Nature itself is truly a work of art; a fact certainly not lost on us lucky individuals living in the beautiful Cooloola region.  Local artist Jolian Solomon has devoted her talent to demonstrating that concept, by incorporating pieces of nature into her innovative and inspiring pieces of artwork.  An example is the painted casts she takes of the ripples left in the sand by the waves (pictured right).  The result is a permanent memento of the artistry of these fleeting marks in the sand, each unique and interpreted differently by each viewer.  Another example is her sculptures made from pieces of driftwood (pictured below).  She coats parts of the wood in resin then embeds the wood in sand until the resin is dry, leaving a textured sand coating.  Jolian’s backyard is filled with a variety of her environmental art experiments, most of them works in progress.

“Art is a constantly evolving process,” she says, “It is not static – it’s continually moving and changing.”

Born in Hampstead in north London, Jolian spent her childhood in Australia then returned to London where she spent her adolescence.  She lived for twenty years in the coastal counties of Devon and Cornwall but is now firmly settled here in Tin Can Bay, where she has lived for the past 11 years.  While she now focuses on her own distinctive style, she has done a lot of conventional art as well such as portrait work and watercolour and oil painting.  “I used to do paintings of all the fishing trawlers,” she says.  “In fact I still do a lot of painting.”

Jolian works as a visiting artist at the school on occasion, and has recently started taking groups of students and teachers for weekend camping trips out into the Wallum bush.  The objective of these trips is for the groups to work together to create pieces of art using only items sourced from the bush.  “We collect materials to hand such as sand, shells, rocks and sticks,” Jolian says.  The group then design and build their works of art.  “We allow the materials to dictate what we create.  It is a very spontaneous, intuitive process.”

Last September Jolian filmed one of the trips and has edited together a DVD showing the process from start to finish.  That particular group decided to construct a maze with a large cairn in the middle using bundles of sticks.  Once the installation was complete, another element was added by the group presenting a performance piece inspired by the movements they used when collecting the materials.  “All the materials are then replaced where they came from.  It is important that we ‘take only photographs, leave only footprints’,” Jolian says.  “A lot of it is about developing respect for the bush, and to learn about camping.”

The DVD mentioned will be part of Jolian’s exhibition at the Gympie Regional G

allery running the end of April and beginning of May.  “The exhibit is a celebration of the bush regeneration after the bushfires,” she explains.  She went into the bush and constructed pieces amongst the bushfire debris, and has been documenting them with photographs as the regrowth takes over and the artworks disappear back into the bush.  “I believe that’s one of the roles of the artist – to open the eyes of people to things they don’t normally notice.”