ARTiculate Spring/Summer 2022

The feminization of geology

by Susan Andrews Grace

The title of Carol Wallace’s exhibition, “Give or Take a Few Million Years,” gives a first clue as to the vast concept of time that informs her artmaking. The exhibition includes drawings, three-dimensional works, video projection and sound. The works immerse you in an embodied understanding of planet Earth that mesmerizes as it informs. Wallace, also a geologist and an artist known for painting and drawing, has stepped into new territory. A geologist lives with a different perspective: she wants to know the geology underneath her feet as well as its history before it became the landscape in front of her.

For this exhibition Wallace left behind an anthropocentric and extraction point of view to present a feminization of geology. An Instagram post by Wallace in January 2020 signalled a new beginning with the comment, “In the studio these days.” The accompanying image of a white sewing machine and a cloud of silk organza with a delicate white line of stitching through it announced a sharp turn in her practice.

Silk organza panels, the largest works in “Give or Take,” hang from the ceiling in vertical, staggered rows that invite you to come closer. They take up the most space in the gallery and give a delicate, ethereal mood; they flutter as you displace air, walking around them to look more closely. The silk plays with light and makes shadows on the nearest wall.

In a studio visit before the exhibition, Wallace mentioned that ink and machine-stitched drawings on the panels represent patterns that occur in the geological fabric of rock. Imagine my surprise to learn this scientific term, geological fabric, for the arrangement of elements (minerals, textures, fossils, layers) that make up rock. The fabric of a rock shows the pattern of its route to existence in solid form. This fact makes even more sense of the central works in the exhibition, even though you don’t need to be a geologist to be enthralled by them. They strongly suggest the feminine that characterizes Wallace’s confident visual thinking.

The panels have names that indicate their formation: pillow lava, wave ripples, mud cracks, granitic texture, conglomerate, coral and ductile textures. There’s a panel with needle-shaped crystals and one with basalt shards of glass. Some have wax paper shapes appliqued onto the organza that lend areas of opacity. One panel has all the chemical formulas for minerals in granitic rock, such as SiO2 for quartz. Biotite has the longest formula, over a metre. There’s a lot to see.

The exhibition includes a slide show of optical minerology in a separate room of the gallery. Digital images were taken through a petrographic microscope of thin section slides. The slides, as the name suggests, are thin slices of rock, mounted on a glass plate. Because of the polarization of light, each mineral has its own specific colours, such as biotite’s bright yellow, green and blue. This results in vibrantly coloured images of sensorial information big as a room, locked in a tiny slice of rock.

The slides are part of a love story; they are the property of Wallace’s partner, also a geologist. He’d asked her to be his assistant for the post-doctoral work he did in Nelson (1988) which resulted in the collection of the rocks the slides were made from. She turned down the offer and instead went to Atlin, B.C. They didn’t get together until 16 years later, but the slides remain a treasured aesthetic symbol of their relationship. The slides made their way into the show, sit on top of a clear mylar map of the Nelson Batholith, laid on a bed of satin.

Above: Rock Sculpture, epoxy clay on rock

Via headset, a soundscape of rock formation accompanies the video projection. No one knows what it sounds like when liquid turns to crystal, tens of kilometres below the surface. Wallace used knowledge of earth to imagine sounds never heard, a sort of synaesthesia of hearing what you’re seeing.

Carol Wallace at work. Photo: Meghan Krause.

In another turn of imagination, Wallace made small, exquisite stone sculptures that appear to burst with secrets. She split rocks that have been water-smoothed for centuries. Then she attached intricate, handmade clay epoxy forms on the split sides. The placement of the two halves, side by side, make a sort of fantastical cross-section.

Wallace collaborates with stone, showing us what hides in plain sight inside the vein of a rock. Her choice of silk organza made by worms leaps to a gentle aesthetic involving the human body as well as the earth from which we are made and to which we will return. “Give or Take a Few Million Years” enchants as it makes beautiful sense and sense of beauty.

“Give or Take” portrays geology with tenderness, intimacy and concern. Wallace makes straightforward connections between rock and life. Many elements in granitic rock, listed on the panel of mineral formulas, also make up the chemistry of human flesh and bone. The fact that my body is made of the same material as the granite foundation of many of the buildings in Nelson and surrounding area, fascinates. No one tells you this in school!

“Give or Take a Few Million Years” will be on display at the Tilted Brick Gallery in Creston from July 22 to September 3. tiltedbrickgallery.ca, carolwallaceart.com

Susan Andrews Grace is a poet, essayist and visual artist who lives in Nelson.

Banner Photo: “Give or Take a Few Million Years” installation. Ink and thread on silk organza, 2022. Panels measure 42 inches by 8 feet.