on listing (april 09)

I make mementos in order to forget.
It is about all I can do.

Trying not to make the work I would not have wanted to make, I articulate my way through each day. Keeping busy, even while idle. Forging object and image from various notions of response; fracture, ending, longing, and dispense. Sitting at the same overcrowded worktable I compile numerous lists. Meticulously list the irrelevant, draft plans unmethodical; just as before.
Starting with 001. I proceed to list, working from top to bottom in rows, I continue until I fill the space across an entire sheet of paper. One list ends and another one begins. Making note of the ordinary, thoughts and instances as they enter my head, and go again replaced by another to the proceed the next. The lists go on, one after another, and then another:

001. the new indulgence
002. value driven
003. can this really happen here
004. call me when you wake
005. before the depression
006. duck and cover
007. today it’s about waiting
008. not on a rugged coast
009. plain white sheets
010. tell me about it, not now
011. just about everything
012. one a week, only
013. showing her teeth
014. never looked back
015. the hit the air with
016. same old struggle
017. intense pressure

As Ben Highmore speaks of the troubling ‘transformation’ of “the most characteristic of everyday life: its ceaseless-ness” , through its attention, apprehension, and scrutiny; resulting in a division between content and representation. I attempt to transcend a similar desire for the preservation of this “ceaselessness” through habitual, repetitive modes of output, seeking to record, represent and constitute the everyday. In this way, moreover, I seek to provide possible points of common entry into the work and the process.
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i. Ben Highmore, “Everyday Life and Cultural Theory,” The Everyday, ed. Stephen Johnstone. Documents of Contemporary Art (London, Whitechapel & MIT 2008) 82

pOLAROIDs (00-07)
In October of 2000, I received a package in the mail on the day on my 22nd birthday, just before my mom and I drove to Deer Lake to celebrate my birth and our collective day off of work. After art school I had returned to my hometown to clear my head and took a job working in the shrimp processing plant in Jackson’s Arm. By the time October rolled around I had worked there for over six months and although the money was nice, I was severely discontent with my job and my surroundings. Amongst other presents the parcel contained a Polaroid one step camera, and several packs of film. I was quite happy with this gift and immediately ran into the yard and snapped off several quick photos of some hose that my dad had lying around. Over the next eight years I would take hundreds of Polaroid photographs.
Most were just of my friends, although there were the occasional attempts at wit and/or aesthetic. Here are nine from the first seven.

THE CLOTHESLINE SKETCHES

Dealing directly with narrative, and more specifically the process of storytelling, I have researched and created within the concept of how narrative can inform and manipulate the image, and vice versa. Using digital video to compose situations of fractured narrative; incorporating personal references and delving into oral traditions, I enact subtle narratives. Using said video as a filter, I extract portions and recreate these fabrications in manipulated digital print and furthermore, drawing. I am transfusing and repositioning the imagery to illustrate portions of my meandering attempts to re-construct the familiar, through narrative.
While exhibiting a selection of drawings, digital prints and several corresponding small-scale handmade objects, I used pieces of pre-cut adhesive vinyl as a drawing tool to re-compose elements of the imagery directly onto the gallery wall. When installed the work acts as one piece with many components; each component has the potential to exist on its own, or as a significant contributing part of the larger overall piece.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition I periodically revisited the work, making slight alterations and minute additions to the piece, while at the same time facilitating possibilities of interaction with gallery patrons. These interactions mimic the method of layering that I utilize within my drawing. The story is not only significant to the conception of the work, but has come to be an integral part of the final presentation and implementation of the piece(s).

The images shown here are of an installation of the work, as it was exhibited as a part of IGNITION 4: at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal, Quebec in late 2007-early 2008.

ROPSON CHOPS HIS FACE OFF

GETTING BEYOND HIS OBSESSION WITH WOODPILES, MONTREAL ARTIST, JERRY ROPSON SPLITS WOOD, DRAWS PICTURES AND TELLS TALES, NOT UNLIKE AN OLDER UNCLE MIGHT DO.
Montreal, Quebec, Saturday, August 26, 2006 I presented the performance-based work: Woodhouse Sketches, on the rooftop of the William Street Studios. Starting at 12pm and continued well into the evening; this piece would be multidimensional in nature, incorporating: storytelling, drawing and the repetitive act of splitting wood. Simply described; pieces of firewood were split into smaller pieces or “splits”, to reveal/relay images and stories. The performance mimicked the method of layering that I utilize in my drawings.

woodhouse sketches (the drawings)

hurdles (seal hunt), mixed-media drawing, 2006

fairytale beginning, mixed-media drawing, 2006

everything i was ever afraid of, mixed-media drawing, 2006

This is a selection of some work that was created in the spring of 2006. It deals directly with displacement. I was interested in how rural identity is transformed and re-shaped within transient, and particularly, urban settings. I produced a series of drawings and small objects. The images are informed by the commonplace, incorporating personal references; delving into oral tradition and rural folklore, working to illustrate portions of a new eclectic cultural identity.

This work was made possible through a Research and Creation Grant, from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Raised in a small community in rural Newfoundland, my relationship to this place continues to be a formidable force within my creative process. A strong sense of place, and the place itself, imparts an abundance of imagery, stories, inspiration and near exhausting reflection. The correlation between individual and place, and the push and pull between responsibility to tradition and obligation to experience, is a cohesive force within my creative process: where you are vs. where you’re from. This is a defining factor in my art making.

The work is informed by the commonplace. I am giving thought and vision to the everyday environment we intuitively process. With my work I hope to transcribe and share with the viewer the sense of pleasure and disdain I encounter when applying the whimsical and the sublime, to the mundane. Rural ideologies serve as models of observation, engagement and interaction, and are strongly implemented within my discipline. Works integrate images of, childhood play, fear, the romantic, violence, masculine stereotypes, small town tendencies, and ‘Newfoundlandia’. These are investigated within the art and its application, often with an underlying hint of humour. In presenting my work, I try not to rely on overt storytelling, but rather visually establish several corresponding sub-narratives. The abundance of information is meant not only to structure loose narratives, but in the end, to deconstruct, and invert with an overload of information. Something I have come to refer as atavistic narrative.

Although my artistic endeavours are regularly shifting to accommodate a changing environment, I am particularly focused on drawing. I draw every day and this is the most essential part of my art practice. My work is directly focused around drawing based installation. I use drawing and narrative to construct and document this attachment to the commonplace. I make an assortment of artist multiples, drawings, prints, zines, constructed objects, performances and I am continually collecting and creating images, layering within and around the framework of narrative. I often integrate work directly into public settings, and enjoy the challenge of collaborative projects.