Covered Ground

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Rhonda Harder Epp, “Lichen in White – 1,” 2015

paper on foam core, 47” diameter (courtesy of the artist)

To drive to the North – it is 1,452 kilometers from Edmonton to Yellowknife – is to experience the shrinking of trees. Gnarled trunks, the kind you can wrap your arms around, lose girth by the hour. Somewhere around Fort Providence, N.W.T., they become so elongated and skinny they are more like ghostly essences of trees than trees themselves. 

Other forms of plant life also diminish as you head north. But lichens, which actually are not plants at all, but the scions of an odd alliance between fungi and algae, are different. They run riot, the number of species actually increasing. And for Tracey Bryant and Rhonda Harder Epp – the two artists in Covered Ground: Landscape and Lichen, on view until May at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, their beauty and resiliency is endlessly fascinating. 

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Rhonda Harder Epp, “Lichen in White – 1” (detail), 2015

paper on foam core, 47” diameter (courtesy of the artist)

Harder Epp, from Edmonton, makes paper sculptures inspired by a hiking trip to the Northwest Territories, where she first took notice of the organism’s “amazing design potential.” Lichens are tenacious in awe-inspiring ways, she says in her artist statement, and her circular sculptures convey this awe, too. 

Each is a magnified view – as through the lens of a microscope – of exquisite pattern and texture. She constructs each swirl and whorl with hundreds of punched-out paper shapes, gluing each fastidiously into place. A sense of calm or meditative passing of time emanates from the works, owing to her patient process.

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Rhonda Harder Epp, “Lichen in White – 5,” 2016

paper on foam core, 8” diameter (courtesy of the artist)

Lichen in White – 1 is wonderfully multifoliate. Flat, orderly discs fan out from their centres, as spiky growths sprout between. Lichens are entire worlds unto themselves, and in Lichen in White – 2, 4 and 5, Harder Epp enlarges their shifting terrains. 

She limits herself to shades of white to help focus on texture. Though monochromatic and cool, they are anything but dispassionate. It’s easy to feel her fascination with the intelligence, or at least the complexity, of design. The sculptures feel like a paean – the artist as worshipper of nature. 

Shifting the eye from Harder Epp’s crisp whites to Bryant’s expressive colours feels like the sudden melting of snow. Spring, in the Northwest Territories, reveals hundreds of lichen species – greens, oranges and neon yellows – dripped and splotched across granite swells. 

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Tracey Bryant, “Unearthing Light,” 2020

encaustic medium on aluminum panel, 12” x 12” (courtesy of the artist)

Several of Bryant’s paintings are done in encaustic medium. Wax easily retains marks and impressions, and she uses this sensitivity to remarkable effect. Her pieces articulate what she calls “a landscape etched in lines, scars, memory and time.” 

The Line that Divides depicts a pearly surface, cracked in two, covered in blooms of black and white filaments. Its large size makes the rock feel momentous. Pink Cycles is a portrait of black growths on pink granite, but it’s also like viscera or flesh. 

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Tracey Bryant, “Pink Cycles,” 2018

acrylic medium on canvas, 30” x 30” (courtesy of the artist)

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Tracey Bryant, “The Line that Divides,” 2020

encaustic medium and silver leaf on cradled wood panel, 36” x 48” (courtesy of the artist)

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Bryant’s paintings are all more than one thing – abstract and representational, close up and far away – and are imbued with emotion. It is, after all, a landscape she knows well. Yellowknife is where she grew up, and, to borrow a phrase from American writer Wendell Berry, she’s well acquainted with the "imaginative sufficiency" of home. Even as a child, she says, the land was her sanctuary.  

An unusual feature of this exhibition is the accompanying audio-guide. A pandemic replacement for in-person artist talks, it lets Bryant and Harder Epp discuss each piece. Audio tours typically entail an expert’s heady explanation of historical art, but Bryant and Harder Epp’s personal thoughts and frank admissions are a refreshing change. Looking at a piece while the artist’s voice reverberates in your ears affords a unique intimacy. It’s a novel approach that will hopefully continue long after the virus fades. ■ 

Covered Ground: Landscape and Lichen at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife from December 2020 to May 2021.

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