of writing from the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek, the federal document that established reservation land for the local Indian people.  Particularly poignant to me were the signature pages marked with X after X.  The writing deliberately fades in and out of legibility, creating a metaphoric presence in the artwork.