Jill’s recent art reaches back to an ancient time in the history of our planet, by imagining the waters and mysterious creatures who swam over New Mexico and Colorado in the shallow ocean that scientists named the Western Interior Seaway. Jill relates this work to current environmental issues with sea level rise and the extinction of species. Fossil traces appear in places she sometimes encounters when hiking in the dry mountain foothills near her home. There are sea shells in rocky ledges and the impression of forgotten creatures taking their last breath. In places, the ripples of ocean waves captured in the sand were hardened into rock and now tilt upward, evoking primordial memories of a distant time. Through fossils and geologic evidence from the Cretaceous time period in Colorado and New Mexico, Jill discovered interesting details and images which are the focus of this body of work.
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Cocoliths I Bark fiber 2018
23 x 16 x 4” -
Cocoliths II Bark fiber 2018
23 x 16 x 2” -
Detail from a page of the artist book, Ancient Seas 2019
Handmade paper, laser-etched drawing -
Primordial was inspired by the fossil of an ancient marine species, Pachyrhiodus, alive in the Cretaceous time period, that swam in the inland seas covering part of the southwest, where I live. The piece is silk organza with Kozo bark fiber. It also includes shapes inspired by ammonites and primitive versions of floating algae, called Coccoliths, which bloomed amid the ancient shallow seas and brought nourishment to the creatures there. 50 x 53 x 3” -
(Detail) Primordial was inspired by the fossil of an ancient marine species, Pachyrhiodus, alive in the Cretaceous time period, that swam in the inland seas covering part of the southwest, where I live. The piece is silk organza with Kozo bark fiber. It also includes shapes inspired by ammonites and primitive versions of floating algae, called Coccoliths, which bloomed amid the ancient shallow seas and brought nourishment to the creatures there. 50 x 53 x 3”
