SHIRLEY WIEBE STUDIO ACCOMPLICE [DIPTYCH] 2021 40 x 20” Media: tin, staples, mixed media, skill saw cuts on cradled panel https://www.shirleywiebe.com/ https://www.instagram.com/shirley_wiebe ARTIST BIO Shirley Wiebe is a self-taught artist based in Vancouver Canada. As someone from a prairie farming community and now based in a large urban center, Wiebe interprets her surroundings through this lens of contrast, connection and culture as she excavates narratives of human endeavour, public and private. With a particular interest in site-specific and project- based work, Wiebe’s concepts develop through investigation of materials, history and place. Often using what is at hand or gathered through research, substances are teased apart and re-imagined; corrugated plastic, mesh screening, industrial fragments and discarded objects undergo permutations that both utilize and deviate from their intended purpose. Her drawing, photography, sculpture and installation work explore relationships between the built environment and physical geography. Wiebe examines how structures, objects and materials have agency to convey history and meaning; to spark personal and collective memory. Her compositions bear traces of small incremental actions and intuitive leaps, which push the constituent elements beyond their common usage and form. Consequently, her work is both familiar and strange.
PROJECT STATEMENT Studio Accomplice is a self-coined phrase that describes how the artists’ studio can influence production. I have experienced a number of working environments including a garage, basement, front porch, spare bedroom, makeshift tent and several actual studio spaces. Aside from unique architectural features, each one has become a silent partner and companion to breakthroughs, dry spells, successes, frustrations, and numerous hours of solitary making. My belief is that a studio has the agency to inspire and inform, if invited. This diptych represents a collaboration with influences of my current studio space. Its concrete floor contains a series of cut patterns that form a visual greeting as I come and go. They correspond to skill saw cuts that were made to access underground pipes at some point in the past. I chose to mimic the patterns by tracing and then duplicating the cuts into these wood panels. At first glance the slices appear as black lines on the surface and this ambiguity appeals to me. The industrial tin sheeting was salvaged from Boeing Surplus. Repetitive stapling, erratic hand drawn sound waves and swirl patterns depict the creative energy and music jam circles that my studio contain. Studio Accomplice pays tribute to lesser noticed visible codes of ‘work’ and to the significance of physical gestures that support our day to day lives. Human hands continue to build the city every day.
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