
Paper Ship
After 6 years of good health, Winter 2011 my chronic fatigue came back. By Spring I managed to return to life and grad school, but with only three weeks to do three months of work.
I built this paper sculpture in an empty 4th floor lunchroom in Concordia’s Visual Arts building. I saturated every surface with so much graphite that most days I looked like a coal miner. The piece was suspended from the ceiling on rubber ribbons, and it was light enough that it rolled gently when breezes blew in through the open window.
For years I was unable to find a place to exhibit it. I kept it and forgot about it. Then in 2018 I was able to borrow a space so that I could re-work it. I included it in the Ingrédients pour un Univers fait Maison exhibition, flat on the wall. In 2019 I was finally able to exhibit it as a three dimensional drawing at the Maison de la Culture de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – Botrel, in 2019 where, somewhat ironically, it spent the COVID lockdown.





Making
















The gallery shows my basic working method across all media: careful plan, drawing out patterns for each section of the sculptural drawing; careful budget, calculating costs of pencils, graphite powder, rolls of watercolour paper, rubber and hardware… And then ignoring the entire thing and making it up as I go.
…some of my technical disasters are a direct result of this tendency. BUT, over the years I’ve also realized that forcing myself to stay focused on the original plan leads to mind-numbingly boring works I have no interest in exhibiting or pursuing.
And ignored plans are always helpful. I will be following some vague, impressionistic mental map.



