We saw the Joe Fafard show at the National Gallery. His work is stunning ... sculptures that capture whole stories of daily life in the faces and bodies of real human beings ... meticulously detailed right down to the veins and age spotting in their hands. His work is an interesting mix of super realism and caricature. I had seen his horses and cows before ... and they are wonderfully detailed as well, but it is what he captures in the human subjects that holds me ... their humanity and their mortality. He is a keen observer and a great craftsman, but it is his ability to discern what is truly important that makes his work outstanding. And it is that wise ability to see into the true heart that makes possible that juxtaposition of the real and the suggested. I am not sure I have captured what I really mean, but I will likely come back to this post again. I didn't want to leave the impression that his art is to sculpture what Andrew Wyeth's or Alex Colville's are to painting.
His human subjects range from indigenous people to artists (my favourite was Emily Carr) to politicians to family to just plain folks. There were times when I looked at one of his sculptures of an indigenous person and saw a whole history of a people. With the artists he uses the colours and textures of the artists' work to make the sculptures true and complete portrayals.
I must say I also loved his holstein cow that reminded me of a poem about cows in a field ... looking like badly made tents. (Maybe Ogden Nash?) And his horses made me want to touch them expecting to feel horse hair instead of cold metal.
I loved the running wild horse installation piece. Big ... halfway between two and three dimensional. I felt as if a painting had come to life. I could feel the movement and the loss of a time when wild horses ran free on our western plains. In Mongolia it still exists ... that unfenced freedom ... but there are few such places left on earth.
The next artist we visited, Barbara Carlson, is playful. She has produced all kinds of art composed of found pieces ... and even a book about pocket lint ...
One of her pieces is her creation of a people's highrise based on photos of real homes. It is very different from what we see in real life, not at all like those sterile concrete structures that house poor people. It is mainly red brick and every apartment is unique and also part of the whole community she has created. You know from the detail that real people lead real lives in this building.
I bought a small print of one of those pieces ... a rear view ... because I like poking around behind the facades of buildings and streets. I wrote a poem once about the secret places behind the facades ... the places you would never guess existed if you didn't poke about and explore what lies further down an alley or in behind a door.
Today I have already been out throwing sticks in the water for Kenya, taking photos of the Canada Geese who are visiting the lake, and hanging out my first line of laundry this year. It promises to be another great day!
No comments:
Post a Comment