See-Saw Glasses 2010

Parasites (laser cut banana leaf)

Tree Boat

Cow Carousel 2009

Liquid Landscapes:

Green and Red Road Kill

Liquid Landscapes

Tree Boat

Slow Speed Boat

Installation for the Joy of Making

Paper Flotilla

Life raft

Liferaft Goggles

Flying Boat

Lifebuoy Collar

Gather-ing

Gather-ing - install

Gather-ing - working on the install with artist Gillian Widden

Gather-ing - install of Sky Fork from roof timbers

Craft Emergency 2016

Gather-ing Somerset Museum of Rural Life

My current series of laser cut paper and acrylic vessels explore the theme of survival.

I produced these works during my residency in the laser cutting studios at Plymouth College of Art and Design.

The initial impetus for this work was a commission from Dartington Arts to work with veteran U.S. site specific choreographer Stephan Koplowitz and his company Taskforce for LIQUID LANDSCAPES, a series of water related dance performances in Plymouth in June 2009. I was commissioned to produce a site specific installation of over 300 multi coloured paper vessels to which the dancers responded at the Mayflower Steps. The first designs focused on a simple net shape and were all hand cut.

The first prototype boat shape was based on a commercial packaging net, but I repeatedly customised this to produce a range of more complex laser cut vessels. The boat can be seen as a life raft piled high with remnants of lost lands, a salvage vessel or Noah’s Arc. The devil is in the detail however; the imagery reveals that, in our rush to discover pastures new or to escape the exhausted and derelict, we bring with us unwanted passengers, be they stowaways in the form of non indigenous species, viruses, and voracious technologies, or simply our own inadequacies.

photo: laser cut copper boats produced with a bursary from the Quenington Sculpture Foundation
profile photo credit : Steve Russell

All images copyright Helen Snell
www.axisweb.org/p/helensnell

View my website http://www.axisweb.org/p/helensnell/