The exhibition opens on Saturday 14 January with a reception from 7 to 9 pm. As part of the joint celebration with the concurrent Bernard Clark: Tattoo Portraits exhibition, Kingston artist Dave Gordon will offer an introduction to his acerbic portraits-in-the-landscape painting series featuring celebrities from Walt Whitman to Conrad Black.

The vaulted ceiling of the 1895 church tapers downward to points where chandeliers were once suspended. It is from three of these points along the western aisle from which the smoke will emit. The clouds will puff gently into the space without musical accompaniment to appear at once mysterious, intentional and abstract.

What I have done is to channel some of this found energy into a drawing. For the first drawing I used a 1934 Westclox Big Ben Chime Alarm, which I purchased at a yard sale at an old farmhouse west of Kingston, Ontario. As it was a women’s style clock and in almost new condition, I will conjecture that it was the wife of a farmer who posited that energy in the spring of the clock sometime in the 1930s.

To facilitate the drawing, I partially disassembled the clock and prepared a piece of paper to fit over the face. I then rocked the movement until it began to tick, fitted the piece of paper and replaced the hands of the clock. Glued to the minute hand was a small pencil lead. Powered by the winding motion of a woman’s hand some seventy years ago, the lead was dragged across the surface of the paper for a period of 23.3 hours. The result is a record of that energy as it slowly dissipated.

An accompanying text panel is created for each piece.

A recent 23.3 hour drawing by someone who likely died a long time ago, 2009. Graphite on paper 13x13”

Possible the last of Bill Tets, clock repairman, 2009. Carbon paper drawing 10x13”

I have an old, copper alarm clock made by Veglia in Italy. While I do not know who owned the clock, I do know who last serviced it. Written on the inside is “Bill Tets, February 15, 1939.” Typically, a clock repairman will scratch a service date on the outside/rear of the clock, but not wanting to mar the surface of this charming old clock, he wrote in pencil on the inside. Although clean and in otherwise good condition, the clock does not run, so, despite Mr. Tet’s best efforts, it is probable that the clock functioned for only a short period after he serviced it. And since a good clock repairman winds the clock before returning it to the customer, there is a good chance that the energy stored in the alarm spring is that of Bill Tets.

I removed the clock’s movement and placed it on a piece of carbon paper. I then released the spring of the alarm causing the hammer to rapidly hit the carbon paper. So vigorous was the hammering that the movement dragged itself across the paper for a short distance. That energy was possibly the last of Bill Tets, clock repairman.

1925 Westclox American alarm clock with peg-leg

Trail of a Peg-Leg American

This 1925 Westclox “America” had been in service for many years. At one time hobbled and then fitted with a makeshift leg, this veteran of the Depression Era was so well used that the nickel-plating around the winding key is completely worn away. Curiously, both the alarm setting knob and the corresponding hand are missing, effectively disabling the alarm. Perhaps the owner woke naturally at the same time each morning and had no need of an alarm or perhaps there was just no reason to get up.

There is no service mark on the clock and a clockmaker would have had a more suitable replacement leg, so it is reasonable to assume that the owner himself made the repairs. Despite the alarm being disabled (or because the alarm was disabled), the alarm spring was still partially wound. I removed the movement, placed it on a piece of carbon paper and released the spring. The alarm hammer thumped the surface, while the cogs of the alarm spring bit the paper and pulled the movement forward in an ungainly, limping motion.

Working with a piano restoration expert in Ottawa, I investigated how the reproducing technology might allow the pianists themselves to make drawings. The method developed was simple: attach pens to the vacuum and pump mechanisms in the piano that recreated the expression and pedal work of the pianist. I then held paper against the pens while the piano played. The title of each drawing identifies the pianist, the title of the musical composition and what expressive element within the composition generated the artwork.

From 1915-27 George Gershwin performed many of his own composition in the creation of Duo-Art piano rolls for the Aeolian Company of New York. Feeding Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, So Am I, and Swanee rolls into a Duo-Art/Steinway & Sons piano brought the instrument to life and caused the pens to darted about the paper with great vigor. The result is a series of small, enigmatic line drawings that were created, remarkably, by the hand of George Gershwin himself.

The right hand of George Gershwin playing So Am I

The right hand of George Gershwin playing Rhapsody in Blue, pt.2

The left hand of George Gershwin playing Swanee

The left hand of George Gershwin playing Rhapsody in Blue, pt.1

Created with Joanna Swim, the installation will be comprised of 36 waving (beckoning) Lucky Cats. Japanese in origin, but now a common pop-culture item throughout Asia, these “Maneki Neko” charms are meant to bring luck to their owners. Multiplying their luck in an 6×6 grid, the cats’ waving arms will slowly drift in and out of synchronization, creating a subtle, mesmerizing rhythm.

The Clock Drawings utilize the energy stored on the springs of old wind-up alarm clocks to create simple drawings. What is remarkable is that the energy stored on the springs of these clocks is the direct physical energy of the last person to wind it, and that energy may have been stored for more than 80 years.

Developed in the early 1900s, a reproducing piano plays rolls that recorded, not simply the sequence of notes required to render a musical composition, but the actual physical movement of the pianist as he or she performed. As a result, and as intangible as it may be, what we hear from a reproducing piano is not a sound recording, but a replaying of the original performance with all of the expression and timing of the featured pianist. George Gershwin is known for having performed his own compositions for Duo-Art reproducing pianos and it is through this technology that Mr. Gershwin has recently made drawings.

Each Rain Barrel is a chandelier-like lighting element comprised of 11 blue LEDs strands attached to the top of a lampposts. The LEDs chase downward with white pulses in a random pattern emulating rain. The overall effect is of a shower, but one that combines and occurs with visual variety as one moves down the street.

The Rain Barrels were employed as a way-finding element between Live City Vancouver Sites in the downtown during the Olympics. Together, the Rain Barrels and Light Bars (a single strand of the larger Rain Barrels) created a distinctive blue-lighted path along Hamilton and Mainland Streets from West Georgia Street through to Yaletown and along Pacific Boulevard to David Lamb Park.

Like a good deal of my other artwork, the Rain Barrels mediate between the abstract and the readily identifiable.

My colleague Pierre Poussin created two other series of street lighting elements: Flames, which were featured in Yaletown and Fireworks, which ran along Cambie Street.

Introduction

Luck is a nebulous concept. But as intangible as it may be, we have all had the sense of having been lucky at one time or another. Having once felt the rush of being lucky, one can’t help but be drawn towards it.

The Shape of Luck Series began while I was in residency at the Caribbean Centre for Contemporary Arts in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 2007. The national lottery had grown to $11 million and the island was in the grips of lotto fever. As a way taking part in the frenzy, I plotted the six-number sequences from each week’s lottery draw on radar graphs and then transferred the resulting shapes to my studio wall. Visitors soon noticed the similarities amongst the shapes and serious speculation began as to whether the winning lottery number could be predicted.

Somewhere between my pseudo-scientific method and the suggestion that these shapes did in fact reflect good fortune, the series became a sounding board for some deeply-seated beliefs about luck. I will conjecture that viewers attempt to resolve the 2D line drawing with the 3D shape it depicts and the resulting flux in perception is attributed to something just beyond comprehension – luck.

Following the original installation in Trinidad, The Shape of Luck was presented in the Weinmeisterstrasse U-Bahn Station in Berlin as part of Glück gehabt, a theme-based exhibition mounted by NGBK, and at the Shanghai Restaurant in Ottawa as part of Chinatown-Remixed.

Shape of Luck, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 2007

This series of vinyl appliqué drawings was created while I was in residence at the Caribbean Contemporary Art Centre, Port of Spain, Trinidad in the summer of 2007.

Trinis love their lotteries. With the Lotto Plus jackpot reaching a frenzied 11,000,000 TT in July, 2007 and the addictive qualities of Play-Whe again causing political concern, I thought an artistic exploration of the lotteries might reveal something of the Trinidadian sense of luck. In the Shape of Luck series of wall drawings, winning lottery numbers are graphed on a radial axis. The resulting shapes are curious. Resembling star constellations and with similarities evident amongst them, one tends to look to them as if they portend some mute secret of fortune and success. Any sense that they do foretell is, of course, brought to the drawings by the viewer. Still, even knowing this, one can’t help but look.

Shape of Luck: Lotto Plus
The Lotto Plus results from for July and August, 2007

Shape of Luck: Play-Whe, 2007
The Play-Whe lottery has its origins in a local lottery in which players chose amongst Chinese characters and symbols. In the official version of the lottery, the characters are still used, but are assigned numbers. Graphed here are the most and least winning numbers, red and black, respectively.

Shape of Luck, Berlin, 2008

Shape of Luck (Die Gestalt des Glücks): Lotto Berlin, 2008, 252 x 356cm
For an exhibition entitled Glück gehabt, NGBK of Berlin invited artist to submit designs for artworks on the theme of luck. The images were mounted in the Berlin subway system on advertising panels. Like the Trinidadian series, I used winning results from a local lottery, in this case Lotto Berlin, to derive the shape. The piece is mounted in the Weinmeisterstrasse subway station and will remain there until mid-2009.

Shape of Luck: Shanghai, Ottawa, 2009

For Chinatown-Remixed, an arts festival in Ottawa’s Chinatown, I graphed lottery numbers found in fortune cookies that resulted in big lottery wins around the world. The resulting six-sided shapes were overlain to suggest the folded shape of a fortune cookie.

22×30”, branding on paper

I stumbled across the technique before I developed the concept. While at a local toy store this spring, I saw a novelty branding iron with a moveable typeface. Intended for use with a backyard BBQ, the host could sear a steak or burger with the name of a guest. I purchased the iron knowing I could use it in an artistic process, but didn’t know how.

A few weeks later, the concept met the technique. The song Wonderwall by British band Oasis got stuck in my head. I thought I might exercise the song, which was now burned into my grey matter, by burning the title onto a piece of paper. The use of smoke and fire seemed suitably ritualistic for the extrication of the song, but that the tool was decidedly suburban was nice. Thereafter I began making notes of what songs got stuck and when.

I soon discovered that the amount of burning changes the way the song title is perceived. Neil Young’s Look Out for My Love read like a threat when the paper was really charred and like a barely audible plea when the paper was just lightly singed.

And fair warning: there is potential of contagion. If a viewer reads the title and recognizes the song, there is a good chance it will then become stuckin their head.

Hard Luck Woman, Kiss 1976

Back in the USSR, The Beatles, 1968

Look out for my love, Neil Young, 1978

Fun House, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, 1970

developed as an online interactive artwork where users can insert 6-figure lottery numbers and view the resulting shape.
That shape is then added to the index of shapes, which continually morphs from one into the next.

http://www.artengine.ca/shapeofluck/index.php

The drawings are fourteen 15 x 22” drawings in the series.

No. 11

No. 9

The vividly coloured pattern of the glass façade compliments the naturalistic elements incorporated by the architects in the design of the building. Inspired by the stand of trees that once graced the site, the abstract design features the colours of leaves, blossoms, sky and wood.

As the levels of natural and artificial light change through the day, so do the colours of the glass, perpetually altering our reading of the artwork and the building. The progression of the façade from west to east introduces a theme of seasonal change, which echoes the architectural space from the studio wing to the exhibition and performance areas.

The expression “safe as houses” refers to the permanence and protection of one’s home. As a way of playing with this notion, an entire residential tower was treated with light, making it appear impermanent by night. For the installation, Concord CityPlace Developments offered the use of Panorama, a 28-storey, elliptically shaped tower, which was glazed but not yet occupied in October 2009. 600 construction beacon were placed on the balconies on the top 21 floors. The beacons strobed in asynchronous fashion resulting in a tower that sparkled with an ever so slowly shifting pattern of light, visually dissolving the glazed façade and challenging our preconceptions of architecture as solid and unchanging.

The Panorama Tower just before nightfall, October 3rd, 2009

The Panorama Tower as seen from Lake Shore Blvd on the night of October 3rd. Photo by Andrew Alexander.

The Panorama Tower as seen from north on the night of October 3rd. Photo courtesy of Brayham Contemporary

This low-relief sculpture was inspired by the Region of Durham’s motto: Peace and Prosperity. The words of the motto, plus the word Durham, were broken down into individual letters and assigned a numerical equivalent: A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. The numerical sequences were then plotted on a line graph, which resulted in the pattern we see. In essence, the heraldry that we might expect to see in a traditional county courthouse has been updated to suit the contemporary interior of the building.

This line graph charts the percentage voter turnout for all elections held in Britain (blue), France (brown), Canada (grey) and the United States (green) since the end of WWII. Through the middle of the century, a time when the West held up democracy as a bulwark against communism and the evils of the East, we see a slow and steady decline in the voter participation. The graph resembles a minimalist landscape.

The piece has been active since late June of 2007.

Linking the old Dominion Bank building to the new skyscraper at 1 King W. allowed for a light well and atrium, but the steel super-structure of the bank extended into the atrium space creating an imposing grid. As there are residential units with no exterior view directly across from the grid, I provided each with its own cloud.
24 sheer banners hang within the grid gently swaying. Theatrical lamps will be trained on each cloud and balanced with lamps housed behind the beams.

Sheer Polyester Banners and Baffles, 80 x 35’

Shelf: 759-760 began with a visit to the Ottawa Central Library Branch. There I recorded the type of binding on the first book on each row of the fine arts shelf. These recordings dictated the colour and texture of the stained glass in the artwork, for example: a red stained glass represents a red book cover, while a blank space signifies a white or black cover, and a textured glass indicates a book rebound in canvas. The resulting colourful grid becomes a screen through which the daily rhythms and ordered calmness of the library can be viewed and enjoyed.

Shelf: 759-760. Stained Glass and Aluminum Curtain Wall Extrusion

There are 6 different prints in the series so far.

Printable Ikea: Panna (foam-rubber trivet). Water-based Printing Ink on Paper. 26 x 40”, Edition of 8

Printable Ikea: Flyt (cardboard magazine holder). Oil-based Printing Ink on Paper. 26 x 40”, Edition of 8

Printable Ikea: Rationell D­­ (kitchen drawer liner). Oil-based Printing Ink on Paper. 26 x 40”, Edition of 8

Printable Ikea: Barrat (doormat). Oil-based Printing Ink on Paper. 26 x 40”, Edition of 8

Employing the methodology developed for the Phrase Series, the View Screens were created to partially obscure the entranceways to garages along Spadina Avenue. Since the residential towers for which they were created are called Harbour View and I was both enhancing and obscuring a view, the word VIEW is transcribed into Morse code and repeated to create the pattern.

View Screen. Stainless Steel and Powder-Coat Paint, 10 x 8’

Suspended below the glass ceiling of the hall is an aluminum and dichroic glass compass rim. During the day the rim is seen as a combination of silhouette and blue glass. However, as the glass is dichroic, the colour seen is dependant on the angle of the sun shining upon it and varies from blue to magenta. At night the glass reflects a gold colour back into the space.

Directly below the rim is a wood inlay illustrating the ancient method form determining north in the night sky.

Photo: Karen Mills

View of Timber Hall floor

The exhibition Hide In Plain Sight coupled my work with that of painter Peter Dykhuis. Having noted our mutual interest in the relationship of abstraction to camouflage, curator Gil McElroy devised an exhibition in which our pieces were set alongside modernist works of the Painters 11. The juxtaposition informed on the language of abstraction and how a current generation of artists is now deploying that language to different ends.
As well as presenting some older works, I created 40′ mural directly on the wall of the gallery using signage vinyl. The mural was a graph showing the size of the canvases being painted by members of the Painters Eleven between 1953 and 1960, the dates of their association. Coincidence and humour was found in that the graph itself resembled an abstract expressionist composition and that the information in the mural, although appearing official, had no real bearing on the aesthetics of the work.

The Average Size of the Paintings by Individual Members of the Painters 11 between 1953-60 with a Tendency Towards Bigness, 2005. Signage Vinyl, 11 x 40', Robert McLaughlin Gallery

As part of a series of exhibitions exploring personal utopias Göllner constructed a small one-person dwelling based on the design standards of late modern institutional architecture in Canada. The cube-shaped hut was built from coreboard plastic sheeting and designed for mass production and easy assembly. Conflating the egalitarian design strategies from large public buildings of the 1960s into a personal, disposable refuge of today provided a witty and resonant commentary on contemporary society.

U-Build, Day View. Dimensions: 2.4 x 2.4 x 2.4m

U-Build, Night view with residents

U-Build – Robyn Pickens

Artist Adrian Gollner is flying all the way from his home in Canada to construct a small one person dwelling in the Archer’s Field of Chrsitchurch’s Botanic Gardens. Titled U Build, his project explores utopian architectural grand schemes and design principles of late modern institutional architecture in Canada; ideas that are applicable to most of the western world that has survived many an idealistic government housing plan.

Referencing these ‘knock-em up quick’ buildings, and with a nod to the impracticality of such government edifices for the masses, U Build is constructed from cheap coloured coreboard. For the night wanderers amongst you, it is illuminated from dusk to resemble a glowing coloured box.

Gollner’s installation is scheduled to coincide with the High Street Project’s current show ‘Fly Through’ which exhibits the work of Ri Williamson and Thom Craig. ‘Fly Through’ is a manifestation of ongoing dialogue and drawing between these two artists, who, like Gollner share an interest in the politicisation of space, primarily in the instance of ‘ready-made’ housing and seemingly endless subdivisions. The latest kid on the block being the ‘gated communities’ where every probable and barely imaginable form of social neuroses appear to be incubating and festering. (Save pukeko from subdivisions).

U Build opens on Friday 3 September at the Archer’s Field, Botanic Gardens (just past the wee hill by pond) at 5.30pm and both shows run until 18 September.

About U-Build – Adrian Göllner

I have arrived at architecture through art. Public art commissions and an interest in modernism have led me to consider architecture as a signifier of the moods, aspirations and aesthetics of a society at a particular point in time. In the fall of 2003, I mounted an exhibition entitled Modern U. at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, which addressed the utopian ideals inherent in the late modern architecture of the campus. I have taken the architectural design principles of the larger institutional buildings and conflated them into the design of a single-person dwelling. My intention was to demonstrate how the collective utopian ideals of the earlier generation might now only be pursued on an individual basis.

In the year following the acceptance of the U-Build project as part of the High Street Project’s series of exhibitions exploring utopias, I became aware of a general and growing interest in late modern architecture and, in particular, kit-houses. I read articles in airplane magazines, home design magazines and in architectural journals, all of which look back at experiments with kit-houses in the 1960s in the wake of a current architectural designs for the same. My project might only differ from the trend in that an element of satire was introduced through the use of particularly cheap materials. Indeed, the practical concerns of designing and building my own kit-house made my pursuit very close to that of an architect’s, especially when one considers that we both apply principles of design developed under modernity: modularity and space and cost efficiency.

The walls and ceiling of the U-Build hut were made from coreboard corrugated plastic sheeting, a product most commonly used as a backing for temporary exterior signs. Light, colourful and inexpensive, it seemed like the perfect derivative of our disposable societies with which to build the dwelling. That said coreboard proved to have some admirable qualities. Waterproof, durable and capable of being folded into some remarkably hard-wearing forms, coreboard was used to create building units that provide both surface and structure to the hut. The completed dwelling was a three-colour plastic cube measuring 2.4 x 2.4 x 2.4m and suitable for occupancy by one highly idealistic individual.

U-Build – Hamish Win

U-Build has its origins in 2003′s Modern U, a project in which Adrian Göllner addressed the architectural style of the Carleton University in Ottawa. Built between 1952-72 Carleton University was shaped by a modern aesthetic that designed an infrastructure that sought to control and influence the inhabitants and users of the campus. Hence Modern U is half satire, half sincerity. The very title mimics a kind of sartorial TV show, or handbook, which directs one across the heady waters of provincial parochialism into a furtive and surface orientated (read consumptive) ‘modern you’ of post-war, egalitarian optimism. However, Göllner ‘s satire (if indeed it is that) never reads so simply. The tone is, in some manner, extremely earnest. What one commentator writes off as the architectural experience of a bland ‘fast food restaurant’ Göllner celebrates as a grandiose architectural conception which deigned to build ‘outside of the sullied urban core, [so that] the young minds could be formed in an idyllic atmosphere of trees and dynamic new architecture’.

Göllner’s banner works for Modern U mimed the original architectural promise, bringing back the arcane knowledge that formed its conception and structure. For instance, the poster which accompanied the Lanark dormitory was accompanied with the snappy slogan, “Up all night philosophising” which is riducoulsy funny, but just the kind of notion and enthusiasm, a post-war, egalitarian sensibility would think. Göllner’s banner plays off that initial planning, showing the way the dormitories were structured to organise, or at the very least encourage communion. These smaller satellite congregations would then feed into larger networks in an ongoing circuit of enthusiasm and shared experience. The very stylisation of Göllner’s graphic mimes the plugs of electrical circuitry, a much more obedient and subservient system – which is precisely why so much trouble goes into inducing the environment at Carleton University. Such is habitation control – you should see what biologists need to do to test fertility-breeding programs. Which I suppose is what one could think of the whole Carleton University – Modern U experiment in which the next generations minds are to be shaped and nurtured for the future.

But if Modern U was concerned with the communal and organisational structures of campus life, U-build directs itself at the atomised individual. A solitary dwelling designed for one seems the complete opposite of a Lanark residency designed for hundreds. No longer underpinned by the structural logics of interplay and communion, U-Build operates around the stand-alone individual, sheltered and cut off from such habitational encouragement or sociability. It therefore presents itself as the quintessentially cube of solitary behaviour, cut back to a simplicity that seems to be all about surface deflection and refining the individual. As Göllner expressed:

I suspect that the U-Build house will have an equivocal presence. This neat plastic form set amongst trees would be the very essence of the modern dwelling. At the same time, the house might seem like a rather sad and naïve attempt to rekindle the collective societal aspirations of an earlier generation, albeit on an individual basis. I am also aware that this modular building kit may recall some Bauhaus projects of the 1930s. Gerrit Rietveld’s depression era Crate Chair, for example, was very much a people’s project. In fact, that the house will be made from sections of brightly coloured Coroplast, it may well resemble one of his primary coloured DeStijl buildings.

So in some ways, Göllner’s U-Build seems quintessentially caught up in that modernist drive towards a Utopian simplicity as a refined dwelling, pleasantly set amongst the trees, not to mention its ready-to-assemble egalitarian mobility. But for all this, there is something about its pragmatism and announcement as retreat that I can’t help but want to compare to Henry Thoreau’s little hut in Walden.

Harassing his contemporaries for their secession to the world of material want, and the superficiality of slick surface ‘decency’ (‘it would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon’) Thoreau takes to the woods as a counter-charging spur of self-sufficiency and self-actualisation. Bemoaning the lot of the city dweller trapped into high property prices and the escalation and poverty cycles of rent and the forlorn mortgage, Thoreau sets out his retreat to the woods as both example and experiment. Reminding his reader that ‘many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box’ (29) Thoreau attempts to lead a life of simplicity by paring back his dependency on ‘food, shelter, clothing and fuel’ to a Spartan kind of economy. At this reduced edge, Thoreau abhors the ornamental, criticising such architectural decadence as ‘literally hollow’ and insubstantial to the to the ‘September gale [which] would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials’. For Thoreau, ‘architectural beauty’ grew from within, following a sort of order of necessity, allowing for an ‘unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance’ (47). Hence:

The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling (47).

It is with this in mind that he warns us, ‘if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clew, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead’ (28). Yankee shrewdness indeed. What Thoreau really means is a certain sort of dogmatism, a willingness to follow his self-actualised, Spartan simplicity. His argument then, centres around a kind of diatribe which valorises the poetic sentiment of freedom over a misanthropic resentment at society’s economic infrastructures: There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simple and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged. But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes (46).

It would seem then that U-build seems peculiarly prone to a belaboured occupation as though it was a re-enactment of Thoreau’s hut. Built from such self-sufficient and Spartan material as coroplast, U-build is exactly that less ‘luxurious box’ Thoreau so eagerly wanted society to adopt. That it is so thoroughly convincing in its ornamental colouring and surface slickness as a quintessentially contemporary building seems to mark out U-build as a troubling decoy that enlists that modern palette of refinement and ornamentation back into that peculiar quotient of form, functionalism and nature. It is this that so complicates the very notion of actually inhabiting, or deploying U-build, as either aesthetic object, or as mobile, self-sufficient residence. Ultimately it comes down to a certain willingness, an engaged enthusiasm, that will need to go back to that aesthetic-ascetic/endurance-enjoyment kinda scale if they’re ever to make up their mind.

Paul Gessell, The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, October 2, 2003; E4.

Henry, Thoreau, Walden, Princeton University Press, 1989; 22. All other references in text.

1 Thoreau would be enormously endeared by such a practical approach to material. ‘Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighbourhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves or whole logs, or bark insufficient quantities, or even well tempered clay or flat stones’ (40)

In 1947 Hank Williams traveled to Nashville to pitch a radio show to WLAC. In the same year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, observing the beginnings of a nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, set the Doomsday Clock for the first time. As the clock ticked, Williams’ own time was running short. In his five remaining years, Williams charted 39 country music hits and the US military tested 62 nuclear devices.

Williams recorded the novelty song No, No Joe in 1950. In it Williams wryly warns Joseph Stalin: “quit braggin’ that your bear can bite, ’cause you’re sittin’ on a keg of dynamite.”

This exhibition plots the hits of Hank Williams and America’s Cold War nuclear weapons tests on graphs running the length of the gallery.

Graph 1: The orange line shows the strength and occurence of A-Bomb test between 1946 and 1955. The medium green line and dark green line show chart position of the A- side singles and B-side singles, respectively. The larger orange circles indicate H-Bomb testing.

Graph 2: On the facing wall in orange, incidents that heightened or decreased tensions in the Cold War and caused the Doomsday Clock to be reset are shown. Set amongst this timeline are incidents in Williams' life in green text. Positive incidents in Williams' life are higher on the graph and vice versa.

The images above link to substantially larger versions on which some of the text can be read.

While the graphs appear to draw a correlation between the two histories, in reality the two stories only really cross when Williams records No, No Joe under the name Luke the Drifter and when he entertains US troops in Germany in 1949. Still, seeing the all-too-short life of a singer from Montgomery set against the escalation of an arms race brings the local, and often sadly mundane, in curious relation to the geopolitical tensions of the era.

This book is an exploration into the relationship between abstraction and camouflage. The challenge to myself was to illustrate the reasons why things are seen -surface, shape, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement- using the simplest of terms, a 4 x 4 modernist grid and the minimum of text. Three examples from the book are provided below.

Having had time now to reflect on the project, I have become attuned to a certain undertone in the book. As much as it is an intentional hybrid of colour theory books and military manuals on camouflage, there may well be a more subtle message about the dangers of being different.

Why Things Are Seen is a 16 page soft cover book printed in an edition of 500. The book can be purchased for:

Canadian Currency: $5.00 + $1.00 for postage = $6.00
US Currency: $4.00 USD + $2.00 for postage = $6.00

Send a cheque or money order to:
Adrian Göllner
206 Cambridge St. N.
Ottawa, ON
K1R 7A9
Canada

The Modern U. website, now hosted by the Carleton University Art Gallery, continues to provide a virtual tour of the exhibition as well as supplementary information, photographic images, and graphic animations: http://cuag.carleton.ca/online/modernu/

Site 2: Lanark Residence

The Carleton University Art Gallery
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
September 22nd – October 19th, 2003

Like the UN Decorations Series, the IMAI Series borrows the pure abstraction of recognizable symbols and recontextualizes them. The grouping of small round paintings simultaneously recalls a boy’s model collection and Claude Tousignant’s 70′s, hard-edge roundels.

International Military Aviation Insignia, 1997-8, Installation at Carl Davis Gallery
Size: Thirty 8″ Round canvasses
Medium: Acrylic on canvas

The Target Series
Based on the pistol practice taken while exhibiting in West Virginia in 2001, the Target Series is comprised of 21 small round canvasses that in size and arrangement emulate the calibre and grouping of the weapon being fired – loads of fun.

The series was created for Red Scare, a solo exhibition at the Old Dominion University Gallery in Norfolk, Virginia in September, 2002.

The first five towers are now complete and feature the lighting treatment in the evening. Up to 16 towers will be included in the lighting scheme.

CityPlace Towers Viewed from West

Montage Tower

Matrix Towers viewed from southwest.

Optima Towers viewed from northwest at dusk.

Harbour View towers C and D

The Correspondence Series is a partial transcription of the correspondence between American President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Words and phrases indicative of the tone and position of either leader have been lifted from the body of the letters and transcribed into Morse Code. The resulting sequence of dots and dashes (red for Khrushchev’s words; blue for Kennedy’s) constitute abstract compositions, but ones that indicate something of the secrecy and tensions of the Cold War era.

Between October 22nd and 28th the two leaders exchanged ten tense letters. Those letters are presented here as sets with Premier Khrushchev’s public announcement on October 28th and Prime Minister Castro’s reaction to that announcement presented as individual compositions. It should be noted that the syntax for Morse Coding has been strictly observed.

The series was created for Red Scare, a solo exhibition at the Old Dominion University Gallery in Norfolk, Virginia in September, 2002. The series was time/site specific as Norfolk is home to the US Navy and the exhibition occurred on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Below is part of correspondence from which the text used to create the abstractions where taken.

1.
I stated that an attempt to force abandonment of our responsibilities and commitments in Berlin would constitute such an action and that the United States would resist with all the power at its command.
Kennedy, 22 Oct 62

United States has openly taken path of gross violation of Charter of United Nations, path of violation of international norms of freedom of navigation on high seas, path of aggressive actions both against Cuba and against Soviet Union. Khrushchev, 23 Oct 62

2.
the steps which started the current chain of events was the action of your Government in secretly furnishing offensive weapons to Cuba.
Kennedy, 23 Oct 62

Having presented these conditions to us, Mr. President, you have thrown down the gauntlet.
Khrushchev, 24 Oct 62

3.
This Government received the most explicit assurance from your Government and its representatives, both publicly and privately, that no offensive weapons were being sent to Cuba.
Kennedy, 25 Oct 62

You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear. Khrushchev, 26 Oct 62

4.
You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us.
Khrushchev, 27 Oct 62

We, on our part, would agree–upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations, to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments (a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against the invasion of Cuba.
Kennedy, 27 Oct 62
5.
The Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as ‘offensive,’ and their crating and return to the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev on Radio Moscow, 28 Oct 62

6.
I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were approaching a point where events could have become unmanageable.
Kennedy, 28 Oct 62

I express my satisfaction and thank you for the sense of proportion you have displayed and for realization of the responsibility which now devolves on you for the preservation of the peace of the world.

7.
“son of a bitch, bastard, asshole.”
Castro referring to Khrushchev, 28 Oct 62

The line between propaganda and advertising is a thin one. Star Power presents the viewer with a series of ads that mix communist iconography and images of hydro electricity. Bold and visually stopping, the images further confuse the question of who is in control of electrical power in Ontario: Is it some far left consortium, or is a company simply borrowing the radical chic of Soviet design as part of an ad campaign? Plastered onto construction hoarding in downtown Kitchener, the origin and intent of the images remained elusive.

The Star Power Series was presented as part of CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum – Kitchener), September 21-29, 2002. The theme of the 2002 Forum was ‘Power to the People’.

Bus Power Series

As a way of introducing the theme of this year’s forum, ‘Power to the People’, to the people of Kitchener, Ontario, I was asked to create a work for the ad-slots inside the buses of the local transit system. The result was three ad-like images that allude to seduction of power.
CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum – Kitchener), 2002 ran from September 21-29, 2002.

Like much of my work, this installation combined interests in advertising, abstraction, and the Cold War. You Are Here saw a large vinyl appliqué placed on the storefront window of an old print shop in downtown of Sumter, South Carolina. Appearing to be an official commeration of some sort, the sign states “YOU ARE HERE: The 40th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis” and features a large roundel. Finding oneself in front of the target shape while being instructed to recall the nuclear brinkmanship of October 1962 was intended to evoke the sense of vulnerability felt by Americans 40 years ago.

You Are Here was presented as part of Accessibility 2002, an annual installation art event held in September and October in the city of Sumter, SC.

Signage Vinyl

During preparations for an exhibition at the Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin I noticed that some mailed correspondence took considerably longer to arrive than others. As a way of exercising the distance between Ottawa and Dublin, I designed an artwork. Everyday for 192 days I mailed a postcard-sized piece of the flag of Ireland from my studio to the gallery. If the cards had arrived in the same sequence in which they were mailed, the flag would have been reconstructed faithfully. That however was not the case and the result is an abstraction as created by the rhythms of the mail.

The flag ready to go in the studio. The cards were mailed from the left to right and top to bottom. April 2000.

The flag as reassembled in Dublin. I was surprised; despite the distance and time, the flag was much less distorted then I had anticipated. July 2001

Along with 17 other artists from Canada and abroad, I was invited to create a site specific work for the City of Kitchener, Ontario. My contribution, Org Chart, placed an organizational chart of the city’s municipal structure onto the windows above the foyer of Kitchener City Hall. Integrated into the design of the building, the origin and intent of the chart was difficult to discern. Is this art or the Rosetta Stone of all bureaucratic directives? Equally, is this decoration or are the coloured squares a secular substitute for stained glass?

Org Chart: A site specific artwork for Kitchener City Hall.

The image was created using sign vinyl and measured 11' x 24.5'

The inspiration

There is art in bureaucracy. As you may know, the Region of Ottawa-Carleton recently amalgamated into the City of Ottawa. Having been employed by the Region’s Art Program, I sat through numerous presentations on restructuring, all of which were illustrated by elaborate organizational charts. Short on specifics, the charts were just as readable as abstract compositions as they were as plans for a new city. That an element of the bureaucratic process could be read as art suggested the form for an artwork specific to Kitchener City Hall.

Make no mistake, this series is intended to be light-hearted. But in taking what is decidedly
wrong-headed approach to the analysis of Goethe’s Theory of Colours, something may be said about the contemporary fixation on statistics – a belief that numbers in and of themselves
constitute importance.

What I have done is to count all occurrences of colour words in Goethe’s theory, compile them
and then creates a series of comparative graphs. While the graphs seem to provide the viewer with a thorough and responsible analysis of the Goethe’s theory, they in fact offer little in the way of understanding this Romantic treatise on colour and art.

Like earlier series, this series presents images that appear very much like modern hard-edge abstraction, but that have a second literal meaning. In this flux of readings however there are some visual coincidences to be found that do illustrate some of Goethe’s observances on colour. The pie chart below, while an abstract composition in itself, does illustrate the relative percentage of primary, secondary, tertiary and neutral colour word usage in the text. Given the subject matter, the pie chart also begins to read as a colour wheel. In a like manner, the stacked bar graph illustrates the number of usages of the colour words, but also demonstrates the laws of simultaneous contrast (the effect certain colours have when abutted to another).

The pieces have been produced digitally and then laminated onto boards. This manner of presentation has been chosen so that pieces integrate into the academic atmosphere of the institute. Six images measuring 48″ x 32″ were produced for the series.

The People’s Plan is my contribution to a series of public commissions for Ottawa’s
O-Train. Ad cases at each of the five stations house images created by local artists. I designed two images for Carleton University station and a third for my own amusement.

The light box images at Carleton U. are designed to recall the government mega-projects of the 1970′s. Symmetrical and non-monumental, the logos echo the egalitarian sensibility inherent in the modern style architecture of the university. While we may not view the mega-project with any sense of nostalgia today, the social engineering behind these grand plans represents the waning edge of a futurist vision.

Carleton University

Police services in Centretown Ottawa

This piece was created for Borders and Boxes, an exchange exhibition between Mexico City and Ottawa on the theme of globalization. As a way of expressing the dynamic between inexpensive consumer products here in Canada and the low wages paid to Mexican workers, Pancho Villa (someone who had fought and lost a revolution to free workers from servitude on haciendas) is rendered in 1,160 coupons from the Canadian Tire chain of stores.

It is interesting to note that Pancho launched his own currency during the Mexican Revolution. It has been argued that it was the loss in value of the currency that led to his defeat.

Pancho Villa, Mexican Revolutionary, as Rendered in $254.95 worth of Canadian Tire Money
Size: 8′ x 8′
Medium: Canadian Tire Money, Canvas, Velcro

Michael Bell, circa 1972, as Rendered in 2430 Post-It Notes
Carleton University Art Gallery
December, 2003

Noting my portrait of Pancho Villa in Canadian Tire Money, I was asked by the staff at the Carleton University Art Gallery to create a piece in a similar vein for Michael Bell’s retirement party. That Michael had spent a career in arts administration, portraying him in Post-It Notes seemed a fair medium.

True Advertising was an exhibition of three billboard images in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the summer and fall of 2000. The billboards promoted three new products, all of which were a little too good to be true. People wanting to find out more about the products or complain about them were directed to the True Advertising website where promotional material was provided. The site also included a feedback script so that visitors could post their comments.

The project was jointly hosted by The Floating Gallery and Plug In Gallery.

As a way of extending the physical scope of the singular:FISSIONS exhibition and reminding urban dwellers of their vulnerability in the case of nuclear attack, I created a series of Civil Defence posters. Placed in ad cases of bus shelters in downtown Ottawa, the posters reflect the optimism sported in government-issued survival manuals on nuclear war. Each of the posters is 5.5′ x 4′ and designed to be backlit.

Civil Defence, Bronson St. and Sunnyside Dr.

The Loose Lips Series is the first of three series I created for Singular:Fissions, an exhibition in a decommissioned Cold War bunker outside of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on the theme of fear and the Cold War. The series employs 1960′s style hard-edge graphics in the creation of faux anti-communist propaganda. Place at crucial junctures in the bunker, the back-lit posters cautioned bunker personnel that enemy spies are lurking. Most visitors took them to be original to the facility.

Each of the posters was housed in a light box measuring 34″ x 27″.

They walk among us
The communist threat is real.
Installed in the medical centre on the fourth level of the bunker.

Spot the red
Close ranks on communist infiltrators.
Installed in a bunkroom on the fourth level.

Them in Europe. Us in Europe.
Tactical nuclear weapons keep Europe free.
Installed in the machine room on the first level.

December 16-18, 1999
terminal, Arts Court, Ottawa

Clock Box was an installation of wind-up alarm clocks. In the 4′ x 14′ space of terminal, I arranged 81 of my favourite alarms in a single, continuous row along the wall. With the space entirely painted in matte black, one was left with only the dimly lit clocks and their ticking. I’ll admit to being surprised by the overwhelmingly response to the installation. It is similar to some of my other work in that there is a modernist repetition of a single similar element, so I had expected, perhaps, a like reading. I had not anticipated that these clocks and the bewildering sound they created would have such an emotive effect.

Time Piece Exorcises Millennial Angst
terminal gallery
Ottawa (December 8, 1999)-Clocks, alarm clocks, lots of them ticking, ticking and ticking away in a blackened space. The installation, Clock Box, is a contemplation on the nature of time at the end of a century and a millennium. It’s also an attempt to exorcise millennial angst by artist Adrian Göllner.

The work continues Göllner’s exploration of Cold War fears that stemmed from his childhood. “As a child growing up in Germany, I knew of World Wars I and II and thought that World War III was simply a matter of time and that it would be very final. It seemed impossible to me that we would make it to the year 2000, which was so far away. I used to imagine the year 2000 as one big mushroom cloud,” says Göllner. He views Clock Box and an earlier piece, Cold War Cards, as way of finally ridding himself of the ghost of his childhood Cold War fears.

The installation consists of Göllner’s personal collection over 140 alarm clocks arranged in the unique confines of the terminal gallery space. The clocks date from the turn of the century to present day and range in style from the basic working man’s alarm clocks, to very feminine women’s vanity clocks, to cheap, modern versions designed to be thrown away.

“The steady tick, tick, tick of the wind-up alarm clock already belongs to the past, but it was these clocks that set the cadence for this century – get the workers to the factory on time and ensure consumers knew when to tune into their favourite soaps. This installation is very much the clocks’ collective swan song. At this rare marker in time, their unique properties offer the viewer many ways to become conscious of time and its passing,” says Göllner.

Tapping into childhood conceptions of what the future might hold, Artengine, KIT and local high-tech professionals built a robot designed to explore and settle new territory. The robot, controlled by visitors to the Greylands.com, was part of multi-layered art project that sought to reexamine established notions of space, presence, property and the land upon which we live.

As part of Artengine I was part of the Greylands team. My responsibilities in the project varied from vacuum forming the body of the robot, documenting the project, designing and building the real estate sign, to being the site logistics officer and taking care of payroll.

Aerial view of the LeBreton Flats site, October 2, 1999. Just south of the Ottawa River, the site had been industrial until 1962 when it was expropriated by the Federal Government.

Real estate sign. 128' Greylands sign corners the real estate lot and addressed morning traffic.

The robot, Nimby, is made of an electric wheelchair, a Netwinder computer, a GPS system, an ethernet line and a chalk talc dispenser. The shell was created out of vacuum formed ABS plastic and recalls the shape of a rider lawnmower.

Rear view of robot as it draws out architectural floorplan on a selected lot. Chalk talc was used as the a marking medium.

Greylands tech scrambling after robot.

Customer reception lounge in site trailer.

Sales desk in trailer.

Press Release Text

GREYLANDS
Technology, the internet and your next home.
October 2- 9, 1999
The LeBreton Flats, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
A project by Artengine and KIT

Tapping into childhood conceptions of what the future might hold, Artengine, KIT and local high-tech professionals have built a robot designed to explore and settle new territory. The robot, controlled by visitors to the Greylands web site, is part of multi-layered art project that seeks to reexamine established notions of space, presence, property and the land upon which we live.

The first frontier for Greylands is the LeBreton Flats of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Once a native hunting ground, a settler’s outpost, a lumber yard and a residential/industrial district, the LeBreton Flats reflect the pattern of Western development across North America. This rich and complicated history will be evoked by way of an on-line faux real estate development that will lead prospective buyers through the process of selecting a lot and designing a new home. Having been relayed the house designs, our robot will trundle out onto the physical site and draw the floor plans onto the respective lots. Within a week the 63 lots made available will have proud new owners and those owners, wherever they may be around the world, will be able to view their dream home designs on the Greylands web site.

When all is complete, the LeBreton Flats will have been traced with a compelling visual reminder of what has come before and what the future, the very near future, indeed might hold.

The Greylands team will be on the LeBreton Flats with the robot, a project trailer and souvenirs from October 2nd through to the 9th. An opening for the project will take place on October 2nd from 2-7pm. The public and media are invited to visit the LeBreton Flats, take part in the project and follow the robot’s progress.

Greylands is a joint project by Artengine, a contemporary internet gallery based in Ottawa/Hull, and KIT, a British art collective.

Now the Cold War can be fun for the whole family!
This full colour set of 20 trading cards is not only entertaining, but it’s highly collectible as well. Think of the hours of quality time you and your loved ones will have pouring over these timeless momentos.

Postscript

In response to CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War and their five video cassette set of the “Best of the Gulf War”, I created a set of historical trading cards that parody the info-tainment approach to serious subject matter. Punchy, glib and sensational, the Cold War Cards seem to be very much the product of a commodity-minded America. In keeping, a rather rah-rah voice is sported throughout the cards which, while appropriate to the medium, ultimately reinforces the absurd potential of the Cold War and the hype necessary to keep the West ready, willing and able.

The cards and merchandisers were placed at various retail locations, where it was difficult to tell whether they were a crass commercial product or a parody of a crass commercial product. Card sets came with a stick of Wrigley’s Double Stealth Gum.

The original website continued the tone and tenor of the cards and offered a further Cold War information.

The reverse of each card contains text and graphics. Here are a few samples.

Bedroom Mustang, 1995
Size: 2’10″ x 6’8″
Medium: Oil on Canvas, Wood, and Fabric

Bedroom Fighter Series
Exhibited at the Cornwall Region Art Gallery, October 23rd – November 25th, 1995

Armstrong Linoleum Tile Series, 1996

Size: 5(4’7″ x 3’7″)
Medium: Linoleum Floor Tile, Masonite, and Plywood

Bed Sheet Spitfire I, 1997
Size: 2(2’7″ x 2’7″)
Medium: Bed Sheet and Oil on Canvas

Bed Sheet Spitfire II, 1997
Size: 2’9″ x 5’6″
Medium: Bed Sheet and Oil on Canvas

Diving Spitfire, 1997
Size: 2’7″ x 5’2″
Medium: Bed Sheet and Oil on Canvas

Mondrian / Spitfire, 1996
Size: 5’6″ x 2’9″
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas and Oil on Canvas

Silk Dress / Faux Silk Fabric and Studio Towel / Woman’s Work Dress
Size (all pieces): 3’2″ x 1’7″
Medium: Found Objects
Two of a series of fifteen works.

Birmingham Suite
Exhibited at the Big Peg Art Gallery, Birmingham, England as part of the B’Ham: Evidence
exhibition, July 17th – 30th, 1995.

This public artwork was commissioned by the Region of Ottawa-Carleton for the Walkley Transitway Station. Beneath an overpass the history of Ottawa is concisely described through six sets of dates, words and maps. While the subject matter is historical, the appearance is contemporary. The artwork is rendered in sand-blasted concrete and calcite.

View of east half of installation.

The maps were set into the incline under the bridge with a corresponding dates and words aligned directly below. This particular set features a map of the lakes and rivers of the Ottawa region before western habitation, the date 1600 and the words Voyageurs (the fir traders who explored the area for the
Hudson’s Bay Company) and Outaouacs (the native tribes who lived in area).

This piece was part of a City of Ottawa program in which local artists were commissioned to paint wading pools. Having just completed the UN Decoration Series, military service ribbons were fresh in my mind. The coincidence of basic pool colour, lane markings and some UN Peace Keeping ribbons suggested that a pattern could be created that recalled both. My hope was that our leisure and the service of our military would be related.

Unfortunately, it looked a little too much like modern art and a few of the local residents sniffed it out. As they rightly discerned, someone was providing them art and they hadn’t been consulted. Their perpetually blue pool was blue and white for a year and they were up in arms.

Rubber-based paint on concrete wading pool.

UN Observer Group in Central America / UN Mission in El Salvador
Size: 2’8″ x 4’8″ x 6″
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas and Formica
One of a series of five UN Decoration pieces

UN Decoration Series, 1994
Exhibited at the Ottawa Art Gallery for the Practice Ground Exhibition,
September 15th to October 30th, 1994

WWII Decoration Series

Like the UN Decoration series, the WWII Decoration Series consists of military ribbons abutted one atop the other to create an abstract composition. This series of couplings is mounted on an Arborite surface that looks suspiciously like a small folding table. Where the WWII series differs from its sister series is that it is painted with encaustic. The bumpy polished surface of the encaustic provides an antique quality and, appropriately, a respectful tone.

India Service Medal, 1939-45 / War Medal, 1939-45
Size: 1’11″ x 4’5″
Medium: Encaustic on Plywood and Arborite
One of a series of five WWII Decoration pieces.

WWII Decorations Series, 1994
Exhibited at the Cornwall Regional Art Gallery as part of the Decorations exhibition,
October 23rd to November 25th, 1995.