POLLY GOULD - Different Paths from Sky to Ground: The Sea Stories
Different Paths from Sky to Ground explores the water cycle and the patterns of connections between falling snow on glaciers of the Alps to the waters of Venice: its drinking water and its lagoon. The crystalline form of ice and the geometries of the historic and now redundant rainwater cisterns in the city's squares provide the shapes of the sculptural works. formed by glass seed beads - conterie - threaded on wires. The title phrase Different Paths from Sky to Ground is taken from the explanation of why each snowflake is different from every other: It is the pathway of the fall of the developing snow crystal that influences the variation in form, yet every snow crystal is structured as a hexagon due to the crystallization of water molecules. Ruskin's image of the sea of ice is here remade as an anaglyphic giclée print. Two stretched overlapping perspectives are separated into red and cyan and appears three dimensional when viewed with bi-colour lenses. The same image is printed as a Risograph multiple in two tone acqua and orange on Alga Carta paper, an historic ecological paper first developed in the 1990s that is manufactured from the excessively proliferating algae from the Venice Lagoon.