The Fishwheel is a collaboration between the artists Jessica DiClerico and Oliver Schemm, who have been collaborating for fifteen years. The inception of The Fishwheel began when the artists stumbled upon a digital photo archive of historic images from the Pacific Northwest: an arresting black and white photo of a processing wheel in a salmon cannery.
At a very early age I spent many hours playing in and about a wonderful old dairy barn. Each spring the interior of the building received a fresh coat of whitewash. The structure and this rejuvenating process have undoubtedly influenced my work until this day.
Tyler Vendituoli’s piece was inspired by the trend in doing things locally and the nostalgia for our industrial past that comes with it. The gear, a once common and necessary part of many people’s day to day lives, is all but foreign to most of us now.
For the past year my work has explored human sentiments towards wonder and the natural world. From the outset of humanity, nature has served as the goad to inquiry, the catalyst for wonder. It provides us with stimulation necessary to investigate, explore, and define our world.
I find that so much of my work comes down to creating illusion. With drawing, it is the illusion of depth and volume on a completely flat surface. With sculpture, it is creating a credible texture in a difficult material. Making a block of cold, hard marble express life and warmth or, as in Stumped, creating a wood texture in hard granite.
