Tillamook Fern Cluster by Arielle Brackett
2021
Brass, powder coating, cord, flocking

Arielle Brackett is a metalsmith, mixed media artist and educator based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. She creates installations, small scale sculptures, wearables and jewellery.

Brackett received her BFA in metals at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, US) in 2017. She has exhibited nationally in the United States and internationally in Canada, Romania and Russia. She was awarded the Juror’s Choice Award in Jewellery from CraftForms 2021 and has received prestigious scholarship opportunities from Penland School of Craft and the collaborative craft education initiative, Frogwood. In addition to her studio practice, she works to build community as a founding member of a Portland-based art collective, New New Collective.

Arielle Brackett’s artwork intends to inform the public about the ecosystem of the Tillamook Forest in Oregon. The Tillamook Fern Cluster necklace encompasses the history of the Tillamook Rainforest: one of violence and devastation. In the Tillamook region alone, 215 species face extinction due to logging, urban development, agriculture, industrial pollutants and over-fishing. One such vulnerable species is the Pacific Northwest’s male fern.

At first glance, Tillamook Fern Cluster looks like a cluster of ferns, but upon further inspection, the red powder-coating emerges as a bloody coagulation and the flocking as a build-up of scar tissue. By representing environmental violence through artworks that require intimate engagement, Brackett exposes the public to the impacts of consumerism on our forests and encourages protective action.

www.ariellebrackett.com/ IG: www.instagram.com/ariellenbrackett/

Early Birds