The NWT is just chock full of interesting artists. And for this True North Tale, I got to sit down with another one. This is a True North Tale on April Glaicar a mixed media artist from Hay River, She told me about the current project she’s working on which allows her to create stunning pieces of art using physical pieces of the territory.
Arctic Raw is a jewelry exhibit featuring landscape, images of the Northwest Territories and other countries in the circumpolar world and other regions. Right now I’m working mostly on the Northwest Territories collection, I use a process where I take my photographs and recreate them into solid glass. And those are a feature part of the work and then different textures on the silvers and bronze metal or organic textures from that area that I’ve been to. So I might press rocks or plants and make molds from them or driftwood, those kinds of things
It also allowed April to include some of the precious metals found right here in the territories. Here’s April telling us what it was like to work with NWT diamonds on the Yellowknife piece
Working with the diamonds was really exciting for me and working under a magnifier and the beautiful brilliance and colour coming through them was really quite exciting looking forward to doing some more pieces with the NWT diamonds. And I also have some pieces in the works that are incorporating other semi-precious gemstones from the Northwest Territories that we really aren’t hearing about from Tourmaline and some Smoky Quartz
April comments on what it’s like to physically use pieces of the territory in her art.
Oh, that that for me is really powerful. I feel it complete the work that I’m doing the glass elements when I use my photographs in the yard there they become solid glass. And so that’s a very visual colorful textural element but using the actual stones or actually, the precious gems like the diamonds those are part of the ground here. They’re part of this place. Over years and years and years. Some of these rocks are billions of years old. And I feel really, really fortunate to be able to have that ability to visit places, take impressions of rocks, or sometimes collect rocks and whatnot. So I think it really brings the energy of the location to the piece that I’m working on. Whether it be art or jewelry, I think it carries that energy with it -April Glaicar, Northern Mixed Media Artist
To checkout all of April’s work head over to https://aprilglaicar.com/ or check out her Instagram and Facebook pages.
