Connie Chappel

April 26 - May 24, 2019

aceartinc. gallery - Winnipeg, Canada

Multi-faceted work uses sculptural installation to combine curious material into experimental archaeological scenarios. Unusual juxtapositions of artificial and natural objects investigate the idiosyncrasies of organic growth, decay and exhumation processes.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Winnipeg Arts Council. I would like to express my deep gratitude for the support.

Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.

Didactic Wall quote by Sandra Cisneros (“Four Skinny Trees” in The House on Mango Street)

EMBODIMENT photos by Karen Asher

These assemblage sculptures integrate unearthed organic material such as rocks, roots, branches and tree trunks with fabricated body fragments salvaged from flea market discards. They reference the underground through the excavation of dead plant and tree matter. The attached limbs suggest a human connection to the earth. The sculptures also furnish a second life to overlooked discarded matter both natural and manufactured by displaying them together at above-ground level. My intention is to align aspects of the natural community with that of the human condition. Some aspects include adaptation, diversity, self-generation, and the inescapability of death. The connection between human life and the natural world is essential during the struggle for survival.

The struggle of a birch tree is revealed through processes of human intervention.  Organic matter such as bark and sap is combined with manufactured material such as acupuncture needles, glass, vintage mannequin hand, and electric light to memorialize the felled tree.    

aceartinc. gallery - Winnipeg, Canada 2019

Installation of one hundred dangling fungal knots animated by air current.

A new species of fungal specimen emerge.

Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.

Quote by Sandra Cisneros (“Four Skinny Trees” in The House on Mango Street)

A weathered log presents as a body form displaying  tassels of beard lichen (usnea) and a transformative scale of pixie cup lichen (cladonia). Lichen thrives within a symbiotic relationship between algae and fungus.  Loss of diversity in the lichen community is a response to changing climate and environments. 

August 20 - September 8, 2020

AllArtNow Lab, Stockholm, Sweden

Meta Mask is a series of sculptural relief masks built from photographs of bark from trees in various states of health. Made from paper, the masks became by-products of trees. Displayed alongside each mask is the corresponding full tree image noting the longitude/latitude location and sea level of each. My interest in trees’ ability to filter air linked to the use of COVID-19 masks.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council. I would like to express my deep gratitude for the support.

installation photo by Katarina Eismann

September 9 - October 29, 2022

C2 Centre for Craft, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Vivarium Migration, an installation of ‘cultivated’ woolly hybrid creatures, is based loosely upon the invasive spongy moth introduced to North America for the silk industry. Its polyphagous larvae defoliate both deciduous and coniferous trees, then migrate en masse in search of new food. Native trees have limited ability to survive these attacks without the presence of natural predatory controls for the moths. My research found that spring drought prevents the growth of a fungal disease that collapses outbreaks of this moth; as a result of the recorded decrease in spring precipitation in the US South and midwest the spread of this moth and its accompanying devastation is expected to expand. This work contemplates the interconnectedness of species, monocultures and global warming. 

September 9 - October 29, 2022

C2 Centre for Craft, Winnipeg, Manitoba

The (Wardian Case) Collection contains diseased tree microcosms in cloth and plastic terrarium-like pouches to suggest safe storage of infected tree material. Paradoxically, the cloth allows contaminants to filter outward into the air. This work references the 19th century practice of collecting and transporting plant specimens from the new world back to Europe for study, and the subsequent reverse migration of plants from Europe to the Americas, in the glass cases created by Nathaniel Ward. These cases allowed the specimens’ survival during the long sea voyages and eventually became the aquariums and vivariums we use today to hold displaced aquatic and tropical species for our curiosity. This piece highlights the difficulty in containing the spread of disease within the tree canopy (especially monocultures) as well as between humans, and between species. 

September 12 - November 10, 2022

Gallery 1C03

The University of Winnipeg, Manitoba

“Stone Lung” is an object of wondrous dread. The sculpture lurks on the floor of the exhibition space like a hybrid life form. The starting point was an uprooted stump of a birch tree that, when pulled from the earth, was found to be clutching a stone in its roots. Chappel added a found mannequin hand and a plastic hair net, and all these dead things together take on a haunted kind of creature-ly life. The hand is outstretched, offering what could be a benediction, curse or entreaty: remember that we are connected, and that our fates are intertwined. Our garbage, and our human arrogance, will come back to haunt us, so we need to figure out how to live with our ghosts.

Erica Mendritzki, curator, text from exhibition brochure.

February 4 - March 4, 2023

Port Loggia Gallery

NSCAD University Waterfront Port Campus, Halifax, NS

Dying.exhibits is where the world of art, culture, and end-of-life in contemporary times collide. It invites the audience to re-evaluate their relationship with life and death. Existentialism is explored through varied art forms with a focus on the realms of fragility, death, dying, loss and grief.

January 14 - January 31, 2023

Artscape Youngplace, Toronto, ON