Esti Mese: Sculptures from a Bedtime Story, is a series of felt characters from folk tales, legends, childhood, and motherhood. They travel from a Hungarian forest along the Danube River to the Canadian wilderness of Northern British Columbia and the Arctic.
The outdoors is where my work originates from. I spent my childhood along the Danube river in Hungary. Every summer my parents and I would canoe from Budapest up to our camp. My world was filled with the outdoors: frogs, beetles, foxes, wild bores and an imaginary wolf friend. They occupied my mind through songs and events along with Hungarian folk tales, poems, and bedtime stories from illustrated Hungarian picture books. When we immigrated to Canada, the natural world opened up to a vast wilderness. Summers were spent in the Rockies and the Gulf Islands. Later travels to the Canadian Arctic, Iceland, and living in Northern BC with twin toddlers would become the setting for Esti Mese: Sculptures from a Bedtime Story. It is a tale inspired by motherhood and a desire to visually tell a tale to my twins about our roots. Hemlock, Spruce and Pine represent Northern BC. The Caribou, or Tuktu in Inuktitut, the Arctic. Beetle, the Danube River, and Boar, a Hungarian forest.
Decoy is a photo/sculpture series about human/animal relations in which human figures interact and pretend play with felted animal pelts, suits, and marionettes. The visual stories are about habitat loss (like deforestation), wildlife mismanagement, invasive species, adapting, and coexisting.
Using Icelandic wool I process the raw fibre after shearing and prepare a felted textile that I hand sew, needle felt, and then steam into a final sculpture/pelt. The animal characters in action are then photographed on location native to the animal from temperate rainforests to arctic habitats.
Tales for Tuktu depicts the plight of the caribou (tuktu in Inuktitut) based on a trip to the Canadian Arctic. A Canada Council Grant led me to Baffin Island with the intent to observe the caribou in their habitat. In an area where large numbers once roamed I encountered only one to whom this series is dedicated to. She stands alone and preserved in a museum diorama. Scenes of a tapirs’ unwelcome visit, a herd of caribou spooked by a polar bear pelt, an aftermath of a trophy hunt, and seals fleeing from human entanglement are about riddles the animals are facing in the arctic. The animals are in distress caused by a negative human interaction and a balanced coexistence is in question.
Habitat is a series of macro photos of dioramas based on habitats where the animal population is in decline and endangered. The photos are inspired by my travels on Baffin Island. The dioramas are made out of sugar, tea ,milk, and cake to recreate the Canadian Arctic. I am using tempting and irresistible sweets because as a child I regretted eating chocolate animals and felt guilty for consuming them. I imagined they could feel every bite and nibble. It was inevitable that eventually they would be eaten. Will our arctic environment eventually be all "eaten" up by us humans too?
