The man made of wine bottles sports a surveillance mirror. Like his maker, he’s monumentally interested in keeping an eye on everything.
Jerry Pethick’s Le Semeur/Sunlight and Flies, 1984/2002, is at the Seattle Art Museum as a solitary representative of the artist’s career.
Born in 1935, Pethick died in his home of brain cancer on Hornby Island in 2003. He’s affiliated in Vancouver with the Catriona Jeffries Gallery, which means he is far from overlooked. Why is it, then, that so few Seattle artists under 40 know who he is? (And I’m thinking of the ones who are using his ideas.)
That’s what retrospectives are for. Even if it only traveled in the Northwest, rattling through museums and
art centers from Vancouver B.C. to Eugene, it would serve to introduce a new generation to a man who gave
structure to their region’s aesthetic thinking.
I’ve heard him called a glass artist, and that’s true if glass art extends to cover optical lenses, Styrofoam, solar panels, found objects, photos on
transparent plastic, diffraction foils, holographs, silicone and straw. He had a head full of celestial things but never failed to find beauty in a rusty bucket lying in a ditch.
More Pethick, from Catriona Jeffries.
Wheelbarrow & Cabin, 1987-1988 Glass, plastic fresnel lens, instamatic photos, florescent light fixtures, silicone, aluminum
A History for Greg (Mountie Red), 1993-1995
Canvas, felt, paper, spectrafoil, photographs, silicon, graphite and postcards
Black Retort Travelogue, 1991/1992
Crayon, spectrafoil, wood, plastic (fishing lure), pen, plastic, metal
Thanks for this, Regina. I love Jerry’s work. Your headline though, reads “Jeffry” not “Jerry”. Some sort of Freudian slip? Only one Jeffry I know and he’s got lots of heart and soul too.
Thank you, ahk. Will change in the interests of reality. Can’t strike through a headline, so this will serve as the correction.