The display of works by eight artists from across the country will be at the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery until October
When the artist Samuel Roy-Bois first entered the Nelson museum gallery in which his piece My Sun was newly installed, he immediately noticed Stephen Noyes’ exhibit piece, Burden Basket.
“I thought, this is so much like what I’m doing, right? It’s a bunch of little pieces of wood put together that are in themselves very fragile, but combined together to create resilience. So they become strong because they’re being woven together, put together.”
The two artists had never met before. But in the mingling after the speeches at the July 11 opening of Wood, a new exhibit at the Nelson Museum Archives and Gallery, they immediately connected.
They were observed in animated, enthusiastic discussions, first about Noyes basket. They then moved to stand in front of Roy-Bois’ My Sun, again intensely discussing the work.
Both men said their works, even though very different in style (one traditional, one contemporary), had a lot in common because they were made of small pieces of wood joined together but in unusual ways.
Noyes is a Sinixt multimedia artist and a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, also of Tulalip and Puyallup descent. His work is a mix of modern and traditional woodworking. His basket is a traditional style to be worn on the back with a tumpline around the head or with shoulder straps.
“My gift is re-purposing to make use of limited supplies,” his artist statement says, adding that the basket is made of roots that would normally be considered too short.
“Cedar is sacred so nothing is wasted if it can be helped. I had to get to know the nature of each root and limb. No two are alike. Each has their own strength and weakness.”
Roy-Bois, originally from Quebec, is an assistant professor of sculpture at the University of British Columbia. As an artist, he works with installations, sculpture and photography, focusing on the built environment.
His piece My Sun is a large three-dimensional grid that is intentionally structured imprecisely. Its complex shadow on the gallery wall is part of the piece. The sun, embedded in the centre of the lattice of short pieces of wood, is the head of a snare drum that once belonged to his young son.
His artist statement says the imprecision in the piece is about the “resistance of materials” and their “refusal of total control,” and about how we live in systems “that we do not fully master.”
Examining My Sun, Noyes said, “Its intricacy is very much like assembling that basket. Look at the work that he puts in. It’s pretty darn magnificent that you can imagine things like this and then actually make it a reality.”
The other artists in the exhibit, curated by Arin Fay, are Peter von Tiesenhausen, Xiaojing Yan, Rita McKeough, Susan Point, Pat Bruderer and Nadia Myre.
Wood runs until Oct. 18.