Reflection Blog Post No. 2

Overall

     Rebecca Carlton's work focused a lot on environmental impact. She took the time to do research for each of these pieces and turned these facts into symbolism, relating animals to humans. While confining her species to US ones, she managed to diversify them. 

Vanish: To Become Zero

    Her attention to detail when making the leafs was fascinating. Firstly, hand making all of them is impressive as is, especially considering she made around 10,000 leafs in total and followed the tree ring pattern. Also, to look at endangered plants is such an outside-of-the-box thing to do. Everyone talks about endangered animal species but never for plants. She identified 4 endangered US plant species and stated how many are left of each (I don't remember the names, but I remember the location: California - >6, Arkansas - >600, Virginia - >8, Hawaii - >300). This was mainly a call-out piece for the preservation of these plants, and I feel like her execution of this was strong. Her symbolism for this was obvious with the black clay and the environmental quotes solidified the statements. 

5 Billion to None: An Extinction

    The same thing as Vanish: To Become Zero, her attention to detail, despite there being less to detail in this piece, was fascinating. She molded every single egg for this piece, and while they were just eggs, she made them unique by adding a number to those eggs - all 5,000 eggs. There's not much else to say about this since it was more of an acknowledgement of wiping out a species rather than a connection to human life.

Sonoran Circumvolution

    The piece itself is great - respective of the community this was made for and highlighted certain animals based on the time of day. However, I am more intrigued by the behind the scenes  considering how collaborative she had to be and her stepping out of her usual mediums to achieve this. This piece being 20 ft tall, made of quart and steel, and producing it in the North then having it set in the South makes this piece the most impressive of all in my opinion. For this piece to also be representative of Tuscon, Arizona is a huge achievement within itself too. I don't recall if she said that the state was able to provide her funding as well, but either way she did the community and state justice. One thing, though, is I wish she explained the title of this piece since the other 3 pieces were explained. 

Are We Listening?

    Even though it's not finished, this piece being split into 3 separate pieces. The bird circle felt like it was the base of this project. It showcased the countries, language spoken, and how many people spoke it. While she explained that it emphasized coming together, that's kind of evident in the other 2 pieces, hence why I say it's the base. The 'V' that the birds do for migration represents interdependence on each other, and she explained that it was because the birds take turns being leaders and followers. This was a good explanation and allusion. Nothing more to add to this. The Spiral was incomplete, and I don't want to comment on it because of that. I'm only going to say that if the piece is supposed to represent chaos and an ego's destruction, shouldn't the piece be more messy? And to spend 7 years on it?! I admire her dedication to this piece (could not be me in the slightest lol).