Grounding was a body of work that documented Reitzel’s process of grounding herself through creating site-specific artwork on the unceded traditional lands of the Syilx nation. As a settler, Reitzel worked directly on and with the land to open her body to ‘touch’ and be ‘touched’ by the land, and provide a direct translation of the sensations she felt. She created works bare-foot and traded paint brushes for her hands and other body parts, which related to the mindfulness theory of ‘grounding’, a process in which our bodies “electrically reconnect to the earth when our skin is in direct contact with it”.
Like the permeable boundary of the body, the canvas and clay are places of ‘encounter and transformation’. Through clay, Reitzel could explore the softness of material, the absence and presence of the body, and the movement from matter to object. The growth and decay of nature and the body's natural cycles are Reitzel’s inspiration. Using her hands as the primary tool to create, the work revealed the material’s relation to her body and its movements. The hand was exaggerated in her work leaving pinches, mini recesses, and fingerprints. With her hand emphasized, connections could be made to the process and the resulting final form revealed its own creation.
The work spoke to her role in that creation and bore vulnerability to the presence of her own body. It commented on the interface of herself and other natural forms. Prying open raw material as grounds to discover the interwoven relationship between her body and other natural phenomena. Like a flower in bloom, the sculptures revealed the gradual opening between herself, the material and the land. Recording the stages of growth and transformation as she became further attuned to the Okanagan valley.
Brittany Reitzel is a multidisciplinary artist who holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia Okanagan on unceded Syilx territory. She is passionate about working with clay for it's malleability, earth-bound origin and alchemic properties. She also specializes in land art, painting and performance. Her continued artistic practice is dedicated to the relationship between art, joy and wellness.
You can learn more about Reitzel at her website, here.