Deborah Margo is part of Exposed 2011. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
In 2010 I started working with large salt licks found at my local feed store. They are dense, heavy blocks in uniform units of luminous yellow, white and blue, as well as shades of brown, each measuring 10.5” x 10.5” x 10.5”. To date, I have been immersing them in water as well as pouring solutions into their cavities, allowing for transformations either from the outside in or the inside out.
For Exposed 2011, I installed multiple salt licks outside to investigate how they are changed by the vagaries of weather, wind, temperature and the designated site’s inhabitants. My control of the material’s transformation is limited to its placement in different locations within the site. The blocks are not installed according to a specific pattern or order, but positioned in response to the different landscape features found. The making of these forms is an active process where a final outcome cannot be predetermined. Instead the vestiges will mark an inevitable, irrevocable and endless process. Pamukkale’s Paramorph is linked to my previous sugar installations, but the history of salt, the scale of each element, its plasticity and rich color, all of which are transformed outside, are new developments that allow for further explorations and discoveries.
Born in Montreal, Deborah Margo lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She has a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and an MFA from Temple University/Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia; she completed additional studies at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, and the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. She is a writer for www.akimbo.ca, Toronto, a professional gardener and a faculty member in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa.
ABOUT EXPOSED
For the past twenty years, the Helen Day Art Center has hosted an outdoor public art and sculpture exhibition called Exposed in Stowe, Vermont. Exposed hosts sculptures, site-specific installations, and participatory work from twenty-three national and international artists. the 2011 edition offers a series of Thursday night events by 12 video artists, writers, performers, and musicians accompany the exhibit. This exhibition and series of events is accompanied by cell phone audio tours, QR codes, walking tour maps, walkabouts, and a catalogue of the exhibit published by Kasini House Books. The exhibition will take place July 8th to October 8th, 2011.