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hello everyone thank you for joining me today my name is rachel bouchard and

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i will be guiding today’s conversation we welcome you to our from the studio series sponsored by

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epcor’s heart and soul fund as well as the canada council for the arts here at the gallery we embrace the

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teachings of tatawa a kree phrase meaning welcome there’s room in our house even

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the virtual one everyone is welcome [Music]

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oh

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interdisciplinary art practice includes okay drawing photography digital image

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creation and the creation of short animated films paul freeman attended the alberta

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college of art design and was awarded the governor general’s award for academic excellence as a graduate of

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1998. he received his mfa in drawing and intermediate from the university of

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alberta in 2005. freeman is the founding artist at the nina haggarty center for the arts

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an art center with developmental disabilities in edmonton where he was the artistic director

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between 2002 and 2019 the art gallery of alberta nominated his

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exhibition it’s only natural for the elder nan foot visual arts prize which he received in

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june 2013. freeman was a recipient of the edmonton’s artist trust fund

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in 2017 and has been commissioned by the city to create sculptures the new valley line lrt at avenmore

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station so could you take this time with me today to

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artist paul freeman

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hi hello paul how are you thank you for joining me thanks

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we really appreciate you taking the time well thanks for asking me yeah

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so uh let’s just dive in so um this this series is printed directly

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from objects that are placed on the glass of a photo photocopier um can you tell us a bit about the concept

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that you’re working through sure when i was a a student at the alberta college of art and design i

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started as a jewelry major or sorry i started as a yeah jewelry major

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and in the course of the required drawing classes i i i don’t know if i was just feeling a

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little bit cheeky or a little frustrated a bit of both i suppose i decided i could solve every

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drawing problem presented to me with a color photocopier and so i started making images using one

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of those old canon clc 700 color copy machines the first color copiers

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that were out so around 1994 1995 i started playing around with the

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color copier and in the course of those explorations i got so excited about what i was doing

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that i shifted by major i left the jewelry program and i did what is called an

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interdisciplinary studies degree so at that time at acad you you could

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select a mentor to ask them to support you in developing a project of study that was

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not really didn’t really fit in anywhere else and so i maintained my jewelry practice but

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i did a lot of work uh creating images on the color copier and the image on the left of the

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mallard yeah is um something that the alberta foundation for the art spot for

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me pretty much right after i got out of art school i think okay and um eventually i left the color

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copier behind it got harder and harder to access the machines

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and to do such weird stuff and i and i just switched over to using a scanner but essentially

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the process was the same going into the world and looking for or finding natural objects

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often dead animals and then bringing them to the color copier or to the scanner and composing

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on the glass yeah yeah i like the juxtaposition of the

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live well i mean they’re not they’re not um i mean the cut flowers that are still

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um they haven’t wilted as as in comparison to the the animals or the birds

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yeah well for me the exciting i mean aside from the you know the exciting uh process of just

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experiment and and play that you have a lot of this work you know i really got

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excited about well the kind of impact it was having on other people and the opportunity to play with scales

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so at a certain point all of these images got really really large like cinema screen scale images and you know i got really

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interested in i mean on the surface it was about thinking about being vegan and thinking

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about animal rights and things like that looking at them today i don’t really read them that way they’re much more

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personal metaphor and kind of make me think about the life i had back then

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but um the attraction and repulsion that happened with these dead animals

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mediated by the image you know the way that you can be drawn into looking at all the detail

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and then pushed back by the reality of what you’re looking at so for me that was the exciting part

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yeah i i have a question for you um did you submit these pieces in your classes

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paul um if so what did your professor think oh yeah i submit i was um that’s all i

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would do i wouldn’t draw at all anymore so yeah i submitted them all i had the right teachers i guess they were able to buy

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in to what i was doing yeah and willing to talk about them conceptually as drawings

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at least and so no i got i got just

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i got good feedback and i um rapidly shifted from thinking about

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becoming a jeweler into being this guy who makes these photocopies and by the time i graduated that was me

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i had maintained my jewelry classes to get my degree but my focus for sure was making these images

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okay all right um all right so this slide

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is this series was titled full frontal lobe is that right

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yeah or sometimes i call it mind control tricks because for me that’s what this body of

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work was all about you know um i’ve been a serial parent i have a 28 year old a

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14 year old or a 13 year old and a four four-year-old and so i spent a lot of my life

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like most parents confronting the reality that i was either going to develop some mind control or resort to

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force and obviously resorting to force isn’t a great option yeah it made me think about all the mind

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control i was engaging in yeah just as a survival mechanism

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and as a way of um trying to be a good parent and uh then thinking more broadly about

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the way you know particularly through media through images um there’s a lot of mind control tricks

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going on whether it’s fast food or images of masculinity or femininity um i think we are

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we are pushed around quite a bit so i was just kind of playing with that and the reason for the matador and the brain

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kind of comes from looking at the history of of mind control technique and one of the

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things that happened in the 60s was a a doctor named jose delgado started

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putting implants right into antiballs and putting them in the ring with matadors

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and controlling the ball and so that’s how it all got started

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uh so um is there any play on the fact that you’ve you’ve only focused on the frontal lobe

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and and there’s that disconnect between the uh parietal and the occipital and

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and the temporal is that is is there is there anything to that

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i don’t know how much of it was front of mind back then when i was making these works but

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certainly today i have a a deeper understanding of my own

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um brains the different brains inside my head and how often i’ve been uh through my

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life been very driven ruled by maybe the lower brain and so in some ways i was thinking about

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these as being like mind control sometimes is about um

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ideas and thoughts but sometimes it’s about getting at the bottom of the brain activating more reptilian urges

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yeah yeah and even the idea of the the um [Music]

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uh the the lesions that would be created from in this case the the whip you know and

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the consequence of that in the frontal lobe that’s interesting

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um we have a question what was the process where did you source your imagery if you did oh sure absolutely

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i like most contemporary artists i love google right love the internet it’s such

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a great place to find images so in a lot of my drawing practice i have done quite

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a bit of bucket filling where i just go online i’ve spent you know two days looking at

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images of safari hunts and all those dead animals and just kind of filling the bucket with

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stuff so i have folders in my computer full of images of well deer full full of images

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of uh pinup boys and girls and so i have a mind control

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bucket in my computer that i just started dumping things into yeah and i found this really great pdf

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produced by the mayo clinic the big american uh hospital and so it was a document

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developed people who were going to have surgery on their brain and in this pdf there was a 3d brain

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that you could turn around wow and position at any angle so i use

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that braid that john or the mayo clinic brain and the cursor to just manipulate the brain

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into different positions and then he used photoshop and a kind of cut and paste

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strategy to bring the images i was finding on the web together with these images of the brain

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and then basically it’s a tracing project after that playing with line weights to try to create a little bit of space

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and um you know i’m not i am not that that kind of draftsman who could just whip

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this pen and ink drawing off in one flourish with no pencil marks or it’s a tracing project for sure okay

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um i have a comment uh the limbic reptile brain exclamation mark

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[Laughter]

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okay so this one uh cervical rectus um what can you this guy has some

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serious mutations um i’m wondering why you used a bach

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and and why what’s with all of the mutate what’s

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with the mutation sure i uh when i graduated from

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the university of alberta when i did my master’s degree i did a whole bunch of sculpture yeah where animals children

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were all getting they were mutating they were maybe getting infected by the natural world and one of those

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pieces actually since i have it right here i’ll grab it um

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one of those pieces was this guy who was on display at the shaw for a while and okay oh yeah yeah had all these

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sticks growing out of him and so one day i was driving into calgary and i saw the big elk on the side of the

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road cast elk on the side of the road and i thought hey wouldn’t it be cool

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if i mean really that was the beginning of the project which i think is the beginning of a lot of projects

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honestly um and then the real motivations take a long time to emerge for me

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but those impulses are pretty strong and so i got inspired to take that idea that i

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developed in my graduate exhibition and bring it into these deer and switch from sticks to antlers

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and for a very long time i talked about this work as being about

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a whole set of ideas that i don’t connect to nearly as easily anymore but certainly when i was drawing

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and making these works um which were shown in uh an alberta

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biennial these drawings they were the ins my inspiration was

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always to make sculpture and came to my studio and visited

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they said well we like the drawing so much it’d be a shame if you made sculptures that we only wanted drawings

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why don’t you focus on drawing and so that’s how this big drawing which again the alberta foundation for the earth zones

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was created and yeah for a long time i talked about these objects these animals

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the drawings whether they’re drawings or sculptures as being about kind of a metaphor for

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a growth-centered economy a metaphor for alberta kind of being all in on oil and

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gas and not having a very diversified outlook so sort of like being all about

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one idea or having one being over invested or like too much of a good thing and

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then um in preparation for

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so after these drawings were made yeah i applied to the alberta foundation for the arts and

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a couple of years later to the edmonton arts council and got some money together to actually build

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the sculptures i’d always dreamed of making they were it they’re easy to make now but they

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were really hard to figure out at the time how to put everything together how

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exactly to make it work and um

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i had a great time showing these at the art gallery of alberta and even this was i don’t think i

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this was in the rbc new works gallery okay at the art gallery of alberta and i mean as you can tell the aga has

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been a very important part of my life for a very long time ever since i was a little boy i’ve been taking classes

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there i got my first teaching experiences at the aga i had some significant exhibition

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experiences there as well so i take a moment now to just thank the aga profusely for all their support over the

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years i am very grateful to be asked to speak to you today and thanks to catherine and everyone

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there for uh for helping me become the artist i am today so um

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after this exhibition came and went i really couldn’t let this drop i put

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another big proposal together i found some more money and i started a new project which was to

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take these animals and now they’re deer not elk but these antlered forms

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and do a whole new exhibition which um i showed at gallery 501 in

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sherwood park and at la citate over at the faculty genre and that’s

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is from 501 is that correct this is from 501 this image is from 501 yeah the two shows were fairly different in

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terms of one had everything hanging at eye level and the lassi day show had everything hanging

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way up in the air but that would be so yeah yeah the perspective of that

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gold that the gold um hanging ball of antlers is is behind me now in in my house say

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it lives in my living room now but prior to this exhibition you know

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i’ve been writing i’ve been talking i’ve developed artist statements all that stuff i didn’t feel right about it i was

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feeling more and more and more uncomfortable as the exhibition date loomed that okay

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why so aside from the fact that i was not sure that that big black and gold

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sculpture wouldn’t fall down on the ground it had only hung in my studio for about 18 hours before i hung it up

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so i had some serious moments of of dread over the weekend but mondays are still hanging there and

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it’s still fine um but i was i had um

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been seeing a counselor for a couple of years at this point and so i had a pretty good relationship with her my life had

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undergone some pretty big change and i was um i’m very grateful to janet for all the help she’s given me but one thing

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that she did for me was she came to my house she sat in this room with me which had

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seven of the sculptures hanging from the ceiling so we were under this fairly oppressive cloud yeah antlered

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deer and we could maybe slip to the next side and show okay show what those look like oh no

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it’s the one after i guess okay we’ll go back to this one yeah

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so we sat underneath all of these and they were packed quite tight together and i just

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said i don’t believe i know what i’m doing i don’t believe i know what this show is about

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i know there’s something much more important happening here why did i have to make nine of these

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things i already made two like what am i trying to say to me myself

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that i’m not able to hear that’s making me do this over and over again and i had

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like i said to you before what feels like a very simple set of thoughts but they were

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hard to come to epiphany i think often seems easy after the fact

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but i just came to realize that these works were much more about discovering that

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through a lifetime you can acquire a whole set of coping mechanisms

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strategies for survival that may be worked at one point in your

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life but without letting them go you can’t really move on so essentially yeah i think i was saying to myself over

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and over again maybe you gotta let these antlers go maybe you gotta let your antlers drop

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maybe you gotta set aside some of your defenses right and

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so for me the show really didn’t come together until kind of a day or two before exhibition

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and then i was really able to speak about it and i think a much more effective way and i’ve always thought gosh i need to

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go back to this work and finish the show i need to have a set of sculptures where

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this buck has shed his antlers he’s reintegrating into the herd there’s like a coming back to the group

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after realizing that you’ve got all this stuff over so for me it was a pretty big deal

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yeah yeah of ego or status whatever that that the symbolism of the

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um the antlers are um okay so i have a question for you do you

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use real antlers so the antlers of course they were like

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they’re cast from life but i have molds that i’ve made so okay i have some real antlers i also have some

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plastic antlers that i bought from taxidermy supply and i make my molds and

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all of these are cast with a product called smooth on 320 which is a

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off-white two-part resin and i put some stuff i forget the

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technical term but it’s like a micro balloon it’s a little glass balloon

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so that my you know my whole idea behind this project was to try to keep these animals as

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light as possible and so i think each animal weighs about 150 pounds

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which is not bad considering it only weighs about 60 pounds before it has all its antlers on it

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so um yeah the whole project if anyone’s curious is a

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polyurethane core with an arbiter inside and then for this for these sculptures i

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used a product called freeform air which is a two-part epoxy clay again full of these micro bubbles

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um and i i skinned all the foam with that with that epoxy i used

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the styrofoam or silicone pad that i made i stole some marks from a very very good artist named

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cheryl angel over at nine of hegerty i got one of her discarded uh lino plates and i made

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a silicone stamp from her marks that i used to texture all the

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clay on the outside of these deer and then there’s a fairly complicated

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again a simple idea when i finally came up with it but all these antlers have to come out

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for shipping for transport and all these animals have to hang upside down so

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basically i don’t know that we can see it very well in these pictures but every large antler is on a square

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rod that goes into a square hole inside the body that’s shaved with aluminum so it’s like

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a metal hole that the that the a metal tube that my square stock can go into and

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i’ve drilled a little hole through the tube into my square

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and i have a small antler on a threaded rod that goes through a nut

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and spins in and locks the antler in place so every big antler is paired with a small antler

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and there’s a kind of key and lock system to keep everything together it took me a very long time to figure

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out how to do that and it was one of those um falling asleep after having filled the bucket

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with how am i going to solve this problem falling asleep one day i thought plastic

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straws wait a minute nothing will stick to a plastic straw and i found a way to set up channels and

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guides and get all this stuff to work so the technical part is always

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pretty fun you know yeah and the dreaming app is always a lot of fun right

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right um i have another question for you was there a difference in how they read

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that you were exploring regarding different uh the different hanging heights

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from one show to the next well i sure read differently in my mind as i was building

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the project lassiter was always my spot okay i always thought that would be a great

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place to put these because there’s so much vertical space the height um are there they they were quite

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different shows i mean you’d have to ask someone else who’s not so intimate with the word

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dude just just the idea of them hanging is like a cloud above you and then it’s like now you’re talking about consciousness

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and you know subconsciously you know how ego gets in the way often

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and and so it would play on that for me depending on on the height of it where

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it felt more like a cloud hovering above rather than i um at eye level

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yeah i think there was a little more of an exuberant atmosphere in the last city show when

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things were up this was well obviously much more in your face

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oh so should we go back to the chair do you want to discuss the chair okay i i love that piece i just think

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just the idea of whoever sits on that and then having the protection from both sides

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but um or maybe it’s defense being defensive

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well i made this piece for uh an opportunity again at the aga they had a refinery party around

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halloween okay and so i was invited to make something for the show and again it just kind of came to me

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i could see this object in my mind i got pretty excited about how to put it together

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yeah and what was really fun was the night of the party they set up a light so that people could

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take their photographs in the chair it was really fun to watch people sit in this thing oh that’s and

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how immediately their their whole body would change and they would all adapt these crazy

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haughty kind of power driven poses and for sure the pieces of you know when

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i look at it now i see these arms reaching forward the king’s arms reaching out to get you

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and it is it’s this kind of i think a bit of a push and pull there’s this uh

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feeling of being protective but there’s also a a pretty offensive pretty like there’s no getting

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absolutely a person sitting in the chair i love it and i think for me in the statement kind of about

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you know feeling like you can just take whatever you want that the that it’s sort of like this

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feeling of um i think i called it potent take like you can just this attitude of the

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world is yours for the taking seems to be the attitude most people adopt when they sit in the chair

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yeah i we have quite a comment from sarah she said so many people have told her that the chair reminds them of the

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show hannibal oh yeah i get that a lot for sure do you really

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[Music] i mean i haven’t seen any of that i’ve seen it all now haven’t seen any of that

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when i worked on this work but yeah those references are pretty common for sure uh [Music]

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all right and now this no and again i’m very grateful to the aga for having it in their shop at art sales

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and rental i don’t know how it would handle that share at home between the dog and the kids like it really needs another spot

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so i’m very grateful that they’ve given it home yeah yeah well you could use it as

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your you know your uh recliner

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it’s the power position the kids you know when you’re talking about mind control when i’m laying down the law what i’m

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saying you won’t like what happens next yeah oh so tell me about this drawing this

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rendering i guess yeah these are just this is for the avenmore

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lrt the project we’ve been talking about the project for four years it’s been

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a very long process of figuring out the engineering the uh

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maybe the simplest way to put it is that there’s a big space off in between the idea of making things and the making of

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things right and so bringing those spaces closer together so i can actually make

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the thing has taken quite a bit of time and because the placements of these sculptures

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there’s a sculpture or an art project going up on every station in the line um

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so steph johnson i know was doing new tart there’s a bunch of artists mutart sorry uh doing doing stations

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hers i think is going to look really really great i’m excited to see it and um

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i love every sculpture is going on top of the canopy that you would stand under when you’re

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waiting at the station so when i made this drawing i thought i was going to be able to put all three

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together on one canopy that’s no longer the case but the forums have basically stayed the

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same i’ve kind of been lifting from my the antlers of a dilemma exhibition

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taking those forms but really pushing towards because this is a public work

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everybody’s gonna look at it um i mean i love all those antlers sticking

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out of these creatures i think it’s awesome but not everybody does not everybody reads it the same way

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and for me for sure the goal and the writing that i did in order to to get this commission was i

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wanted to make something really fun and playful that sort of referenced

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how exciting it is when you encounter an animal in the river valley at least i’m always excited when i see something

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and um how fun it is to slide down hills that’s the basic idea oh yeah i would

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just like last i would like people to see the work and smile and

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and you know whether you’re going to work or coming home in the morning that it offer a little bit of a bright moment in your day and uh

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so for me that’s fairly different from the way i’ve thought about working in the past

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making yeah for a long time you can see it like the shedding of the antlers you

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know especially the guy on the left he’s just you know he’s he’s having a great time

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well that’s my goal is that they will read as as playful and not tortured not screaming but like or not screaming

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in they’re screaming out of joy you know yelling for joy and um

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yeah it’s uh it’s i can’t yeah if we have time i can show you the works in progress today

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and uh yeah i’ve got uh a guy he’s actually jill stanton’s uncle

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jill’s a pretty well-known artist in our community she’s uh her uncle is doing the forging for me to

30:43

create the armatures that are going to go inside these sculptures so my processes kind of the same

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although materials have shifted quite a bit because these guys are going to be exposed to the weather 365 days a year

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so i’m shifting the fiberglass as a coating and i was just about to yeah my coating has

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changed we’re really really concerned about

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water getting in anywhere so my goal is to encapsulate the whole object right from from hoof to antler in

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in fiberglass epoxy so okay i’ve done an experiment it seems to work it works a lot better

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than i thought it would actually i’m very very happy with the results so yeah i feel like this is all coming

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together there’s still some questions to answer in terms of connection points on the roof and stuff

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but we’re getting there and so and yeah i hope to have it installed by september 15th that’s my

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goal oh good good well the 14th the 15th is my worst 15th yeah okay

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uh okay so these are um how are these made and do they stay this color

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yeah so i um as you said your introduction i was the artistic director at the nina for

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a very long time yeah beginning and had a great time there uh really great time but i realized at a

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certain point because i’ve um still got a young child at home

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and uh anyway to make a long story short i decided that i needed to

32:23

[Music] take a bit of a leap and put more emphasis on my own practice

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before it was too late so i started calling it freedom 50 and it decided that i would leave my job

32:35

at 50 and and push out into the world and so

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one of the things that happened to me while i was thinking about making that change

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is i was watching television with my son my middle son and he was really into this cooking show

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at the time and i watched these chefs debating who would be the ultimate winner

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and as they all talked about innovation breaking with convention challenging the viewer all that stuff

33:06

probably the most interesting chef leaned into the group and said you know i think the chef’s job is to

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bring delicious food to the table and i sort of sat back and thought right

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i could think about that a lot more than i have i’ve been pleasing myself a lot and not

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necessarily thinking that hard about bringing the commercials to the table yeah and exactly right

33:32

thinking about it in terms of like if i’m gonna make this shift i have a family to be responsible to i

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better figure out how to turn some of this into a way of making some money and so these candy colored antlers

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um and some of the other works i’ve been doing are about trying to enter that space a little bit

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could it make something that uh is pleasant and appealing and that a person might

34:00

want to bring home without letting go of everything i’m interested in and you know the reality

34:05

is i have these malts they were very hard to build they’re very expensive to make so the more i can

34:10

make out of them the better uh and yeah my ambition for them

34:16

i suppose in a you know aside from the very pedestrian like let’s make some money

34:21

um i was really excited about the possibility of taking these objects

34:27

that always read as kind of dangerous hard you know threatening yeah and make

34:33

them feel like they were fragile make them feel like they would break if they fell on the

34:39

floor or melt if you put them in water or so to kind of use a little bit of

34:45

juxtaposition in the materials choice the reality is they’re pretty tough the

34:50

resin is pretty strong but my goal is to make them look like they’re pretty pretty fragile

34:56

yeah we have a comment um that they should they should be lollipops

35:03

i’ve thought about it my silicone is the wrong kind of silicone if i were to do it safe i’d have to

35:08

remake the mold in a food grade right otherwise but it would be cool

35:14

to do a hard like a rock candy or something yeah and sarah’s just reminding um everyone that these pieces are

35:21

available in the shop aga uh it is wonderful to have your artwork at an accessible price point for your

35:27

fans yeah and uh these are interesting too

35:34

because you know visually the hands that are supporting the the base of the table

35:40

make me think of antlers as well yeah i mean there’s definitely a

35:46

relationship there and you know i showed them to uh heather hamill

35:51

who’s now the st gallery and used to be art sales rental and their first comment was oh how very

35:57

cocktail of you and i said yeah i’m wonderful

36:05

so yeah i mean i want to make something that’s fun and uh viable but i have a hard time letting

36:10

go of the weird you know so i’m trying to bring them together and these last

36:17

pieces are sorry i have another question with regards to the hands um are these molds your hands oh yeah

36:25

they’re my myths for sure okay and as and is there um

36:31

is there what’s the context of that what is is there um a meaning to that

36:38

they’re just the ones i had available yeah when i say them won’t no okay no

36:46

no in fact i’d like to use some other hands yeah have my heart another big sometimes

36:53

are you a big bruce norman fan bruce salmon fan sure i like bruce quite

36:58

a bit yeah i like his um heads on the studio floor i don’t know if you’ve seen that

37:03

one it’s wonderful oh are they projected onto forms

37:11

well yeah it’s like a whole bunch of golden heads and it’s like basically photographed i haven’t

37:17

seen that one oh it’s great uh all right so and these these are also

37:24

available at the um at the aj shop is that right correct yeah and so again it’s more

37:33

well of silicon mold made okay you know with the deer skull for

37:38

sure it’s a question of sealing it all off so that um the silicone doesn’t leak into the

37:46

pores of the bone and just get married to that forever so varnishing and sealing and then a fairly

37:52

complicated mold right you know three-part mold made in latex and

37:58

and uh the antlers the antler molds all that i mean they’re fun i love them but

38:03

man they’re a lot of work it’s like 50 50 screws every time you take it apart

38:08

and really long seams to clean up and i love them but there are a lot of labor so

38:14

the goal on these lamps was to have a mold that had no seams

38:20

and so um they’re pretty simple objects what i love about them is that

38:25

every time i pour one it’s a surprise you know i mix up all my colors i get all my little things together and then

38:31

yeah the plastic sets up fairly quickly so it’s kind of like okay it’s go time let’s go and i start

38:38

pouring things in and every time i pull the mold apart i’m surprised at what happened inside i like the kind of

38:45

experiment that happens

38:51

all right and here’s the the little guy that you just showed us is that right i love it yeah so these are pinocchio

39:04

yeah things so so yeah one thing that happened here was

39:10

when i did this body of work so i worked for i guess probably at least a year at the u of a developing the exhibition

39:17

at a certain point i stole this process this way of working

39:23

from an artist named mel chen who’s in those art 21 videos okay he was talking about being blocked in

39:30

his studio and he went to his friend and said i

39:35

don’t i need help i don’t know what to do and so his buddy said well

39:40

tell me what you love to do in the studio and he said well i love to make things with my hats and so his friend

39:46

said all right as a way of getting unblocked you’re not going to make anything by hand

39:51

you’re not going to do that you’re going to take your favorite thing and put it aside okay and i have found that to be a very

39:58

important and useful tool over the years to just ask myself what do you love doing

40:05

and then to just gently slap my hand and say stop that for a little while you know so for a long time was very

40:11

focused on copiers and scanners and like eventually well when i started my practice at the u of a when i

40:18

was doing my graduate degree i said okay you love all that gear put it away

40:23

they’re gonna make you teach drawing you better figure out what you’re doing like put it away and so i did and likewise with this

40:30

series of children that are all infected with plant forms i recognize that when i was doing these

40:38

altered sculptures my first move was always to chop the head right off

40:43

and go from there switch the heads and so for this body of work i said okay

40:48

not allowed find a new answer you know and i think that’s an important strategy at least for me to use i find

40:57

i’m recapitulating myself endlessly so i better find new ways to do it right right it’s important to kind of

41:03

shift out of your rut once in a while so i’ll often ask myself what’s my favorite thing

41:09

and then just ask myself to stop it for a while try something else yeah well and there’s

41:15

something about revisiting it after you’ve explored whether it’s drawing or writing or

41:20

it must have taken the work to a whole different level after leaving it for a while

41:28

yeah i think so and definitely it’s been you know it’s i i feel like

41:36

it kind of the that the when you know everything what it’s going

41:42

to look like before you even start you’re in a kind of a bad spot you’re in a baby a worse spot than

41:47

where you don’t know what to do it’s maybe a better spot to be in so i think in a simple way i try to put

41:54

myself there yeah put yourself back where you don’t know what to do and try to figure it out again

42:00

yeah um okay so i love i love this piece on the right it’s wonderful what

42:08

what can you tell us about these words right well um

42:15

i did it a little i guess it was a class of sorts

42:22

before the hdrc boondoggle that happened like in the late 90s

42:27

and all that money got shut down at the federal level there was this really neat class that was offered for graduates at

42:34

acap so we were paid like a part-time wage

42:39

to come and do these business development classes for artists

42:45

at a college in calgary and one of the guys that was teaching these classes was a photographer

42:51

named monty green shields he lives in calgary and so i was you know i it was actually

42:57

pretty good important experience for me because i started this process of like let’s figure out what

43:02

your business is artist and i immediately did 180 and said well

43:08

i guess that better be a jewelry business because like how could you make a business out of this other stuff that’s crazy right

43:15

and like making photocopies of dead animals that’s not a business yeah and so i wrote up a whole business

43:21

plan about how i was going to be a jeweler and all the things i was going to do and it made me so unhappy yeah i just

43:29

threw it in the bin and i said no my my business is paul freeman makes like cinema scale images using color

43:37

copiers and dead animals that he finds on the side of the road and that’s the proposal that i ended up writing for the

43:44

business plan that i wrote yeah and um i did an exhibition at the call paul

43:51

kuhn gallery in calgary i had a couple of chances to show monty the work not just in slide but in the real and he

43:58

said well i know you’re moving back to edmonton you know because i wanted to be uh near my daughter at the time

44:04

and so i was hot in fact i was driving from edmonton to calgary to do these

44:09

classes but regardless i was encouraged by monty to contact catherine

44:14

and tell her that he had told her that she needed to see my work this is monty from paul kuhn gallery

44:21

this is monty from this business class okay in calgary anyway he said i

44:27

think you’re ready paul you need to call catherine and just get her to look at your work and so i did i phoned and i said hi you

44:34

know i’m paul freeman and monty green shields told me that i had to tell you to see my

44:39

stuff and i was able to get katherine to come for a visit yeah maybe i brought stuff to her i

44:45

don’t remember anymore and it was kind of like really exciting

44:51

and and then crickets i wasn’t sure if i’d made an impact at

44:56

all and maybe four months later i got a phone call from catherine and she said i have this vision for this show

45:02

i have this space for you and i want to include you in this exhibition so a year out of art school i had the

45:09

chance to put this this um 740 page image up it’s about 40

45:14

feet long and it’s all stretched out uh and can you explain that process a

45:21

little bit more like how would you actually um so you say when you’re saying you’re

45:27

actually putting all of these images up it’s it’s in base like it was

45:32

would be like a pixelated version of the entire in image right yeah so

45:41

that’s the very first they’re on just color copy paper just 11 by 17 sheets of paper it’s a

45:49

nightmare if you can imagine trimming all those edges and can i get to light up

45:55

yeah anyway and lots of work and i’ll never forget the um praise i

46:01

got from catherine when we did the show because she was like paul you just came in bang that up

46:07

like yeah that would be that would take some time anyway yeah i

46:13

had a plan and just scaffold and stuff we anyway the the way i made it was i got i got a

46:21

bunch of snakes and a bunch of mice and some seeds and some flowers and all my materials

46:28

yeah and then i i got a long piece of acetate that was about three times as long

46:36

as the platen or the glass that’s that you put stuff on when you’re making photocopies

46:42

right and so i would compose my image on the acetate

46:47

so there’s the glass the acetate and then all my stuff on top of that and make my pictures and then slide it

46:55

all along and compose more and make more pictures and then pull it farther

47:00

and so that’s how i ended up with this continuous image that is longer a different shape than the color copier

47:07

itself and these pieces of paper on the wall are one generation removed from the

47:14

first pictures so those old machines you could take

47:21

anything that you put on the glass and have it spit out a four by four image so it would magnify it right from

47:27

the glass four by four and then i took each of those 16 pages and blew them up into 16

47:34

pages making 256 perception and there’s three sections on this in this piece

47:41

yeah and how long how long did the did it take for you to install this

47:47

piece a day and a half i think wow pretty quick

47:52

pretty quick yeah i took a lot longer to cut all the paper again yeah but yeah putting it up was

47:58

pretty easy yeah and what about the one on the left

48:03

what is what’s this one about well

48:12

i it was again one of those moments where i was saying to myself this was right when i was starting my

48:18

graduate degree at the u of a and i was very very invested in this idea of

48:23

i’m going to make these weird little sculptures and then i’m going to take those sculptures and put them in the real world and i’m going to make 100

48:29

million photographs of them and then i’ll collage those together into some kind of picture

48:34

and yeah this one was a little bit different in that i started playing with scale and things like that

48:41

but i think it also became the piece or is like okay paul

48:47

time to go somewhere new and so this was the last one i was like okay no more

48:53

no more playing with computers no more playing with cameras like you’re gonna draw you’re gonna

48:58

sculpt you’re gonna figure out how to make those things work together and so for my whole time that i was

49:04

studying at the u of a i sort of put all that stuff to bed but prior to that i’ve had a really great time playing

49:11

around with reconfiguring sculptures and then uh collaging them from photographs that

49:16

i’ve done in either in the garden or out on a camping trip yeah something like that

49:22

well it certainly is all fed into your works and and you’re currently for the most part you are you’re you’re

49:29

sculpting at the moment right that’s your primary yeah yeah i’m uh

49:38

i don’t know yeah right now i’m sculpting and this lrt thing is taking over um

49:45

yeah i think maybe i don’t know other yeah we’re down to the wire yeah

49:53

i think i don’t know what’s next it’s it’s a little terrifying but it’s

49:59

also an important place to go i’m not sure what will happen again

50:04

i’ve got to tell you making big stuff has its problems so this idea that you

50:10

could right sorry what’s this this idea that you could make something digital

50:16

and store it you know in no space it has a lot of appeal yes so i i’m curious about making movies

50:23

again i’m curious about but honestly i don’t it must take longer

50:29

right now it might it must take over your space like your home

50:35

you said this has been ongoing for a couple of years now at what point did you actually start building the sculptures

50:43

well it took a long time to get the design and fabrication packages approved

50:48

because there was so much back and forth engineers and yeah the project team i’m not complaining it just

50:54

it just took that long so i think i started sculpting in earnest in like january but there’s been a lot

51:02

of starting and stopping because until we know that it doesn’t matter the technical details but until

51:08

there’s engineering i’d be foolish to build the armature right it’s foolish to go too far so i

51:14

roughed out my forms i got the sculptures working in ways that made me happy right but now i’m in the process of of

51:22

putting the armatures inside i can’t tell you how i look forward to having legs that don’t snap every time i look at them

51:28

i’m just it’s been very frustrating building those sculptures but when you’re saying the armature in it’s

51:36

the metal the metal rods for support well why don’t we go see perfect look i’ll take you there

51:43

so you can see my living room and and here’s one of those really big

51:49

images right taking something natural and blowing it up to okay a massive scale i can’t see what

51:57

you’re seeing so that makes it harder oh yeah there you go yeah

52:04

oh that’s wonderful [Music] just the guy i made oh so good

52:11

yeah there’s a few of them around in here there’s these guys they’re pretty cute oh wonderful

52:18

there’s atlas sun whoops you know sculptures from nina lots of work from

52:24

rhino in the house of course yeah my wife nicole gollus is a very accomplished painter so

52:31

yeah with plenty of her stuff around too

52:38

yeah we have a few comments here too

52:55

so great to hear and another saying i really enjoyed your antler metaphor

53:00

great work paul

53:07

oh did we lose you

53:17

it looks like we’ve lost paul there’s um so with that um are there any other

53:24

comments that you’d like to share yeah we have it says that he’s left the

53:31

room um so with that um thank you all very much for joining us

53:36

and uh i’ll forward any messages that you’d like to leave for paul

53:42

oh there he is he’s back he’s back to say goodbye

53:48

hello paul

53:55

hi hi we lost you there for a moment sorry i think someone unplugged my modem

54:02

outside and so i started losing my signal it was all set up to go

54:07

um if people really want to see it i’m sure i can make it happen in like two minutes but i’ll have to run and do it

54:13

we have um well we’re we have six minutes okay uh i should share the comments for

54:21

you as well sure because you wouldn’t have heard them uh we had a comment saying that they really enjoyed your antler metaphor

54:28

and great work paul another thanks for all the insight you’ve given us into your practice over the years so great to

54:34

hear um so and then janet is excited to see what’s next

54:40

and um yeah that’s that’s all for now

54:45

so if you’d like do you want to try and get it going or do you want to wrap it up i bet it’ll work it’s

54:53

probably just a question of plugging one thing in so okay if you guys don’t mind i’ll run out for one minute and see if i can get it

54:59

to happen sounds great yeah so as we mentioned um there are a

55:06

few pieces like uh the two pieces in this slide that you can get

55:12

um at the aga shop so if you’re if you’re interested

55:17

especially like these antlers are fantastic if you’re interested you should check them out um and sarah says let’s do it let’s see

55:26

the sculpture there we go

55:51

hi paul can you hear us

55:57

yeah it’ll be really exciting exciting to see have a sneak peek of the work in advance they just look so playful and even just

56:04

to see the scale of it um i’m i’m interested to see what the

56:10

uh how he’s supported the armature can you hear me i sure can

56:17

oh

56:30

you’re you’re good we have hi hi i can’t hear you oh do you want to check

56:37

your try your audio i turned it on again now i hear you okay good stuff and now your video there

56:44

we are all right we’ll see okay all right so let’s have a sneak

56:51

peek i hope we’ll make it yeah

57:00

so far so good yeah yeah we’re doing

57:10

great

57:16

oh it looks like we’ve frozen again

57:24

oh oh sorry i think we’re having technical

57:30

difficulties here i can hear you but the the images bummer

57:36

oh yeah it’s on is it working now uh i can’t why can’t i it’s

57:41

mine is frozen at the moment oh it’s darn there it goes

57:50

um we’ve lost signals so i think we will just um does anyone have any comments that

57:56

they’d like to leave for paul before we wrap up today’s session

58:03

oh it says paul’s back [Music]

58:11

[Music]

58:20

yeah okay but i can see you now it seems to be

58:27

breaking up a bit but

58:32

oh no sorry paul has left the room again

58:37

um thank you so much everyone for joining us today um it’s been an honor speaking with paul

58:44

i i can hear you paul but i can’t i guess it’s not gonna work sorry no worries

58:50

no [Music]

58:58

yeah the image is still frozen but i we can hear you i can still hear you okay

59:06

yeah i i guess sorry it was working the other day but no worries that’s my faith well we’ve

59:12

had a couple of comments uh no oh here we go here you are

59:20

there we are sorry hi okay guys we have a couple of comments

59:27

a home studio visit would be great was one of them and uh yeah wow

59:35

thanks for hosting and then paul another thing uh a studio visit in person is

59:41

is is in order so yeah so i guess we’ll just wrap up

59:49

for today but thank you so much for taking the time it’s been it’s been a pleasure talking well thank you

59:55

yeah and um well i really enjoyed it likewise and uh the ada

1:00:02

is in closing uh the aga team continues to work hard to bring you art creative

1:00:08

projects to do at home and engage with you daily if you have further questions please reach out to us at info

1:00:14

your aga.ca and is there anything more you’d like to add paul

1:00:21

no just that again i’m you know super grateful to the aga for asking me to be here today and uh

1:00:28

just to acknowledge that you know they have given me lots of support over the years i’m very grateful to have them in

1:00:34

our city yeah that’s that’s wonderful thank and thank you for sharing that

1:00:41

thanks and thanks again have a a wonderful rest your day and until next time stay stay safe stay

1:00:49

curious and stay connected okay thanks very much you’re welcome

1:00:54

have fun have a great day bye you too

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