Extraction

EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention which seeks to provoke societal change by exposing and interrogating the negative social and environmental consequences of industrialized natural resource extraction. This global coalition of artists and creators are committed to shining a light on all forms of extractive industry—from mining and drilling to the reckless plundering and exploitation of freshwater, fertile soil, timber, marine life, and innumerable other resources across the globe. The Extraction Project will culminate in a constellation of nearly fifty overlapping exhibitions, performances, installations, site-specific work, land art, street art, publications, poetry readings, and cross-media events worldwide throughout 2021 and beyond.

My EXTRACTION painting series (2021) includes (10) 11” x 14” oil paintings (Ghost Gallows #1-10) and (1) 36” x 24” encaustic painting (Our Dark Heart), all of which focus on the central icon of the Extraction Project: Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. The gallows frames (also called ‘gallus frames’ or headframes) are conspicuous, mining era structures that dot the ‘richest hill’. Cables from a mine’s hoist house passed over sheave wheels at the top of the frame, lowering miners to their work underground. Mules, equipment and supplies were also transported down the shaft while load after load of ore were brought up to the earth’s surface. These paintings utilize iron oxide paint I made from Berkeley Pit toxic sludge. Echoes of the muscular, rough movements of Butte’s mining architecture now appear as ghosts, the ‘gallows’ of an extractive era that still holds our lives in the balance. The image of Berkeley Pit from above hovers like a ‘retablo heart’, a sacred wound that is a bleak object lesson in the consequences of extraction, not only for Montana, but for an entire planet.