Artist's statement for ARTCOP21

A global festival of cultural activity on climate change, September to December 2015

 

Little white clay bowls, pinch pots, a small hole in the side. Attached a fresh spring leaf (its spring here in Aotearoa New Zealand). The little pots are left as gifts for passersby, gifts of a beautiful fragile made form which contains and honors a beautiful fragile natural leaf form.

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The little gifts are left on park benches, bus seats, in the library, the mall, the doctor’s office. Anywhere people may have a moment to sit down and rest quietly and notice something different in their environment. In picking up the small pot and looking at it, in that moment of attention to something other than everyday life, a quiet question might arise as to the mystery and ephemerality of the natural world around us.

Australian artist Carole Driver has made dozens of these tiny pinch pots from local clay. They will be placed throughout the inland city of Hamilton throughout the southern spring. The greening of the deciduous trees of the Waikato area of the North Island in which she currently lives are a glorious sight after the long winter. These trees are part of the already extensive terra forming of this land and extensive climate change would rapidly increase the seeding of imported species, leading to further decimation of native species, initially making the greening even brighter as biodiversity diminishes.