Resource Extraction by Tony Bellaver

Artist Bio

Tony Bellaver’s recent project “Resource Extraction” is a focused and deliberate critique on the extraction industry of forest clear cutting in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Upon Tony witnessing the first clear cut, he, “felt an urgent need to use my creative/art practice to respond to what I feel is an assault on the environment”. Tony’s projects have always addressed theme’s of human activity being the dominant influence on the climate and environment. In this current project he uses a classic photographic approach to create images with the desire to share what he directly witnessed’. Some of the multi-image pieces have words/poetry hand-cut from the prints. These words and the technique he examines and confronts the anthropocentric practice of forest clear cutting by the hand cutting of the words to create a negative space in the images. Past artworks focus on how we exist and often define wilderness. Mixed media sculpture and drawings are inspired by his love of nature where he incorporates maps, drawings, photographs and found foliage gathered on his many hikes to create texture and meaning in his diary-like works. This exercise gives him a better understanding of himself as an element in nature rather than the focal point. When back in his studio, away from the wilderness, the journals become the source for larger sculptures, sometimes in book form, of what is in his mind. Tony attended the San Francisco Art Institute for graduate school and along with his career as an artist, exhibiting nationally as well as internationally has spent a good amount of his time guiding backcountry trips for the Sierra Club. These trips have often been theme oriented, often the content of connecting the artist with the wilderness experience are paradigms for his trips in the High Sierra as well as the Rocky Mountains.