Homes in the Wind
The ODD Gallery is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday, and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.
As you approach the ODD Gallery in the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City, it might look a bit dim. Don’t worry, it’s just set up as habitat for the shadows that make up Uprooted, by Jaimie Robson.
The plinths in the gallery support not the artwork but the light sources. In front of them, Robson suspends delicate sheets of paper, intricately cut. Their imagery abstracts botanical motifs. On closer study we also find a mountainous landscape, stylized evergreen trees, and stacked slender crescents that evoke a sense of forest-fire smoke. Once I decode the smoke, I recognize it in other pieces.
The papers cast shadows on the wall. My friend Heidi Marion observed a similarity to printmaking, where the worked object—the block for the block print, the screen for the screen print—is used as a tool. The artwork projects beyond that object, in this case with shadows. The paper cuts function like theatre gobos, stencils that cast shadows used with theatre lights.
However, Robson has gilded lines here and there in her paper cuts. This draws our attention to the paper objects, too, so brilliant white in the light. If you look closely at them, you can see her process pencil marks on them as well.
As people move through the space, the lightweight paper moves too. The shadows seem to breathe. The pieces are not individually labelled. They make an overall environment. The vegetation seems almost like a cornucopia, a plethora of flowers, spheres and cut-out leaves.
We learn in the exhibition pamphlet that these images come from studies Robson made of the forest understorey plants on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.
Robson grew up in those rainforests. Though she makes her home near Montreal now, she hopes to go home someday. She mourns the loss of B.C. forests to clear-cutting and forest fires, and worries that they will not be there for her daughter when they return. The devotional practice of drawing and making these pieces expresses a kind of grief, of a desire to care for something and hold it.
In addition to the flat botanical pieces, Robson has created simple three-dimensional house shapes, similar in structure to a milk carton. These are also ornately cut out. For some, trunks of trees form the four corner posts, with interlocking branches forming the roof. Others are made of daisy-like shapes.
One of these she suspends beneath a two-dimensional cut-out of her stylized smoke, like a hot-air balloon. Another flat cut-out, evoking roots, comes out of its base.
In another grouping, the houses are cut from black paper. Robson has suspended many of them along single lines, so they turn gently.
This piece also includes a cut-out of roots. Behind it, a fixed light keeps that shadow more or less in one place on the wall. Beside the light, you can pick up a high-powered flashlight that makes the house shadows double and dance.
You can ask the gallery minder for other flashlights that you can use to explore the exhibition. I enjoyed using the weaker one on the smoke cut-outs. It seemed to add a smoky softness to their hard-edged linear compositions.
Dawson City in February is still rich in darkness, a good time for shadow play. I enjoyed this exhibition while up in Dawson for the (s)hiver festival. In the context of this outdoor art festival, many installations are also on display, mostly outdoors.
There are also a wide variety of performances. Keep an eye on shiverartsociety.ca for the next one. Why go to Mexico when you can go to Dawson and come home to Whitehorse and have it feel warmer rather than colder?
The possibility of forest fires haunts all of us who live in the boreal forest. In Dawson City, forest fires had direct impacts on people’s lives last year. We can expect an increase in these kinds of extreme environmental events with climate change. This exhibition inhabits that fear but also turns it into a space with beauty and visual interest. The viewer cannot be separated from it—just by entering, your body makes the images breathe. With a flashlight you can interact with the images directly. Does this suggest that our chosen actions can make a difference too?
