Participating Artists:

Barbara De Pirro
Miguel Edwards
Aaron Haba
Meredith Hall and Vaughn Bell
Todd Lawson
Julie Lindell
Peppé
Stephen Rock
Gerry Stecca
Kristin Tollefson
Sylwia Tur

Sponsored by:

Center on Contemporary Art
Carkeek Park Advisory Council
Seattle Parks and Recreation
Associated Recreational Council
Department of Neighborhoods

Supported by:

Seattle Weekly
Piper's Creek Nursery
Hardware Sales, Bellingham, WA
Ballard Hardware
Ballard Sheet Metal



Site 3: Kristin Tollefson
Bainbridge Island, Washington
www.floraform.blogspot.com

About the Arist:

Kristin Tollefson was born in 1967 in Mountain View, California and grew up in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island. She attended Carleton College (MN), and in 1989 completed her BA, Cum Laude, with a double major in Anthropology/Sociology and Art History. In 1992 she graduated with an MFA in Metalsmithing and the Women’s Committee Merit Scholarship from Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI). From 1992 to 1993, she lived in Iceland with fellowships from Fulbright and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

Tollefson has received grants and awards from sources including Artist Trust, Centrum Foundation, Pratt Fine Arts Center, PONCHO, and Jack Straw, and in 2008 was named an Island Treasure by the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council. Her work has been featured on the Seattle Channel, in Fiberarts Design Book 7, Metalsmith Magazine, and An Island in Time and is included in collections at the City of Seattle, 4Culture, the Nordic Heritage Museum, Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, Bainbridge Public Library, Seattle Public Library and the City of Kent, among others. Tollefson’s current practice includes studio, environmental installation and public art, curatorial work (Transition & Transformation, 2004; Collocation, 2005) and teaching. She lives and works on Bainbridge Island.

Artist's Statment:

I am drawn to the sweetness of the grove and the sustained contradictions it holds. A rigorous twenty-foot square planting grid begets sprawling trees with rare fruit and baroque names: Wealthy, King, Gravenstein, Dutch Mignone, Red Astrachan, Rhode Island Greening, Bietigheimer, and Esopus Spitzenberg. A snag punctuates the edge of the planted hill; an unruly mound of blackberry cane encroaches. I propose a celebratory mediation: the snag serves as a structure around which to weave the thorny cane studded with fantastical fruit evocative of the fruits of the orchard. As light and color enliven the tree trunk, its clustered adornment alludes to the bees whose home adorns the snag, busy caretakers of this fruit forest.

Piper Orchard’s undulating topography suggests the waves of historic actions in this place: discover, reveal, tend, languish, discover, reveal and tend again. Inherent in this cycle are our human tendencies toward both the practical and the dreamy and a manifestation of the confluence of people, environment and the creative artifact. This installation draws upon my interest in the sinuous architectural forms of needlework, botanical growth, and handwork along with the use of simple modular elements to create a complex whole.