It all started a few years ago when I found a cone-shaped wire chair with no legs. My first reaction was: ‘If I turn it upside down, I can make a volcano’.
Initially, I wasn’t sure what to use for a lava flow. Luckily, some of the artists and Creative Spaces staff at River Studios (where my studio is located) drank a lot of Coca Cola, and were happy to save their cans for me.
Volcanoes amaze me
I am fascinated by volcanoes. I was acutely aware of the catastrophic eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980, in the US state of Washington where I grew up.
Later I worked in both Hawaii and Vanuatu, where I was able to observe volcanic eruptions in action. Both were amazing and memorable.
In Australia I visited Organ Pipes National Park north of Melbourne, created through ancient volcanic activity. The basalt columns, which resemble organ pipes, were created a million or so year ago from volcanoes located near Sunbury.
Knowing that Australia was the oldest continent, I had assumed that all volcanoes here were extinct. On a visit to Colac, however, I saw landscapes shaped by more recent volcanic activity and learned that Victoria is located on the Newer Volcanics Province (NVP) of dormant volcanoes.
Archaeological evidence shows that First Nations peoples have lived on the Newer Volcanics Province in what is now south-eastern Victoria for at least 37,000 years. Their language indicates that they have witnessed eruptions at various locations. The article How Gunditjmara words and traditions hold stories of Victoria’s rich volcanic history by Sian Johnson in 2020 provides some fascinating details.
Sustainability and my arts practice
I am also very aware that, although only Earth can create new land forms and minerals through volcanic eruptions, humanity is destroying our natural resources by overuse. Thus, it seemed appropriate to create the volcano from discarded and reclaimed materials.
In my practice, I value sustainability and create most of my artworks from trash found on streets and beaches, or discarded by others at River Studios. As you can see from my studio, where I have been working since mid-2018, I have collected a wide range of unloved and unwanted materials from the streets.
Some serious experimenting
It soon became apparent that the chair was a bit too low for an installation, and I needed a way for it to grow. Luckily, one day on the way home from a concert, I found a very sturdy table without its top. My husband was with me and helped me get it home. Over time, I also collected possible candidates to become an ‘ash cloud’, as well as various pieces of black fabric to cover the chair.
Then the studio build started. I had found a large peanut-shaped piece of wood to use as a new table top on which to set the chair. It soon became apparent, however, that the chair needed to be positioned so that the hole at the top was level rather than at an angle. This required adding extra pieces of wood on one side, drilling holes, and finding suitably long screws. I had to ensure that everything was secure and aligned before I could drill more holes and use wires to attach the chair.
To enable the lava to flow from the top, I punched a hole in the base of each can and threaded them through with fishing line. A very tedious job! Each string of cans had a heavy bolt at the top end that I secured inside a witches hat (traffic cone) sticking up through the hole in the chair.
Then creating it for real!
I was excited about the prospect of being involved in the Testing Studio at the Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre gallery. Luckily, I was one of the artists selected to participate. Of course, a gallery is different from a studio, and the first problem was the ash cloud. The hanging rail at the gallery was not above where the volcano was to be installed. With the help of new curator Jasmeet Sahi, we figured how to centre it by using two opposing hanging wires. The centre director, Karen Ingram, looked on.
Then the serious work began: installing the witches hat, covering the back of the volcano, wiring the chair securely to the angled table top, connecting long sticks to the chair wires to make the volcano spread at the bottom, securing these to the floor with masking tape to keep them from slipping, and using more black cloth to cover the front. Next came securing the bolts, attached to the fishing line connecting the soft drink cans, inside the witches hat. Finally, I laid out the pathway of the lava flow, to end where the window ended..
On the home stretch!
Next on the agenda was attaching strips of black cloth to make the volcano look more craggy. I then placed a border along the lava pathway to prevent the cans from rolling all over the floor. I used a black plastic spiral coil – can’t remember where I found that – that I stuck to the floor using BluTack, and starting laying out the cans. It took what seemed like ages. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, but triumphant!
When visitors to the gallery view my volcano and look at this blog, I’m hoping they will learn something new about the land on which they live: both its geological and First Nations history. I also hope they will think of ways they too can tread more lightly on the Earth by remembering the 5Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose and recycle.
