Kristen McClarty’s series of woodcut and screen prints "A Hard Place" is an accumulation of her work of exploring and documenting the scratchings, words and dirty graffiti left by individuals in the local places where she walks. The words written by people who shouldn’t be there but tell the world they are there, and they are here, and they exist, and they have thoughts, and they want to tell you or anyone, something.

In this exploration, she uncovers a profound connection between the physical landscape and the memories it holds. The image of the suspended boulder, frozen in time and space, becomes a figuration of halted destinies and forgotten histories.

McClarty is interested in how those things stack up over time and become a layering of marks and colour that reference each other while they simultaneously cover what was there before. Moreso, she is interested in how these collected memories jumble with what is in her own head, trigger and poke, scratch, mock, question. She sees those things and interacts and tussles with them. Superimposing her own thoughts.  McClarty’s set of three large scale woodblock prints, is presented as a progressive view into the same space, as people slowly leave their marks, comments, and thoughts. A visual demonstration of existence and the passing of time. It is he artist’s response to the response of others to their lives and their existence, between a rock and a hard place.