Avery Ascher

The 6 pieces shown here are part of a body of work titled LANGUAGE OF OFFERING.  This body of work brings together natural forms including bones, shell, and paper from a wasp nest with elements I made from copper inspired by those forms.  It also brings in ideas around the process of making, as well as migration and mobiliary art, those small artifacts that prehistoric peoples made for spiritual, kinship and other purposes and carried with them from place to place.  The ‘venus’ figure, for example, was inspired by similar such figurines dating back as far as 40,000 years ago.  The 12 pieces came about in part through exploring my deep ancestry through taking part in the National Geographic Geno 2.0 genographic project, and also builds on ideas of matriarchal continuity that I previously explored in my Maternal Line project.

All the natural elements were gathered from the area where I live at Clearwater Lake, north of The Pas MB.  Walking the trails and lakeshore there I have been privileged to find these forms that periodically reveal themselves.  In fabricating the copper ‘echoes’ of those forms, I used various metalworking techniques including fold-forming, and synclastic and anti-clastic forming.

I made the copper bowls/vessels starting from flat copper sheet, using a range of forming and hammering techniques to create depth and volume, together with cold connections such as rivets and stapling.  The bowls range from around 7″ to 11.5″ diameter, and are finished in various patinas which give them their colours.