Soil/Soul:
Paintings and Sculpture
by Andrew Fearnside and Bryce Hample

Opening Saturday, January 9, 2016, 2-4pm. Light refreshments provided.

The Open Space Visitor Center is located south of Paseo del Norte and north of Montano off of Coors Blvd, at 6500 Coors NW.

An Artist’s Statement:

How will the global economy reconcile itself to global
ecology? What is the nature of our relationship with our world?

Soil and soul. 

The totality of our being, the “soul” that Jung
called Psyche, is like soil. Dirt. It is highly local, and highly variable in
every dimension; it bears residues of historical events that go back not just
centuries, but millennia; it is known in some dimensions, and recedes into
mystery in others; and it is absolutely vital to life, whether acknowledged or
not.

As we cultivate a living, embodied relationship with the
soil beneath our feet, we cultivate our own depths, and both grow in tandem.
Cut off from soil, our souls can’t grow; and cut off from soul, we can’t
cultivate a relationship to soil.

This relationship has no fixed form, but it is alive. Just
as the neurology of living, human relationships are vastly complex, human
relationship to land, and place, and soil is complex beyond the understanding.
Neurobiologists don’t yet have complete maps of every aspect of the systems
that embody human relationships. Soil biologists don’t yet have complete
biologies or taxonomies

These wall objects, both paintings and sculptures, are the
product of two years of experimentation with materials, fabrication and
finishing techniques invented out of fascination with documents of traditional
lifeways from my lineage and from others around the world.

It’s a quiet life, the feelings in this group, a
contemplative life. For some this life energy is almost inert–stone-like,
seed-like–and for others, life is warm and percolating and snug. Sometimes
soil is dark and forbidding. Sometimes soil is warm and humid and sunny.

These sculptures are not representations of things, but
things unto themselves. They have life in them. They are also metaphors: they
are reminiscent of seeds, of swaddled infants, of emptied husks or silent
shields. Though they are silent, we can relate to them through these
ideas–what would a shield like this protect us from? And what do I want to
proclaim? Or, what would sprout from this seed? And what do I want to
cultivate?