Bluettie, 2024
(200 x 200 x 200 sculpture)
Clay, Gouache and Paper, Waterground, Olive Wood, Hand Dyed Cotton
Bluettie emerged during winter, following a reading of Bluets by Maggie Nelson — a text that tracks blue as obsession, fragment, and recurring interruption. Nelson writes of blue tarp: how fragments of blue appear once attention is tuned to the hue.
Bluettie operates as one such fragment.
She is a small clay figure formed around a stone collected near the dam beside the studio. A nephrologist (cloud specialist), Bluettie maintains a cloud sightings book, recording atmospheric conditions and passing formations. She travels with a minimal archive of personal belongings and occupies a self-defined blue zone.
Her scale is deliberate. Bluettie requires little. She is especially attuned to shared studio environments and often resides temporarily with other artists.
Bluettie moves inside a small blue box (painted blue). She observes from a chair.
The work treats colour as both companion and method — a way of locating attention, generating narrative, and allowing objects to carry their own agendas.
2024/09/30 Bluettie
CATALOGUE : archived
LOCATION : Wadandi Country, Cowaramup, Western Australia
TEXT : Bluets by Maggie Nelson
this project is dedicated to Ray Smithson