Itzell Tazzyman’s winning piece Revealing our First Nature (Trancendence) II. Photography, Rob Little.
Heartfelt congrats to Itzell Tazzyman who picked up this year’s coveted City of Hobart Art Prize for Glass at a gala event held last Friday night at the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery [TMAG]. (The winning entry for photography/digital media was Ruth Maddison’s Kiah River.)
In addition to pocketing a tidy cheque for the princely sum of $7,500, Itzell and her mum were treated to some very swish hospitality courtesy of the Prize sponsor, Moorilla Winery; the Pinot was exemplary and the accommodation plush, by all accounts.
For further information regarding the prize (Jess Loughlin received a commendation from the judges) go to…
http://www.hobartcity.com.au/HCC/STANDARD/CITY_OF_HOBART_ART_PRIZE.html
Meanwhile, for those intrigued by the winning piece, we’re posting the following ‘sketch’ of the work, direct to you from Itzell’s own quill:
Revealing Our First Nature (TRANSCENDENCE)
PINE
Organic and free growing
Pine, once the great conifer, son of the Araucaria tree
The first tree
Habitat for dinosaurs, plant of my first country (Chile)
Basic and elemental;
Now, tamed, cultivated, managed
last of the cheap ‘real’ woods.
Is there still the beauty of the great tree in this wood?
A CHAIR
A place of rest.
Not a rock by the side of the road, a random shape
Basic in form the chair, fits the human body. Its anatomy defined by our shape. Seating height governed by the legs.
The base, a flat surface for the buttocks.
Is there any trace of the tree in this chair? Perhaps the wood grain?
Resting place,
refuge from the jungle, the forests, the roadside,
a harbor not just for the body, but also the mind.
a silence.
a dark.
a meditation.
a pause.
a nothing, which is also a something.
GLASS
Liquid contained in suspension
stillness becoming motion
Glass, the result of human efforts but foreign to Nature
Intense, heat forms, melts and shapes it
Its existence has given us eyes into the universe and into ourselves
(we and glass) have become more known to ourselves
and yet….. are you more than this?
a shape to the shapeless?
A presence.
A representation of ourselves?
AIR
Is presence,
when there is no air
there is no life
The BUBBLE
A gasp was the first breath,
when forced out of water,
air fills the space inside.
The bubble is breath solidified.
AIR, expanded by heat, made you
but you would have formed a natural shape anyway.
You represent the edgeless
contained.
A moment in the being
it is not the air that is trapped inside
it is us trapped outside.
Inside you the world is magnitude, space and light
timeless
together, air and bubble are one….
And one day,
today,
motionless.
THE WORK
The chair is a link from daily life, the present. The bubble is undergoing a transformation, squeezing thought the junction of the chair, each bubble filling or emptying. Moving from the chair’s inner space to the outer space. As it does, a remnant memory of its last shape remains. But in all this the air is unchanged, it is the constant.
We don’t expect the static object to breath. (sometimes we treat ourselves like static objects).
We see, but there is so much that is not perceived. What is perception if not another sense? A wonder, locked in the guts of our knowing, the child of intuition and wisdom. At birth, we come into being through our mother’s passage, this is not the only time we change. This experience leaves a trace. Our belly button is that point of junction. Architectural remnant of birth, a visible trace revealed only when naked. A link between outer and inner self. A portal – bodiless, shapeless, endless space. Known by many names in many cultures. This space inside us has no edges. From here we find our First Nature. From here happiness emerges, is cultivated. This work is about material and experience:
Wood, Glass, Air – Inside, Outside, Presence.
In our lives we sense this spatial connections as many things. It can be an absence we sense in our depths we may try and fill. An indefinable abstract element sometime called ‘a soul’ which we grow to know.
In any case it is a presence, an experience of being human.
Life’s journey is about stretching and changing shape, inside. Transformation is not effortless, most times it is driven by our hardships; loss, sickness, grief, death, fear, desires. Sometimes by deep meditation, the cultivation of love even happiness. The experience of time passing also changes us. Throughout our lives we feel and listen to learn – our own way.
There is nothing more than change and being. What we experience is transformation.
This is what I’m representing in this work.
Itzell Tazzyman29th January 2007
Title of work – Revealing Our First Nature (TRANCENDENCE)Dimensions – H 950 x D 430 x W 400mm
Description – production chair, glue, metal, glass and air.
Date – January 2007
Artist – Itzell Tazzyman
Collaborators – Brian Corr, Janice Vitkovsky and Patricia Roan
Photography – Rob Little
