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hello everyone thank you all so much for joining me today my name is sarah huffman and i am

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the art rental and sales associate at the art gallery of alberta we welcome you to our meet the artisan

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series a part of aga live here at the gallery we embrace the teachings of tatewa a kree phrase

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meaning welcome there is room in our house even the virtual one everyone is welcome i’m delighted to be

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your host for this hour joining me today is artist jerry dotto before we dive into the subject i’d like

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to highlight that this is an interactive event and we’d like to hear from you you are

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welcome to use the chat window on the side screen to share your comments as we discuss with jerry dotto if a

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question gets unnoticed or unanswered at the time please know that we will review all unanswered questions before we wrap up

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today’s event jerry dotto is a visual artist based in

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sherwood park alberta his work explores our interaction with everyday forms of

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visual communication and how people relate to their urban environment

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he’s been practicing art for over 30 years and has worked in a variety of

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techniques including photography print making mixed media collage using

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recycled materials aluminum-based work and sculpture since completing his studies

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at the alberta college of art he’s exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally most

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recently he’s shown in the alberta biennial of contemporary art in 2017

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the salt spring national art prize and the florida museum of photographic arts international

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photography competition where he took first place in the still life division

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please take this time to give a warm welcome to our october artist jerry dotto hi

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hello there you are nice to see ya here i am so yeah thanks uh thanks for

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uh inviting me in uh for this meet the artist session it’s uh this is a first for me and i’m

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excited to share my work and my process with everybody watching so

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yeah thanks wonderful well we’re so excited to get to know you more get to hear about

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your artistic process and i’m really excited to share the presentation with everyone because your

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images are so wonderful and uh we can get to know more about your process

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uh starting with the presentation so i’m just gonna pop that on the screen here

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all right okay thanks so this is uh my earlier work i did

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mostly print making and drawing um this is a screen print

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from 1982 so most of my prints back then were either

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mostly black and white or black and white with little bits of color and the color elements uh quite often are

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hand colored using pencil crayons this this comes this is

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part of my experience as a graphic designer and illustrator as well

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and i attended the alberta college of arts and there i took the visual

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communications program which is the commercial art program and i i figured i i’d take something

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where i could get a job when i was done school as a graphic designer and then i could always do my personal work

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on my on my own time so so that’s basically the the route i took so i’ve worked as a

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graphic designer for about 35 years and i’ve worked as a fine artist the

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same amount of time but different parts of the day yeah absolutely

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so uh yeah so this uh my work back then was um

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similar to i guess my fine artwork was very similar to my uh illustrator work at the back time at

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that time so and when he went oh sorry go ahead go ahead sir i was going to ask

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uh when you were in school did you uh take a course um similar to this style of work that

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inspired you to continue making works like that or was that something that you kind of played along with um after

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school um yeah it didn’t really develop during school um i guess the things that influenced

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my my style of work at that time were artists like m.c escher um

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salvador dali european illustrators their at that time illustration was kind

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of going under a big change things are getting more more expressive

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more abstract so not not we was commonly known as commercial art

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back then so so it’s kind of a big change and i i really latched onto it and and it helped

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develop my my style of work for sure yeah absolutely and just a fun fact for those who are

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watching uh we actually sold this piece to an employee of the art gallery of alberta

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because she actually had this in her office for quite a few years and she moved to montreal and she really

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didn’t want to part with this piece because she looked at it every day and it’s titled rough day at the office

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and she was like this is going with me yeah a lot of people relate to

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this one because the office yeah yes yeah i think one of

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my favorite elements of this piece is the arrow coming out of the gentleman’s mouth

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um i can just i can imagine what he’s saying

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so let’s pop over to our next piece here fruit of the loon some fruit of the loon

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so this is another screen print with hand colored elements and again this one

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you can really see the influence of dally and escher in this one yeah absolutely so the plane of the

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optical space and our abstract elements becoming uh

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like the squiggly year is very delish yeah yeah absolutely for the folks who

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are watching who don’t know the process of this can you walk us through

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what kind of tools you need to do this do you have to do anything in a particular way to get a certain outcome

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uh well these my the printmaking i was doing back then was

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pretty straightforward pretty simple i i was mostly kind of self-taught i did a lot of my

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printmaking at the snap studios back then how nice yeah and i actually i’ve been

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have been associated with snap and still am actually for since the early 80s

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and um they they were really big and the other artists there helped help me you know develop my craft

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and taught me some of the finer points of printmaking so this is a silk screen print so it’s

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pretty basic process you have have your silk screen and you

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um build the release out of it and or a mask and then the parts that

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you don’t want printed in this case black would just be masked out

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right and then you draw the ink or the surface onto the paper and there you go there’s your print

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wonderful and so everything has to be backwards

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right

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yeah and this in this case like if you look in the uh fly swatter on the left there right at

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the very top of god my you know my name uh engraved and now that’s backwards but that’s backwards on

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purpose okay i see yeah he’s messing around with people’s heads wonderful

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this one is uh big apples this is another screen print uh this is from 1993 so

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this is getting a little bit farther on in my career this is uh again very much my

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illustrative style at the time and i was starting to incorporate text to

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a much larger degree again that’s another influence from the graphic design

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and that’s the thing i found between doing both fine art and graphic design is

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one would influence the other so they’re elements of graphic design particularly the use of text and and uh

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different uses of text uh would it would certainly inform my fine artwork

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and then a lot of the fine artwork specifically the illustrative parts of

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it would influence the illustrations i was doing yeah absolutely and did you work on

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those at at similar times or were you kind of wrapping a piece up and then pulled inspiration from it

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to put to another piece or did you have multiple things on the go yeah for the most part

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my mom have almost always had several different pieces on the go at the same time

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yeah so yeah there’s definitely crossover from things i’ve worked i’m working on

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simultaneously as well as things i’ve worked on in the past as well as things i’m planning to work on

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so right always lots on my goal yeah we got a message from michelle letting

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us know that this is one of their favorite pieces oh great yeah this this is that one

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popular with a lot of people the fun thing about this piece is it’s actually a word puzzle

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um it’s not obvious but if you look if you read only the uh

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the words in the uh balloons right so that’s that’s the things that

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the uh the two-headed woman is saying yeah um it spells out the name of the city

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so oh oh yeah so it’s as i say it’s not an obvious

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thing yeah well i’ll read it out to you it says n-e-double you y o-r-k

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and at first it just sounds like nonsense but if you think of it as letters

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n-e-w y-o-r-k

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there we go that’s wonderful well it’s just so

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dynamic i mean just looking at it you’re obviously visually stimulated

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um but it has so many elements to it that you really need to look at it and

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appreciate it and like i didn’t even think about that and so

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it’s not it’s not an obvious thing it’s kind of fun once people realize

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that what’s going on there it’s they they really get a kick out of it so yeah yeah that’s that’s a fun piece

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though yeah okay here’s another uh another print

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this was um extremely was commissioned by snap for their spring 2009 newsletter

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and uh it’s another text text based image and this one

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is used uses a cigarette package design as the basis for the for the design of

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the print i i used to be a cigarette smoker when i was young and foolish

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and so this is uh this is based on the type of cigarettes i smoked back then

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and the the part that the text is on is actually cigarette papers that have

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been glued to the surface of the print yeah and then print it over top of again on

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on the letterpress yeah and if you look at the little guy in in

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the circle this is based on a player’s cigarette package so they always had the sailor on the on the cover of their

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package but what i did is i took their sailor and i put my face on

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his head so it’s actually a little self-portrait of me on a cigarette package yeah

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and uh what is the piece on the far left with the portfolio of the of the face

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that is uh just well that’s me again i guess

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and that’s why i didn’t recognize it yeah but i do have a beret on there so yeah

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yeah and the question is does killing myself for cigarettes count as suffering for my

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art and he’s going no he’s french she’s wearing a braid i’m

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not friends well i’m a little bit french all right and this piece you don’t do

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the maths you don’t do the math yeah this is another another text based one

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so uh the big word is uh button and that’s that’s a real button that’s

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hanging down from the letter o there so it’s loosely

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stitched to the surface of the print so it kind of if you swing swing the printer around

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the buttonhole flip around a bit there

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and what the text is under button is b you pi or when so

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if you say or sorry if you pronounce the letters of

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button really quick you get b u pi o n oh

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another trick yeah so another kind of fun

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i like to have a little elements of humor in a lot of my work as well too so just make something a little

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different to make some fun to look at and see

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awesome and i i noticed that the r and the two

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on the bottom there are also bolded and red does that happen

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look at the pi and the r and the two that’s pi r squared yeah all right so

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that’s the rate it’s the uh equation for the uh radius of the circle or sorry for the

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area of the circle pi r squared there you go yeah

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with all these all these fun little elements yeah absolutely so this is another uh print this is a

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relief print so this was done on a letterpress so this is the one where

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my uh elements are backwards on the press they’ll be bored when they’re printed so

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this i had had metal plates made for the text and

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the in the little images so at this point i was uh getting also more heavily

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involved with collage and working with recycled materials and

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most of well pretty much all the collage work i do is uses recycled materials mostly

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just uh household packaging things so this is very uh reflective of that

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yeah um sorry we do have a detail of it as well

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so i’ll just pop over to that yeah so this is a detail and again this is uh um

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because it’s relatively small on the original print i found when a lot of people look at the

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print they don’t actually look at the little printing on it yeah so so it’s kind of again it’s just uh

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uh odd remark i made first is the first paragraph is what you would

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typically see on a on a package and the second paragraph

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is not yeah it was a little surprised when i read it the first time

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yeah and then that’s the whole point yeah absolutely it’s just a little fun surprise that

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you don’t normally get um when you see something like that yeah but you have to be willing to take

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the time to read it right yes absolutely so for those of you who have bad eyes like me

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i will try to read this the best i can just peel inner bag apart re-roll inner

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bag after use to maintain freshness and the second paragraph is you don’t need to read your cat’s mind

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to know what she’s thinking just listen to her talking in her sleep

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first everybody’s cat talks no sleep right yeah absolutely

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all right and another one here as well yeah and again you can see these these are

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also pretty heavily influenced by my work as a graphic designer too

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so in terms of packaging design and just general sort of use of graphics this is

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uh this is another relief print and this print is actually i’ve cut and

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folded the paper to make a box but it’s been flat so

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it’s not very big it’s about six inches by four inches so it’s uh again based on the uh

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on a cigarette package design this one includes the little uh the duty

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page sticker that are that are on cigarette packages that’s up in the top

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so i like those elements so that that’s an actual duty paid sticker i stuck it on and along the bottom edge

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there you can see the truffle crumpled up tin foil from inside

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typical cigarette package so i’m not sure why i use cigarette package

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designs they just seem to work well for me i guess do you have a preference of of size of

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what you’re working with um well yeah i tend to work

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smaller like i don’t know eight by ten five by six that sort of thing um just because of

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the space that i work in i i work out in my basement

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in my home so my studios is a small room in the in the back in the corner in the dark

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yeah and uh so it’s it’s mostly filled with

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stuff because i’ve been making art for 30 years now so things tend to pile up so it’s almost

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more of a storage room and i’ve got a small table that i can work on that’s all

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so anything bigger than what i can fit on my tabletop out i have to go out work in the garage or

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or i would say the printmaking i do out at snap nap studios so that’s good resource as

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well so have you done a lot of uh preparation for pieces in your home and then taken things to

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snap or do you just do the whole process there yeah well it depends on the piece but yeah i’ll do as much

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prep as i can at home yeah then so i have uh it’s easier for me to do

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the work once i get to the print studio so right yeah but again this is uh

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again another text-based piece and it’s um it’s got kind of a funky poem

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it’s based on a lori anderson song called smoke rings and

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it’s sort of a mishmash of french in spanish and english

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and um yeah it just kind of goes on about the hazards of smoking and um yeah

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again just another fun piece right right awesome so uh

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from uh from there we go away to some of my photography and um i i didn’t do a lot of futar i

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was interested in photography but i couldn’t really afford you know the film

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and and the processing and all that when i was younger yeah because we were raising a family we

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had four kids in our young family yeah and so i i back then i was doing a

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lot of polaroids but when when photography went digital

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and easier to access and more or less cheaper i got a little more heavily into

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photography so about around 2005 or so 2005 2010 i

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got more serious about my photography so this is one of the first pieces i did that that i thought

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was really successful and it’s it’s actually a composite image

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it’s um there’s another tie into my graphic design experience

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i actually got pretty good at photoshop because of my job as a graphic designer

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so i was able to take digital photographs and i can manipulate them in any way so this is a

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composite image the car and the snow and the subject there is my

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son mark they were all shot at different times and then i put them together in this one piece oh

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okay interesting yeah so it came together quite nicely

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i liked the element of the car uh sort of a half of the ditch he had

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skidded out one night we lived out on an acreage and driving home one night i saw this car in

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the ditch in the snow and i liked how how the back end was full of snow but

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the rest of the car just disappeared into the blackness yeah absolutely and uh

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yeah and then i got the other elements and put them together and there you go yeah well in the break light also

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with the the red of your son’s hat just compliment oh well

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so do you have a preference of working with polaroid or with digital because you can manipulate it more or

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uh well it depends on the image um the polaroids i did um and actually that’s sort of

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what got me into the uh taking photographs of signs right so i was well the signs i saw

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was really struck me as um as as as sculptures i guess

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out there and so i started photographing them as thinking them of them as

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sculptures and the polaroids i i found they were they

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were great the as an analog medium i thought they’re they’re terrific and depending on the

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type of work to do i’ll still shoot polaroids but for

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uh you know to have i like the idea of having big photos too the photos i print are

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usually 20 by 30 average size so i like baby being able to print big so

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yeah it’s nice to have the the digital photographs and to work with yeah and like

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the ability to be able to work with both of those is really important and understanding

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how each of them work i think is really neat too oh yeah yeah and they’re actually

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completely different yeah in so many ways so yeah it depends on the type of image you want to do and

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so yeah cool so on to the next one you did mention this a little bit about

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signs yeah this is uh from a series called

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flow of traffic theory and what what that series is primarily is uh they’re road signs

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that have been uh covered over or beat up or

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somehow had their message covered or changed so that’s the whole

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whole idea behind this series and again that sort of ties into to my use of text in my images

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in this this case it’s more sense of having the message uh blocked or

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distorted and so that’s that’s what i’m looking at with these images here

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yeah absolutely and so these covered signs again these are the ones that i

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was seeing as being very sculpture like yeah absolutely

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this one is so visually pleasing to me

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i don’t know what it is if it’s the dark sky and then the brightness in the foreground or just the

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shapes of everything i don’t know well it’s it’s a really interesting image

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because it’s because of the variety of the types of elements in there right from

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the orange pylons to the uh you know the back of the stop sign it’s got the the

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the odd marks and then in the background you see the uh so the oil refinery towers and then over

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to the left there’s the hay bales and the sandbags so a nice uh variety of elements in

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there and when did you um did you go out and

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do this series kind of all in one go or was this a ongoing project for you yeah

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no it’s a it wasn’t ongoing still is ongoing i see you know if i see

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any interesting signs i still like to go out and fold uh photograph them

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i’m not not as active with these as i once was because i i’m looking for something

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different in terms of signs so i’ve kind of photographed kind of a large variety of signs already

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and but yeah it’s an ongoing process and yeah and this is another one that that

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goes in the series this one is uh it’s been a popular print for me

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um a lot of people have been just found interested in this one i think

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just because it’s it’s so familiar yes right going down highway 2 to

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calgary which you know i do on we do on a relatively regular basis right and um

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yeah it’s just the back of one of those big signs that shows you how far all the cities are or whatever

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but obviously very different perspective um becomes very

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abstract image and that’s the thing too about these uh roadside photos is for me they’re

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very much abstract images yeah absolutely we did just get another

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message from michelle letting us know that evelyn loves this piece thank you that’s my granddaughter that’s

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my new grammar oh wonderful she’s an emerging artist as well

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perfect yeah this one is is a really neat piece

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i love the title a cautionary tale i just feel like there’s such a story behind this and i just i want to know

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what the story what it is

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the the story is um again it’s me playing with uh messaging

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on roadsides this uh no yield is the word yield is also spelled

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incorrectly here so this is the sign that i had the the small yield sign this one that i had

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made up yeah and i went out and

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bolted it to a real yield sign and photographed it yeah so this

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is uh this is one of my what i call my covert operations so

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dealing um or yeah you’re not allowed to manipulate road signs

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it’s it’s illegal so i i’m i’m trying to be careful when i do it

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it’s well this is something that i i’ve done um but uh

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the the intent of the law is of course they don’t want signs changed so that people won’t get

30:48

into car accidents obviously so i’m very careful that when i’m doing it um

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doing it either in a low traffic area i’m if i am adjusting it i’m doing it in

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such a way that it won’t affect traffic um so it won’t be causing accidents and

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in this case i just had to sign up long enough for me to photograph it then i took it back down right

31:13

yeah absolutely so if we ever see you on the side of the highway we

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know series is coming out yeah yeah well that’s

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yeah that’s where i’ve been caught lots of times on the side of the highway but uh again i i like the idea of

31:31

playing with language and p playing with people’s expectations yeah to see a yield sign is you got to do a

31:40

double take right before you kind of catch on that that it’s been spelled wrong

31:45

right so this is uh this is another photo series i did um called two

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wheelers the the story behind this is kind of fun

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um i was visiting my daughter in calgary and they were living in a large apartment complex

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and uh we went down in their car they’re driving through their underground parking lot and as

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you’re going down the different levels of the parking lot i’m looking at at the parking stalls and um it’s set

32:21

up so that there’s hooks on the wall so so the residents can hang their bikes on

32:27

the wall so as you’re driving through the parking lot and looking at these stalls and there’s these

32:33

bikes hung on the wall and it looks like they’re floating through space as you

32:38

as you go down through the parking lot so that’s what really struck me at first yeah i thought man that this looks

32:44

terrific right so i gotta get my camera out and photograph some of these some of

32:50

these bikes floating through the air yeah absolutely i can imagine that when you’re driving by them it almost

32:56

feels like they’re also moving did that yeah yeah and that was very much the

33:03

experience so yeah so as i went down and i started photographing

33:08

the bikes the you start to see the the residents also putting other things

33:15

up in their parking stalls so you you have a limited surface right you’ve got a flat wall

33:22

yeah you can hang a couple things up there or lean it against the wall or so i’ve i based my whole series on

33:31

on these individual parking stalls and the things that they have uh hanging up or or

33:38

leaning up against the walls yeah well it’s interesting too because you

33:43

almost get to know that that person in a way like with this previous image

33:49

it it feels like oh i i can relate to you or i can get to know you because of

33:54

your pink basket on the front of your bike yeah right or the winter tires being stored

34:02

this one’s interesting do you know what’s behind the tarp i’m uh you know what i’m not sure could

34:08

be could be another bike maybe i don’t know yeah that’s that’s the mystery right

34:14

yeah absolutely that’s that’s the thing about these two now is um they sort of struck me as little each

34:21

one is his own little art installation yeah and you know the the

34:27

these people have this limited amount of space and that’s why i like to use the pig

34:32

big yellow stripes on either side so that defines your space that you have to work in

34:38

you get to set up either your tarp or your bikes or you know whatever it is that strikes

34:44

your fancy your coolant you’re coolant yeah

34:49

lots of coolant out there yeah and so this is a photo from uh the fence

34:55

exhibition and uh this was a fun one for me to get into

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it’s uh it’s an international exhibition we started it out in new york

35:08

and it was i’m not sure how many years maybe only about 10 years

35:14

or so that it’s been going on it hasn’t been that long and it starts in new york and then would

35:20

go to about another half a dozen cities in the states

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and what is the public photo photography exhibition so each artist in the show

35:32

has five photos and what they what they’ve done is just

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printed on this long cart and hung up uh in a public space

35:44

outside and um yeah usually goes for a couple blocks

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long there’s there’s usually about i don’t know 20 artists or so that that has work up

35:56

so this is good so this one this particular one they they have uh one location in canada that they go

36:02

to which is happens to be in calgary okay so uh yeah so uh that was great so we

36:09

we got to have our work up in the calgary exhibition now the only bad

36:16

thing is normally they these shows are in the summer when people can go outside

36:25

but the one in calgary they coordinated with the photography festival in february

36:30

which is not a good time to have an outdoor photography exhibit so

36:37

at the time of this photo it was that february which was 2019

36:47

february 2019 yeah it was uh yeah minus 30 pretty much all month

36:52

so

36:58

yeah absolutely it shows resilience of your following and and the

37:07

it’s so nice uh nice to get it out there yeah awesome so now we’re going back to the 90s

37:14

yeah so yeah this is going back again so yeah i thought we’d have a look at some some other stuff i was doing back then

37:21

there i was involved in in mail art was a big thing for me and it was just

37:28

more of a release just a fun way to um not be too serious about my work and and

37:37

create some work and what mail art is is or it was back then anyways someone

37:42

would host a mail art exhibition maybe anywhere in the world

37:48

and ideally you create something and you would mail it to them simple as that now for a purist

37:56

your your piece of mail art would actually be the thing that was mailed as opposed

38:02

to making something putting it in an envelope and mailing it right just step you stamp the stamp on it

38:12

yeah so so this is one of those so this is actually a print as well it’s

38:19

a lino cut print and with some rubber stamping and stem

38:25

stenciling yeah but the print mimics the stamp mm-hmm

38:32

oh yeah it does yeah so that was that was the whole

38:39

point of this one so you know the the outside shape with the uh beveled edge and the um

38:48

and then the banana looks like the whale and the words banana 90 you look like

38:53

canada 78 so that was the whole idea behind that one that’s awesome

38:59

and so working with lino cut um what are some some things that you

39:05

enjoy about working with it and some things that you don’t really like working about with it um well there’s i don’t think

39:13

there’s anything i don’t like working about it it’s it’s it’s a fun process and again you know my my

39:18

images are usually pretty simple so they’re kind of easy to do and and uh yeah it’s just you know fun

39:25

playing with ink and getting your hands dirty and yeah

39:30

yeah okay again some more moral mail art based

39:38

work this is a design based on a

39:43

parking receipt ticket again very much text-based type image

39:52

this has more textural elements in the surface of the paper with with the little hole

39:59

punches and so trying to create some texture in there

40:04

and the embossing of the numbers on the side and again with using the stamp to uh

40:12

as as an element of the design

40:17

those are awesome and how long does a process like this usually take you

40:24

i depend again depends on the piece uh something like this would probably take me

40:30

uh well once i figured out what i wanted to do once i had the design figured out and

40:39

you know thought of exactly what i want to put on it to actually build it i could probably it

40:45

would probably take me a couple weeks this being in addition to right um there

40:51

are um i think there’s 28 in this this particular edition

40:59

thing about this one too sorry if you want to go back yeah i’m sorry sir okay i wanted i i wanted

41:05

to mention this too a lot of the work i’m doing now and this is a good example too is

41:12

uh is two-sided so there both sides of the of the piece

41:18

are images yeah so this is when i first one of the

41:24

earlier versions of when i started doing that yeah they both have a purpose for sure

41:31

yeah yeah neat

41:37

again this is more mail art this is another uh another double-sided piece yeah um

41:44

the the part on top those are um tim hortons cups and i i just

41:51

cut off sections of it and this is where you roll up the rim yeah so these ones i think all say play

41:57

again or something like that yeah they’re all losers

42:12

what is that one pardon me what is the the bottom image

42:18

the bottom part so this is a good example of sort of typically what i do with my uh collage

42:24

work now um involves uh use of recycled

42:30

packaging uh specifically uh like the flaps from from boxes

42:37

or crates and that sort of thing so i’m looking at the the color marks registration

42:46

marks barcodes those elements are kind of the main elements that i’m using in my

42:52

collage work now cool

43:02

you don’t see those very often no this uh so this one and actually the

43:08

previous one too these are for a male art show at the art gallery

43:14

saying albert okay a couple years ago and uh

43:19

this was a fun project i just thought of uh it’s more a conceptual piece and again

43:24

it’s sort of based on it it’s a digital print but it’s based on um

43:31

my use of re recycled materials so it’s made to look like a box that has

43:37

been flattened yeah and uh there was uh

43:42

is a piece that i put together and then then put in an envelope and mailed it so it

43:48

doesn’t have a stamp on it but the idea behind it is

43:53

it was a box with a bag of snow in it and it went in the mail and the snow melted

43:59

and so now the box is all wet and yeah so that’s how it looks yeah

44:07

it’s so fun and creative and the the branding of no name looks so

44:13

recognizable that it’s almost like oh my gosh did i actually sell that like first thoughts was can i actually

44:21

go get that at no frills and sleep just have to go to the right store

44:28

i think they’re sold out right now though [Music]

44:34

so here’s a sample of some of the collage work i’m doing

44:41

this goes back to 2005 so this involves collage as well

44:50

uh recycled materials as well as uh polaroids so that’s why i started incorporating some of my polaroids

44:57

in with collage work yeah

45:04

really awesome okay and this is uh here’s a typical

45:09

example of a type of collage i’m doing now

45:15

so it has uh sort of the requisite elements the um the bar codes

45:22

and the uh the color the color

45:29

color keys those elements um a lot of the collage work i love

45:35

doing now i like to incorporate plastic as well as paper

45:40

and card base and so that requires me to find a way of

45:47

connecting connecting it to the paper elements so they’re normally

45:53

either sewn on or stapled or i use the little little round uh

46:02

shoelace eyelets yeah so those are fun little elements to use

46:08

and in this particular one the on the back is actually a little plastic bag

46:14

and inside the bag is a match in a penny and a little black metal piece

46:22

and the idea behind that is that it’s somewhat kinetic if you’re holding the piece in your hand

46:29

i’ve designed these pieces so that there are made to be held in your hand right so very uh and

46:37

if you shake it around they’ll these little pieces will move inside the bag

46:43

yeah there’s probably an audio uh element to it as well because when you’re holding it and the bag kind of

46:48

crumples or you hear it jingling around yeah yeah yeah yeah to a certain degree

46:55

for sure neat and these guys yeah this is uh this is the piece

47:01

that i created for the alberta biennial in 2017.

47:08

and it is uh it’s actually quite big it’s about um

47:16

almost five feet high by about about eight eight or nine feet wide so

47:24

all the pieces together but this was based on uh

47:30

on one of my smaller little collage pieces and basically just blew it up you know

47:36

2 000 so what i did in creating this piece is

47:43

actually try to recreate as close as possible the little actual little pieces the original pieces

47:49

are only about two inches by three inches big so quite small

47:54

yeah so that included all the this is it showing at where it was

48:00

hanging at the binding so you can see how much larger it

48:06

actually is absolutely it’s very impactful

48:13

yeah yeah and again i’m trying to play with the elements of

48:20

torn edges cut edges there’s die cut edges so trying to replicate

48:25

those elements the the surfaces of

48:31

the paper the thickness of it so trying to to get that all

48:37

accurate as if it was relative to the two inch by three inch pieces

48:49

so now getting back to the road signs so this is uh again uh

48:57

at first i was photographing those signs and well i can actually make some of these

49:03

so um i i found a manufacturer who would make some signs for me

49:10

and uh this is kind of a typical of my approach to the signs

49:17

yeah so again it’s it’s message based but again it’s you know

49:24

you you look at it and you gotta do a double tape because

49:34

yeah so so so having the restrooms ahead sign underneath totally changes the

49:41

meaning of the person again fun to play with meanings and

49:48

interpretations and different points of view right that’s that’s what all these are about

49:56

yeah yeah so this is another fun piece and

50:02

this this one that makes use of uh

50:07

sort of publicly sourced materials i guess you would say and that would be the license plates on

50:13

this one the the license plates are actually two real license plates

50:18

these i had these on my wife’s and mine car

50:24

oh yeah and uh yeah she wasn’t too pleased about that but she’s you know being a trooper

50:30

she she went ahead and helped me out with that anyways right so so i’ve had to i had the idea for the

50:37

sculpture you know long before i i actually built it

50:42

um first thing i did is i had to order the license plates their custom-made

50:49

license plates so you had to order them and get them registered and put on my car and then drive around with

50:56

them on my car for a year oh my goodness

51:02

then after a year i was able to take them off my car and put them on my sculpture so

51:09

so it was a process this one was was a process for sure it was a process yeah you know it’s a

51:15

fun process you know you have an idea and you you know you know you have to take certain steps to get it

51:22

done yeah absolutely so all right so the place where the first

51:28

thing i had for this and after that i had to uh get the it’s a sign post the wooden

51:35

sign post and it’s uh a sock i had to find a long enough plain white

51:42

sock that would fit on my signpost and built a little uh structure to have

51:48

my shoe to fit in my shoe so it looked like it was standing on his toe right and then get the manhole cover as

51:57

the base yeah and where did you get the manhole cover

52:02

from uh from a manhole manufacturer mount hole cover manufacturer

52:11

that’s awesome so yeah this project was quite involved i guess hey

52:20

you know because i say this i said the same thing you know i want to use a manhole cover for my base where do i get

52:26

a manual cover right yeah they want to steal one they’re too heavy to try i was gonna say you can’t take that off

52:33

the side of the highway for sure yeah you leave a big hole in the ground too yeah

52:39

and so this is uh one of my more recent pieces and this is uh taking my

52:47

work with signs yeah just another step further here this is uh

52:55

this just a really big stop sign it’s four feet by four feet so oh wow

53:02

and the because the whole thing i guess is just um is kind of the shock value i guess

53:08

just to look at it to expect to see one thing and not see it yeah

53:18

yeah tampering those expectations that we’re so accustomed to seeing yeah yeah

53:24

and again it’s just point of view and

53:29

so yeah cool well that is the end of our presentation um if there’s any questions

53:37

from the audience please send them in right now and i’m going to ask jerry a couple more questions before

53:44

we wrap up today um so out of all of the elements that we spoke about today in

53:50

all of the mediums do you have a favorite or do you have

53:55

one that you just keep going back to i i don’t know that i

54:01

necessarily have a favorite i i enjoy i enjoy doing all these

54:07

different things i think what i enjoy is the variety as opposed to being stuck to doing just one

54:13

thing i it’s nice to be to be able to do a a number of different things right

54:18

and that and that’s us i know it can be a bit of a problem sometimes for artists

54:24

you know people expect you to do one type of thing

54:30

but um yeah i like to go in different directions and i like to

54:36

think that the the piece or the idea for the piece dictates

54:41

how it will be done right to a certain agreement yeah yeah and a lot of times i’ll i’ll

54:48

see something in i’ll say okay so this has to be done this way

54:56

so yeah cool do you find that um at this point in your career you’ve

55:03

developed more of an efficiency with your artistic practice or

55:08

do you still let things um kind of percolate i guess you could say um yeah

55:16

yeah and again that sort of depends on the project too there’s some projects um that’ll that i’ll work on

55:24

over years like say like like the uh the sculpture with the license plates

55:31

yeah i knew what i wanted to do and i knew it would take a certain amount of time to to get all the different elements

55:38

together so things like that i’ll let them work uh over time and then i’ve got

55:43

some projects on the go now that i am in sort of mid process right without different

55:49

elements working on the different times a lot of the smaller collage pieces now i find um

55:57

they’re sort of kind of quick and dirty i guess i i like i can i can do them in a day or

56:04

a couple days i’ll just you know i just want to relax

56:09

not think too much about what i’m doing there they’re more sort of intuitive pieces i guess uh i’ll

56:16

have like i’ve got a large selection of recycled materials laying around and

56:21

i’ll just start picking through them and seeing what works together and yeah and yeah just just kind of feel it

56:28

out so yeah are there any projects that you’ve revisited and

56:36

you know taken things away from or enhanced in some way

56:42

um not so much um like i have i i keep

56:49

a series of sketchbooks so i’m always writing down ideas and concepts

56:54

and that sort of thing and i’ll i’ll go back to some old sketchbooks and and to some old ideas that i may have

57:01

forgotten oh yeah i remember this right i think i’ll try and do this now

57:07

maybe i wasn’t able to do it back then for whatever reason right but i i always have the itch to go

57:13

ahead and do it now so there’s some of that going on yeah hello well i don’t see any comments

57:21

from the folks in the chat uh so i think we’re gonna wrap up for

57:26

today’s event um again i’m really excited uh and really thankful

57:32

to have this connection with you especially during this time and i get to know more about your

57:37

practice because whenever i’m in our rental and sales and i see the artwork that we have of yours i’m

57:43

always like i want to talk to him and and know what this is and get that

57:49

communication with you because it’s really fun to to hear the artist’s perspective um and i’m really appreciative that you

57:56

were able to join us tonight well thanks sir i appreciate the invitation as well and it’s been a real

58:03

pleasure to to share a little bit of my work and a little bit of my process with

58:08

with everyone and uh yeah it’s been great thanks wonderful absolutely thank you

58:14

all so much for joining us tonight um please keep uh an eye out for

58:20

further meet the artists and we will see you next time

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