Exhibitor #33 (Lead Artist: Karl Mattson / Contributing Artist: Luke Gleeson)

Title: Uncertainty

Medium: Steel, Stone

Dimensions: 8′ x 3′  x 3′

For Sale: NFS

Artist Statement: This sculpture was built for the University of Northern British Columbia’s botanical garden in 2021. It is a collaboration between two artists who live in relatively remote areas of northeast BC, areas that are situated amongst nature and also in the heart of British Columbia’s resource extraction zones including oil and gas, forestry and timber harvesting, mining and exploration. As workers and artists, environmental awareness has played a large role in their lives and their art. For this project, the medium is steel and stone. Heated and hammered iron caribou antlers suspend a locally sourced boulder. A network of iron rods were transformed into tree roots that wrap around the boulder that is crafted by the iron antlers. All this culminates at the top with an abstract representation of a Douglas Fir tree. It is the hope that the work will stimulate imagination while emanating a sense of history through the use of nature as the integral medium.