David Klarén: Unicornalope

Presented by:

David K. Klarén
Unicornalope
2025
Wllow, bamboo, coffee filters, cable ties, solar lighting,
exterior latex paint emulsion, acrylic gel medium
9.5’ x 9’ x 3’
Price upon request

Artist Statement
In the spring of 2025, I was invited by guest curator Bronwyn Minton with Jackson Hole Public Art (JHPA) to create a large-scale lantern as part of a public lantern festival. The project was initiated by a two-day workshop hosted by JHPA and taught by Gowri Savoor, a lantern and light festival artist who specializes in arts integration and community building. The project culminated with Garden of Lanterns, a community event featuring music, dance, and hundreds of lanterns at the Center for the Arts on October 10th, 2025.

From the beginning, I wanted to push the idea of a delicate temporary light sculpture made from willow and paper, into a piece that was more durable and semi permeant, with the ability to hold up outdoors of a year or more. It was exhibited outdoors through the winter of 2025-26 in Pinedale. WY.

Unicornalope is the latest large outdoor sculpture in my Pedestrian Series.

Begun in late 2013, the Pedestrian Series finds its inspiration and title from the stylized figurative pictograms found on crosswalk signs. Pictograms are found in all areas of modern daily life. Pictograms are used as graphically iconic imagery to convey messages on traffic signs, warning labels, and electronic devices. Steeped in a rich history of image making, pictograms are found on stone-age cave walls and were used as the foundation for early written language forms, such as cuneiform and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. In North America, native peoples have been using pictographic imagery for centuries; from rock faces and cave walls to the totem poles of the northwest coastal tribes. It is from this rich historical and contemporary image-making context, that the Pedestrian Series finds its generative roots.

Shortly after beginning concept sketches for this body of work, it became clear that the figuration required more detail than the pedestrian pictogram maintained. As such, the figure has developed a more complex and individualized muscle tone. The figure then becomes less generic, less everyman, less…pedestrian.