Ernest Jolly’s work involves the re-contextualization of lived experience, of
both the individual and the group, in comparison to environmental
change in nature. Through sculptural forms and video/sound
installation I’m pulling together these lived experiences into a
hybridized practice.
My most recent body of work explores the architectural entropy of
failing urban environments in relation to stresses on nature such as
erosion of coastal lands and the depopulation of honeybee hives.
The works compares and contrast such natural phenomenon as
Colony Collapse Disorder to the decline of the industrial city. The
cities I’m most interested in are former auto and steel
manufacturing towns in the mid-west. These cities whose
economies have rest largely on heavy industry production have,
within the past decade, experienced huge economic and population
decline. This decline has left many cities abandoned, without a
sustainable infrastructure and deteriorating architecture. Colony
Collapse Disorder is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a
beehive abruptly disappear. There is no definitive answer for this
disorder at this time. Some attribute the problem to biotic factors,
environmental stress, and malnutrition. Others suggest that it’s not
one single factor but many factors that are the cause.
My work is both a meditation and a call to action in addressing the
factors of urban industrial decline and disappearance of species in
nature.