SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT WORKING WITH PLANT MATERIAL


Working with plant material is an experience that extends even to the sense of smell. The smells of dried leaves, stems, petals, etc. in their storage boxes hit you with remembered memories.

One can be led astray by the colours and forms of the various plants. It seems that it would be enough just to photograph this raw material without having to manipulate it into some final cognized work and not theorize that initial spontaneity out of it. And that is one of the frustrations of working with chlorophyll-based organic matter. It changes quickly and it's pretty well impossible to preserve this initial kick.

The initial kick is often in the gathering, or even the scouting stage, as you size up what looks like to be a particularly satisfying crop. Recent work has become more sculptural and the black locust has become a personal favourite. It's a difficult plant to locate in Toronto. Gathering its leaves can be a painful undertaking and its sharp spikes leave reminders, especially behind the fingernails. (though this task pales to Wolfgang Laib's gathering of tiny pollen for his large floor pieces - now that's discipline). These particular stems looks especially beautiful drying in string-tied bundles (three pieces in this show are black locust-based).

Spontaneity and accident (intuition) are both important aspects of my work procedure. Though I know and like some of the work of certain well-known contemporaries the jolt of recognition and spiritual affinity I feel most with is the non-leaf work of Martin Puryear, a wood sculptor. What I feel drawn to in his work is the poetry and the mysterious allusions. This to me is what leaf work should be, not just something that "illustrates" the passage of time, colour, or some other natural process. And that is a danger one can easily fall into because the innate beauty of the materials one works with can make you lazy and you could go on creating perfectly aesthetic constructions that have no poetic or transcendent resonance. This lack of poetry, and the supremacy of good design, has led someone like Richard Long to call certain of his successful contemporaries "second generation decorators". I can attest that this can indeed become a working hazard.

Environmental messaging is of little or no interest to me and in that sense it's a misnomer to call this work environmental (at least in the sociopolitical sense). Plant material happens to be what I'm working with and I have no arguments about technology, pollution, the truth of nature (at least as far as the art is concerned). I'm not even interested in the time aspect of the plant material, even though that is part of working with plant matter. I like working with plant matter, I like its fragility, its impermanence.

Ideally, what I would like to accomplish is to manipulate it so that it isn't like plant matter in its original form (and meaning) anymore but a new "ground" for contemplation, detachment and elegant thought.

Ted Karkut .
Artist's Statement . Propeller 2007

India 66 cm x 50 cm leaves, charcoal, prismacolor, acrylic on paper 2005

Because It's There 112 cm x 66 cm cherry leaves on gessoed paper 2004

Open Faced 170 cm x 40 cm approx. clay, black locust stems, acrylic 2006

Shadow Piece dimensions variable clay, maple leaves 2007

Sectio Aurea 61 cm x 45 cm petals helianthus divaricatus, pencil, acrylic 2006

Sectio Aurea (side view) 61 cm x 45 cm petals helianthus divaricatus, pencil, acrylic 2006

Ojibway 58 cm x 51 cm acrylic, maple leaves on board 2006-16

Leaf Piece 40 cm x 44.5 cm each ginkgo, maple stems, thread 2002

Pret-a-Porter (coll. Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University) willow leaves on paper frame 2004/05

Helen's Exile 76 cm x 83 cm oil on canvas 1990-2002

Always Known in the Mind 44 cm x 42 cm charcoal, ballpoint pen on paper 2006

Midnight by the Well and Sky 1 106 cm x 93 cm charcoal, ballpoint pen on paper 2006

Midnight by the Well and Sky 2 111 cm x 93 cm charcoal, ballpoint pen on paper 2006

Kailas 19 cm x 16 cm charcoal, ballpoint pen on paper 1998

Japanese Rain 90 cm x 50 cm ballpoint pen, charcoal on paper nd

Meta Blue 50 cm x 40 cm colour photographs, folded exposed photo paper 2006

High Park Early Snow 49 cm x 19 cm b&w photographs, coloured pencil 2006

Windy Day Mandala 106 cm x 93 cm maple leaves, laserprints of colour photograph 2006

105 degrees W 18 degrees N 70 cm x 50 cm charcoal, acrylic, ballpoint pen, flamboyant tree pod 2014

Sumer Is Icumen In 76 cm x 101 cm coloured pencil, gesso, acrylic 2015

8 Haiku, Gallery 50, November 2015

Wind Scatter Piece dimensions variable sumac leaves, clay, light 2015

Japanese Rain 70 cm x 92 cm ballpoint pen, charcoal on paper 2015

Hill 1 91 cm x 76 cm colour pencil, pencil on gessoed panel 2015

No Trace Remains 86 cm x 75 cm ballpoint pen on paper 2015

From The Green Hill 62 cm x 77 cm acrylic, pencil, willow leaves on paper 2015

Tatami Detail 91 cm x 122 cm pencil, acrylic, willow leaves on wood panel 2015

Not A Leaf Stirs 122 cm x 153 cm acrylic, pencil, willow leaves on wood panel 2015

Sunshine Recorder 122 cm x 153 cm acrylic, woodland sunflower petals on wood panel 2014

Ted Karkut in front of "Kailas" willow leaves, acrylic, clay on wall Gallery 50, October 2017 indianyellow1 (view from above) 91 cm x 122 cm acrylic, black locust stems, clay on wood panel 2017 Rhus 2 50 cm x 27 cm digital print on Fuji matte paper 2019 Rhus 1 22 cm x 33 cm digital print on Fuji matte paper 2019 Rhus 4 20 cm x 30 cm digital print on Fuji matte paper 2019 Salix 48 cm x 55 cm acrylic, oils, willow leaves, clay, wood mouldings on wood panel 2018 Transitory 143 cm x 85 cm x 45cm approx. sumach trunk, sumach stems, acrylic, oil 2021 Sumach Bushes, Early Autumn 106 cm x 121 cm trimmed sumach leaves, acrylic 2022