Sweet on Paddling
Some projects take their time, require extensive planning and thoughtful consideration at every turn. Others are like a gunfight at a saloon filled with Muppets. This was the latter.
White Water Gallery's Paddle Project is the gallery's major annual fundraiser: 100 artists, 100 paddles, one night. The works are exhibited and auctioned to support the gallery's programming and its commitment to risk and innovation in contemporary art practice. At the invitation of artistic director Alex Campbell, SweetThings was in!
We had committed months earlier. When the paddles were finally ready, the timeline had closed in on us. There was no practical way to send them south, complete the work, and return them in time. So instead, we went to the source.
Pearl drove in from Guelph, collecting me and fellow artist Erik Mohr in Toronto at eight in the morning. The three of us headed north, back into winter, into a schedule that would see us arrive, work late into the night, and return within roughly thirty-six hours.
We stayed with my friend Michelle, which meant beer, Heated Rivalry on in the background, and paint on the floor until three in the morning. Honestly, ideal conditions.
Pearl's paddle, Raven Love, draws from the flora and fauna of the North Bay region. Using stencilled imagery, she built a layered composition that reads as a kind of compressed northern landscape, indexing place through repetition and pattern.
Mine, The Spanky Hanky Straddle Paddle, came together quickly and a little cheekily. I had a bandana with me, fresh off the heels of BARCODE, and that became the inspiration. A saturated fuchsia ground, bandana pattern translated directly onto the surface, the hanky code sitting visibly on an object tied to northern outdoor culture. Unplanned, but it fit. Some works know what they are before you do.
Installed together with the full cohort, all one hundred paddles formed a long continuous field along the gallery wall. Each one different, all of them part of the same gesture. It held.
That is what artist-run culture looks like when it's working. A community of people who show up, make things, and keep the lights on for each other.
Thank you to Alex Campbell and the team at White Water Gallery for the invitation, and for the sustained work of keeping artist-run culture alive in the North.
