Archive

03 Mar Voices at Hand

Voices at Hand

2010 – ongoing

Relational performance, research residency and evolving archive currently comprised of close to 4,000 letters written in six languages, spanning 213 years. Bookshelves made from repurposed window frames, portfolios, mason jars, and wooden boxes.

Voices at Hand began with the question why do we keep letters and an invitation to the public to donate personal correspondence to help me examine the essence of that question. The project’s debut was a month-long residency where I turned a Peterborough storefront into a studio, laboratory and stage. The response was a astounding. Intrigued by a ‘living window,’ the installation attracted many passers-by. Some returned daily to hear the engaging range of stories, personalities and ‘voices’ I encountered. Others followed the project through ‘Letters of the Day’ posted on the storefront window or via email updates.

Frequent requests from that residency include, a marriage proposal, a letter from a soldier in a WWII POW camp, volumes of cringe-worthy notes passed in class in the ‘90s and a joyous recounting of a reunion in the Channel Islands five days after Liberation Day. By its close I’d amassed 1608 letters.

Since then, I have mounted Voices at Hand at multiple sites, interacted with hundreds of members of the public, and reached people in 26 countries through the project blog and social media.

The letters have been sorted into 60 thematic, often playful categories—each providing an entry into a time and place, each with clues as to why the individual might have been compelled to keep the letter.

The way we speak to each other has always been in flux. As we step further through the electronic portal perhaps we need reminders of our shared humanity. As one letter written in 1983 ended:

“Remember letter writing is a dying art…Who knows, maybe our grandchildren won’t know what the word ‘letter’ means. The horror, the horror!”

—A. Hull, 1983

Follow the project on Facebook, Twitter and the Voices At Hand blog

Voices at Hand has been supported by Prime Data, Canada Post, Trent University and the Ontario Arts Council.

Exhibition History :

Blue Tomato Art Shop, Peterborough, ON, March 2010

SOHO Art & Framing–Window, Toronto, ON, October 2010

Books & Company–Window, Picton, ON, August 2011

Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden, ON, September 2011

AFP Congress, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, ON, November 2011 

Bata Library and Gzowski College, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, February 2012

Norfolk Arts Centre, Simcoe, ON, December 2012

Lady Eaton College, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, March 2013

Photo Credits:

Matt Stimpson (Peterborough), Sandy Nicholson (Toronto), Rita Leistner (Picton), Wayne Eardley (Bata Library), Barbara Chisholm (Lady Eaton College)

03 Mar Into the Living

Into the Living

2009

A fifteen-year survey exhibition comprised of elements from eight different installations.

“ I think she should bring several installations to the Mill gallery as well as her new work in progress for the third floor loft. After all, the stories are too interlinked for us to think of breaking them apart. They edge towards an interlocking of rooms/dwellings, landscapes. The interior/exterior spaces transcribe a living topography into Theatres of Memory.”

—Maralynn Cherry, Curator, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington

Read the catalogue essay here.

The main floor gallery show-cased:

Encaustic on slate pieces from Antarctic Chronicles, (1998);

Two video installations —Another Kind of Dance, One and Two, (2008);

Dancing in a Northern Kitchen (1995 -2003);

Bookworks from Things Conspiring to Tell the Whole Story (2003) and Odes to Anatomies (2003);

Wood-work from Forest Stories (1995).

The third floor loft housed The Whole Real Moment (2003) and

Eternity Behind, Eternity Before, (2006-ongoing).

Into the Living was supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

Photo Credits:

Jean-Michel Komarnicki and Matt Stimpson

03 Mar Bound

Bound

2008

42 encaustic on panel paintings (4×4 inches each),

end table, dictionary and magnifying glass

My response to a Valentine themed exhibition curated by Peterborough artist Jess Rowland.

Side by side at times,

staggered and diverging at others,

intersecting at points along the way—some tracks are obscured, others are straight, clear and true.

My thinking was (and is) ski tracks can be a metaphor for the course of any relationship. For many reasons I called this suite Bound.

bound (bound), v.i. 1 to move with a leap or series of leaps 2. to spring back …

bound (bound), past tense and past participle of bind. adj. 1. confined by binding, tied. 2. closely connected or related 3. certain; destined 4. under compulsion; obliged as in he’s legally bound to do it 5. provided with a binding or cover, as a book 6. [Colloq.], determined; resolved: as, despite risk, he was bound to go.

bound up in ( or with) 1. Deeply devoted to. 2. Implicated or involved in.

bound (bound), adj. going; headed (often with for or to ): as, bound for home.

 

Exhibition History:

Peterborough Arts Umbrella, Peterborough, ON, 2008

 

Photo Credits: William Wilson

03 Mar Eternity Behind, Eternity Before

Eternity Behind, Eternity Before

2006 – ongoing

An ongoing series, currently comprised of 83 small works in either silverpoint or encaustic, and varying installation elements including, objects housed in metal cases or arranged on shelves, magnifying glasses, a table, a chaise lounge and large-scale encaustic on panel paintings.

“I find it good to remember the eternity behind me as well as the eternity before.”

—Henry David Thoreau, 19 March 1842

With so much being disposable in our society, I wonder about the objects we choose to keep and the stories we pass on.

Eternity Behind, Eternity Before takes the form of a catalogue of objects in my home, a record in delicate silverpoint renderings. Heirlooms and ornaments, tools, stones and bones— either emerge or recede into forgetfulness.

This suite of drawings is juxtaposed with small encaustic paintings inspired by a different inventory. Following my son’s fixed gaze in his infancy, I was able to catalogue his earliest favourite things: afternoon light on a wall; wood grain on a blanket box; bed posts; grapevine and power-lines—a play of shadows, colour and light. I felt I was witnessing the very the very beginnings of memory.

At the Art Gallery of Peterborough, setting the work in the stairway of its historic wing led me to consider the stories in that space as it evolved from home to gallery, and inspired me to transcribe them—again in silverpoint— in a chandelier’s cast-shadow and the home’s original wallpaper pattern.

At the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington and at Artspace I suspended the suite of paintings and drawings from the rafters, allowing them to shift with slight air currents, inviting viewers to consider their own relationship with memory.

I am interested in the link, the continuum; what meaning gets passed on between individuals, between generations. And I hope to preserve what may lie at the core of memory/memories.

silverpoint n. 1 a pointed rod of silver (stylus) that when drawn across paper or panel that has been specially coated with white pigment leaves minute particles of the metal embedded in the surface, producing a greyish line that darkens in time as the silver tarnishes. 2 a drawing so made.

Eternity Behind, Eternity Before was supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts

Exhibition History:

Art Gallery of Peterborough, Peterborough, ON, 2007

Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Bowmanville, ON 2009

Artspace, Peterborough, ON, 2010

Photo Credits:

Sandy Nicholson (AGP), Matt Stimpson and Jean-Micheal Komarnicki (VAC) and Fynn Leitch (Artspace)

03 Mar Ex Libris

Ex Libris

2003

Ex Libris was a two-woman exhibition with Alisa Cunnington at Niagara Artists Company where we collaborated to transform the main space gallery into a library —a space of storage, collection and preservation.

Bookworks were created independently allowing us to explore our own thematic interpretations of memory. I addressed memory lost and experienced in four distinct, but related installations.

In Odes to Anatomies, a suite of eight altered anatomy texts depict individual medical histories to address memory lost and pay tribute to the ways in which our bodies accommodate, “rewire” and rejuvenate.

The Whole Real Moment is also aimed at challenging viewers to connect with memory while also acknowledging its weight. Comprised of a reading table etched with text and paper-works —sixteen years worth of lists stacked and fused together with beeswax— this piece explores the obsessiveness of memory and makes palpable its workings.

Inspired by many years of cooking in remote work sites, Dancing in a Northern Kitchen is a mixed media accordion bookwork comprised of seventeen units and shelves, that is at once mural, sculpture and cookbook.

In Things Conspiring to Tell the Whole Story, kitchen utensils, maps, spices, recipes, day and menu plans are organized into six wood-backed journals where accumulated memory is both preserved and lost under coats of beeswax.

Ex Libris was supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

Exhibition History:

Niagara Artist Company/Centre, St, Catharines, ON, 2003

Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Bowmanville, ON, 2009

Odes to Anatomies: A Space Gallery, Toronto, 2004 and

Artsweek Peterborough, Peterborough, ON, 2006

Dancing in a Northern Kitchen: Rails End Gallery, Haliburton, ON, 2008

The Whole Real Moment: Art Gallery of Peterborough, Peterborough, ON, 2012

Photo Credits:Sandy Nicholson

03 Mar Bread Breaking Boundaries

Bread Breaking Boundaries

2000

Community Art Project, Performance and Urban Intervention

Encouraging the notion that art bread and dance can intersect Bread Breaking Boundaries brought a neighbourhood together through the simple act of baking bread.

From gleaning building materials for the ovens, to researching bread lore and recipe testing, participants —actors, film-makers, potters, dancers, bakers, together with neighbourhood families, historians, writers and linguists—worked for three months planning every aspect of the project, culminating in a weekend-long event/intervention in downtown Toronto Park.

“I admit I was a little sceptical at first, but I now know what you mean when you talk about dance in the everyday Wendy. I was baking bread with my daughter today and caught a glimpse of her as she kneaded her dough She was dancing with it — her arms, her legs, her hips —she was dancing and I started to dance too.” —Project participant

Many thanks to participants Jan, Joe, Christopher and Hannah Schallert, Jan Bird, David Frisch, Rosemary and Jack Dale, , Steve Gamester, Susan Bishop, Miri Makin, Jodie Makin, Donna Bartolini, Abby Levin, Lynne Heller, Cameron Taylor, Andrew MacDonald, Sam Babe, Nadia Portera, Allison Goodwin, Melissa Thompson, Kate Leach, Barbara Chisholm, Ashleigh Markulyn, Hanna Jones-Errikson, Phyllis Pearson, Jasmine Foster, Freya Jones –Errikson, Elysa Grotsky, Laurie Starr, Gemma Johnson, and the Church of St Mary Magdalene Folk Mass Planning Committee.

Special thanks to Jan Schallert for embracing every aspect of the project, David Frisch for writing and directing the children’s pageant The Wonder of Bread and to Jan Bird for documenting the making of Bread Breaking Boundaries.

Bread Breaking Boundaries was supported by the Ontario Arts Council and sponsored by Strictly Bulk, Karma Co-op, Crystal Springs, and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario.

The project was presented with assistance from The Church of St Mary Magdalene, P.A.R.A., Toronto Park’s & Recreation, Joe Pantalone, Dufferin Grove Park, Lakeside Excavating, Priestly Demolition, Toronto Public Libraries, Toronto Historical Board, Harbord Bakery, Hodo Kwaja, and Day & Night Woodworking.

Exhibition History:

Community Arts Biennale (CAB 2000), organized by A Space Gallery, Toronto, ON,  2000

Photo Credits:

Jan Bird, Barbara Chisholm, David Zapparoli

03 Mar Forest Stories

Forest Stories

1995

50 hand-carved bowls made from wood burls gleaned from northern Ontario clear-cut, sculpted iron branch stands, encaustic and mixed media paintings, photographs, branches, stumps, lichen covered rocks, moss, wood shavings and milkweed

“A Forest shares a history which each tree remembers, even after it has been felled.”

— Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces, 1996

 

The impetus to scavenge in a boreal forest slash pile came from a girlhood desire to carve bowls from burls. Over the course of this installation, branches snapped underfoot, milkweed pods popped, and crickets chirped. I watered daily to keep the leaves, moss and peat from drying, but mostly to keep the memory of a forest alive.

Exhibition History:

Gallery 401, Toronto, ON, 1995

Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Toronto, ON, 1996

Photo Credits: Catherine Lash