interview 2018

WONDERISH interview-

 

1. Tell me about yourself.

 

I am originally from Toronto, but eventually I followed my roots to a round house in the country near Walter’s Falls, ON, 10 minutes from my ancestral farm. That was back in 2000 when my husband and I met doing my BFA at Queen’s both had our rents go up on Queen St. West. We decided to turn crisis into opportunity and drive to the country and built a studio where we now have the space to create the kind of bold work that we were each dreaming of. I remember we dropped my parents off at the airport to go to Ireland and we just drove the car north. It was so very exciting when went to the realtor in Flesherton, a town that we knew attracted artists and saw for sale- ‘round house with 50 acres, deer, two creeks and airplane hanger’. We decided to check it out for ourselves and saw smoke coming out of the chimney, so rather than lurk in awe in the driveway, we knocked on the door. To our delight the owner offered to take us on a walk to the creek, which he said ‘is a truly magical place’. We did the walk, I in my platform Fleuvogs!…and that was 18 years ago. We love it here! We built the studio and the airplane hanger is where we weld and do woodwork etc. We have 50 acres here of a rich and diverse habitats that are a great source of inspiration for me. I love to sit amongst the trees, the vines and branches, to just be beside the creek and listen. A lot of my work emerges out of that quiet place of sitting and listening, to the water, immersed in the soundscape of the liminal space of the enchanted forest, so to speak. It is this sort of altered space where one may connect to the ‘wild currents within’ that I am hoping to offer the one experiencing my work. I like to create dreamlike sculptural landscapes with enigmatic abstract forms that are often welded out of steel and wrapped and knotted with cordages and twines. I weave together the raw beauty of nature, its networks and twinings, with elements of light, sound and architecture. I would say, my creative process is one that is uninhibited yet deliberately refined.

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2. Have you always been a sculptor?

 

Yes, I believe so. I can remember being a child in England, driving through the countryside in my grandfather’s car and seeing hedge mazes for the first time. I knew then that one day I would like to make something like that. I was amazed by the scale of it and the sense of wonder that it brought about upon merely looking at it and pondering the adventure within.

 

 

 

3. What inspires your day-to-day sculpting work?

 

There are so many aspects to the creative process that is not all in the action of actually making the art. Right now I am in an ebb period after a very active summer and fall with several big projects converging. One of them was a Canada 150 legacy commission for a community-art project called the Ripple Project that culminated in a permanent installation of laser-cut steel light columns, lit from within with watery blue light. Called the Ripple Project, it was a Great Art for Great Lakes initiative through which I worked with the Owen Sound and area community to celebrate our Great Lake Huron through the gathering together at farmer’s markets and such to ‘draw water’, ‘make waves’. I used some aspect of every single drawing contributed as the raw material for the final design panels. So for me right now I am in the listening phase, drawing, pondering, letting ideas form. I like to follow impulses and investigate new materials to work with and new ways of getting my ideas across. Drawings are also a big part of the beginning of the idea that is germinating. I don’t really think my way into it, but there are themes that are always flowing below the surface, images that start to come together on the inside first. I draw them and eventually they begin to form into the sculptures themselves although nothing is really predetermined. I love winter for welding as it is a great time to focus and very primal out there in the cold. I am gearing up to create a new armature for a new piece. I am not working a body of work per se, but rather, enjoying the freedom of creating new works as individual pieces, although they are going to be part of a broader show (see my answer to question number 7!). I am also currently writing some big project proposals which is also often a big part of my practice. I love going to my favourite coffee shop (Ashanti in Collingwood) and working on ideas for installations where there are calls for submissions. When those opportunities arise they are a lot of fun to flesh out.

 

4. Which one of your sculptors is your favorite? (Let me know if meant sculptures! I can re-answer that, if need be)…

 

In first year university I discovered the works of Anish Kapoor and fell in love. I have also been very inspired by Richard Serra’s work and the work of Clyde Connell, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Judi Pfaff, to name a few

 

5. Let’s talk about the time your sculptures were featured on “The
   Strain.” How did this opportunity come about?

 

Oh that was so great and so out of the blue! They actually contacted my husband Steven at first. They asked If he would send some images of some of the sculptural works he had available. He went out to the studio and took some pictures and sent them to look over, and some of my pieces happened to make it into the shots. So when they called back to say which works in the photos they were interested in renting, they unknowingly added some of mine into the mix! So when the agent found out that they were mine he said to Steve, ‘how long were you planning to keep your wife’s work from me?!’ It was funny. After that I sent images of my work too. They ended up renting 9 of our sculptures in total (after the van got briefly stuck in our snowy, rural driveway) for two seasons. Basically, we were ‘Dutch’s Apartment’! It was a lot of fun (although very scary!) watching Season 1 looking to see our works somewhere in it! We didn’t know where it would be or what the plot was. It took us watching 9 episodes before we got to see her apartment. We haven’t watched Season 2 yet but we did love Guillermo del Toro’s show at the AGO! It is an honour to be featured in his work and after that, I can see why he picked my work, in a way. We seem to share a similar resonance with the gesture of twining vines, arterial and neural networks and root systems, it seems. Another funny moment in the whole experience was when ‘Hollywood’ phoned us on Valentine’s Day at 9 at night to ask us for our garbage… you know, ‘studio garbage, to make Dutch’s loft look… authentic’.

 

6. Do you make sculptures based on certain themes or are they more
   abstract?

 

I guess I spoke to this in one of the questions above, but to add that yes, they are more abstract and the theme reveals itself. I don’t usually think my way into a topic that I will then gather art ideas around, unless it is for a commission or a submission around a theme. Rather, I tend to sit and listen and clues of what I am making start to reveal themselves. I know that Neil Young talks about ‘catching the tail of a song’ before its gone… its sort of like that. My whole body of work WATER Shadows began from this kind of an experience. I had been doing drawings of some forms that I was feeling needed to be expressed, but they were pretty loose and not focused around anything at that point. I had this drawing of new ideas brewing on the studio wall. It was winter and one day I went in and saw ice crystals on the window that looked very much, uncannily so, like the drawings I had pinned right next to it on the wall. I was so amazed at the ability of water to seemingly communicate with me in a very deep and mysterious way, in its own language, without words. It was then that the idea for WATER Shadows was born, an installation of sound sculptures that celebrates water, featuring field recordings of watery places of significance in my Grey County and Georgian Bay community. I did many of these recordings by the creek too, including one of my favourite ones of a summer Solstice day when a cicada enters the recording; I was so thrilled when that happened. I then got the idea to collect rubber inner tubes from local bike shops and then it just continued organically, from there. I wanted to create a rich sculptural landscape for the visitor to move through and experience the soundscapes of local watery places, blended together with the machine sounds of car engines and planes. In this way, I feel satisfied that I gave water a platform to speak, to dissolve boundaries and allow for a diversity of voices to be heard. Afterall, water is life. It has become an important topic in my work, but it came to me, rather than through my pursuit of it exactly. The only question I asked was for clues about what the next body of work might be. That is when the ice crystals formed, that looked like ‘water temples’ to me and so astonishingly close in form and feel to my drawings. It was something else really, to be the receiver of that ‘wink’ from water. It was an experience of wonder for sure. That’s when I know I am on the right track.

 

7. Tell us one fun fact about yourself!

 

The one fun fact about myself that I was eluding to earlier is that Steven and I are going to be offering an immersive art and magic experience at the wonderful Wizarding Weekend in Blyth next September. With so many trees on our land we also have a wand business, called White’s Wands! It is our purpose to help inspire wonder and creativity with our wands, to activate the imaginations of all, the place where true magic lies. We are vendors at this amazing, epic festival and decided to offer something really special as an attraction this year. Our White’s Wands Tent of Wonders will be featured there that will not only include our wand shop but also wand-activated and wondrous sculptures and curios with elements of light, sound, magic, and of course, wonder! In a way, that is why I create art in the first place- I really love to create spaces that are a delight to just be in, that create a sense of wonder for me. I love to just go out to the studio at night and sit in the quietude of my installations with just the ambient light of the works alight and the audio element on. Once I get it, this feeling of wonder, more than any aesthetic measurement, I know my work is done. That is the feeling we are going for here.