Bess Whittington
My work is an exploration of the natural world. I use scraps of wood, paper, bone, and fabric and include both found and crafted specimens. Each art piece contains a variety of processes including collagraph printmaking, building, and sculpting. There is a certain practicality and reflection to my work. I work with things that have died, but left a beautiful reminder of their existence (skulls, vertebrae, fossils, and insects). I am inspired by the sense of discovery of 18th and 19th century natural history collections, and the reliquaries housed in the great cathedrals. As they do, my art invites a closer study and preservation of the earth around us.