Nature’s Breath is an installation consisting of wood, matte white perspex, glass, wool, silicone, viridian green pigment, diffuser machines, Myrrh, Frankincense and Mayan Dark Copal tree resin. Nature’s Breath was developed from Lea Rose Kara’s Bloom project with glass artist Dovile Grigaliunaite.
Bloom, blown glass and wool, 26.5 x 25 x 26 cm, 2022. The air pocket are filled with ashes from the burnt wool.
Collaboration is key to my practice and Nature’s Breath was developed from my Bloom project with glass artist Dovile Grigaliunaite. Bloom explored Grigaliunaite’s and my interest in themes of materiality, fluidity, and pushing the expectations of a static object. The collaboration triggered me to think about incorporating the sense of smell into my work, as I began to view the Bloom sculpture as a potential vessel.
I chose to expand Bloom into an installation of three glass sculptures. The vapour is infused with the scent of one of three tree resins - Frankincense, Mayan Dark Copal, and Myrrh - and fills up each glass from within, slowly escaping to the wider gallery through small holes. It evokes associations with the history of plants and organisms that have existed over millions of years. Set on a timer, the vapour machines breathe out the scents every hour, creating a rhythm of inhaling and exhaling that reflects our own breathing. Each glass vessel is set at a different height to allow people to differentiate the three vapours.
Cup of Information, silicone and viridian green pigment,
8.5 x 21.5 x 8.5 cm, 2022.
A Cup of Information, seen here being touched, came from a happy mistake. This unexpected happenstance was experienced during the casting process, and translated into the viewer’s engagement with the piece. During a previous show, I had multiple viewers asking me if they could touch a Cup, curious about its translucent yet solid appearance. Through their touch their expectation was surprised as the bowl wobbled like a jelly. This moment of delight and connection to the object made me consider creating my own army of Cups of Information, which I later incorporated into my Nature’s Breath installation.
During this time, I was reading about our use of senses, with particular interest in the sense of touch. Ashley Montague’s ‘Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin’ and Constance Claussen’s ‘The Book of Touch’ were particularly interesting and established that “to touch is always to be touched”. By intentionally isolating a specific sense, I had the power to manipulate and increase certain emotions such as empathy in a viewer’s experience with the work, and potentially contribute to a wider engagement and new enhanced view of nature.