The paintings: Japanese lavender; Pull forward: push back; Abracadabra, and it did; CD Sumac; Emily's wavelength and Heaven does a backbend literally grow out of a desire to pull forward, push back and make space in a work. I became interested in adapting the sculptural forms from "Sui Generis" to this purpose. Interestingly, these "sculptural molecules" themselves grow out of the form of twisting vines that recurs in the paintings. The vines intrigue me visually and metaphorically as an interdependent complication.

Safety net

for reviews and the Q+ A
go to loop blog for background

loop Gallery 1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1X8
416-516-2581 or loopgallery@primus.ca. www.loopgallery.ca

installation shots: Michael Tweed

"The trans-atlantic shift of the Elliott plaid" is an allegorical timeline of the immigrant experience. It weaves time. Here, the left is Scotland and the right is Canada, the solid blue between representing the wide Atlantic Ocean. The tartan breaks down, pulls apart; it absorbs the new land, changes the new land and, in turn, is changed by it. Itıs a not uncommon pattern, I suspect, where traditions persist as vestigial gestures - in this case, remembering my grandmother's sewing cupboard, remnants of the tartan bundle up the birchbark, the remains of forest.
scroll right for more images
"sui generis" is a formal title for a playful work. The Latin means "of its own kind". Here it refers to experiments "establishing the form of things unknown", 3-D experiments which contain a shared sculptural molecule made from pipe cleaners, plaster, hats and paint, experimentation for its own sake and for the pleasure of making new and singular things. Itıs a simple form that can change into more complex variables, like Primo Levi's slow and sublime carbon atom, which in "being natural", my installation at the Durham Art Gallery earlier this month, represented a form of post-disaster regeneration.

Works from this series were also shown in Sally Mackay's amazing "Too cool for school" art and science fair at Harborfront.