Claudine Metrick

The animations include collage elements such as hand-made flowers, bees, and butterflies that enact imaginary scenarios mythologizing the life cycle. This cut paper playground allows me to examine natural processes with an eye towards play and conjecture.

The First Spring consists of a silkscreen field of beech and maple leaves on Japanese paper over which I am projecting an animation of miner bees. From this ascend brightly colored Mourning Cloak butterflies drawn on duralar. The bees and butterflies in the installation are both harbingers of spring - some of the earliest signs of life after the winter thaw. The Mourning Cloaks were once a sign that the ground could be dug for graves, hence their name. The juxtaposition of the foraging bees with the messengers of mourning speaks to our collective grief right now.

Nightshade and Pollinate contrast lush native ecologies with images of dangerous plants and invasive insects that are destructive of that balance. Installed in a small enclosed structure with a peep hole for viewing, “Nightshade” includes botanical paintings and a collection of painted paper insects cut-out and folded into free-standing sculptures. From invasive beetles, to poisonous plants, the walls and floor crawl with vibrant illustrations. Darkly luminous bell-shaped Datura blossoms tower over clusters of shimmering iridescent flying insects. In contrast, "Pollinate" is filled with native pollinators and their host plants. Golden soldier beetles and hummingbird hawk moths exist amongst plumes of bee balm and goldenrod.

Created in 2020, these pastel drawings and acrylic paintings deal with disintegration. The drawings depict a single bouquet left to molder and decay in the studio over a period of weeks. The paintings are a focused study of the color and form in the resulting withered bouquets. The colors are distilled and the forms contorted into sculptural moments.

This project is my second that deals with the passing of a dear friend. When Jane first became ill, her father planted sunflowers in a patch of ground near her bedroom window so that she could view them on days she was too unwell to get out of bed. He faithfully tended this space during her illness, and the flower became a symbol of hope for her and her community.

Jane died two weeks before her 41st birthday. At her funeral, packets of sunflower seeds were distributed to her friends and family. At their peak, the flowers I planted were massive – easily eight feet tall with heads over a foot wide. I watched as the blossoms rotated from east to west each day reminding me of a folk song that Jane and I once sang together. As I sat on the porch taking them in, I knew I had to draw them.

All work is acrylic and wax pastel on vintage Bingo cards.

This is an ongoing project. There are currently 20 paintings in the series.

This project is a response to the death of a dear friend. Jane spent almost her entire lifetime in the Arizona desert, and for me, the place came to embody her. The images are rendered at a small scale reminiscent of a snapshot – a repository for memory. Each landscape holds an isolated moment of mystery which I hope casts the desert as a vehicle for the sacred and speaks to the loss of a great and abiding love in my life.

This in an ongoing project.

All drawings are 5 x 5 1/2 inches made in my sketchbook with colored pencil. They are a record of my surroundings at home - a meditation on the beauty infused in everyday life.

“The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.” -Anne Lamott

I never considered painting these flowers in situ. These are not landscapes; they are memorials – a commemoration of the garden I built at my home over the past seven years.