Canvas to the Imagination

Chris Bentzen, co-curator of Hot One Inch Action, has been working on an excellent video series of interviews with Vancouver artists. The latest is with painter and illustrator Soizick Meister, an artist I have mentioned previously for her inspiring whimsical series of paintings around a character called Mr. M.

I’ve been enjoying Chris’ interviews because it’s exposing me to Vancouver artists I’m not familiar with. Check out more of the videos on the Hot One Inch Action website.

I went on a road trip to Seattle last Thursday with two friends who are also artists. The whole thing came about because the previous week I’d mentioned to said friends a show I wanted to see in Seattle, Morgan Brig at Patricia Rovzar Gallery. The next thing I knew we were going on an road trip to see art, including the Gauguin show at the SAM, and any other shows that took our fancy.

It was a fun day with Robi and Val. Besides the galleries we visited there were also stops at two local art supply shops, and one of my favorite book shops in the world, Elliot Bay Book Company. They’ve relocated to Capital Hill since the last time I visited and it seemed like the whole neighbourhood was blocks of interesting shops and restaurants.

Below are photos of some of the things I came across in Seattle that inspired me.

Do Ho Suh’s “Some/One, 2001″, Collection of the Seattle Art Museum

Collection of the Seattle Art Museum

African Masks, Collection of the Seattle Art Museum

Morgan Brig, Patricia Rovzar Gallery

Don Charles, Patricia Rovzar Gallery

Robin & John Gumaelius, Patricia Rovzar Gallery

I love it when a plan spontaneously erupts out of nowhere – especially when it involves art.

Today I present to you a most humourous interview with artist, David “Mr Fire-Man” Gowman. He’s a musician, gardener, and maker of horns, as well as a self-described class clown. I promise his words will make you laugh. Read on…

Tell us about yourself:
Today, in the third month of my 46th year, I find myself an instrument-maker engaging community with interactive entertainment by way of performances with a small orchestra dominated by hand-made wooden horns.

But that is more about what I do than who I am. Properly described, I should be seen as the archetypal class-clown determined to escape a long cycle of disappointing corporate employment by creating his own much happier, if less fiscally responsible niche.

How long have you been an artist and how did you become one?
I can think of two starting points separated by several decades. Initially, in 1970′s Kitchener, Ontario, an artist was a person who could draw or paint (or even both!). In grade three I won great accolades from my peers upon completing my Weasel Project (yes, a project about weasels) on account of two very believable illustrations (pencil and guache) of weasels. This conference of status was an impetus for me to apply myself further in the hopes of gaining more praise and social standing from my classmates, an impulse I feel to this day.

Somewhere along the line, I determined to make a career out of my art skills, and promptly sold out to the advertizing industry as an illustrator/designer/prostitute-for-hire, a ten year career that feeds the satire in my performances to this day.

My epiphany came in 1995, in a windowless cubicle, in a Fundamentalist-Christian-owned advertizing agency, in an industrial park in deep Etobicoke, where 75 of us worked mostly for a KFC account. I was using my hard-won skills to render technical drawings for the 64 page deep-fry equipment user’s manual, a task my art director sold to me as ‘a soul-sucking job from hell, but with plenty of billable hours’. That horrible job was finally impetus enough to quit, move to Vancouver and take a chance on my own, self directed work.

Do you work full time or part time as an artist? If part-time, what do you do to support yourself?
I used to be a ‘full time’ artist. My first ten years or so in Vancouver, I made ends meet by selling paintings real cheap-like out of a pizza restaurant in Gastown. But the desperation as a semi-obscure Canadian artist is no trip to the playground. Lately I have two, four-hour-a-week jobs: one cleaning my building on Sundays, and the other as the gardener for a lovely co-op near Granville Island. Both jobs pay $100 each time. Combined with the occasional caricature gig entertaining at conferences or municipal events (yes I am still at least partly a corporate whore), and workshops through community centres, my habits are being supported.

Sticks harvested from the Empress Tree

What are some of your favourite materials to work with?
Currently, my favourite material is wood from the Empress Tree (Paulownia tomentosa) on account of it’s habit of growing long, straight, hollow* sticks very suitable for horn making.

*mostly hollow

Tell us a bit about the process you go through to create your work:
First there’s the pollarding of the Empress tree, a heavy pruning that leaves only about four feet of trunk remaining. This causes it to sprout new branches which grow very fast and often straight up. At the end of the winter, they can be harvested and cured on the porch, out of the sunlight. Once they’re dry, they can be chopped and glued into appropriate horn-shaped configurations.

Another process worth mentioning is composing music and rehearsing with my band, an enterprise I would liken to herding wet cats with a broom, only the wet cats all have opinions and never answer their e-mails.

Where do you find inspiration for your work, and what keeps you motivated?
I think of my work as a voice in the wilderness crying out against corporatism and religious dogma. What keeps me motivated is the certainty that, at least here in Canada, the ecologically-minded secular socialists are losing the fight at the cost of human rights, freedoms and the future of our drinking water.

Plus, the band is getting tighter as we practice. We’ve had some really good sets, lately.

Legion of the Flying Monkeys in performance

Is there a favourite project or piece of artwork you’ve created? Tell us about it:
Tough to pick favourites. But this is a recording from a set we played at Raw Canvas (a restaurant) with pictures from the Means of Production Garden in Mount Pleasant, wherein I am heavily involved.

Tell us about other artists who have inspired you:
I have the great fortune of knowing Ken Clarke, a master sculptor in Gastown who has played a large mentorship role with me over the years. Ken is known for large cast faces and figures he produces in series, but I know his more private stone work that is more Zen and abstract.

Other than art, what are you particularly excited about right now?
There’s a new lunch place on Cambie street called Meat & Bread selling roast pork sandwiches. It’s not easy to convince my pesco-vegetarian wife that this is something I really need. But it does have me particularly excited right about now.

What are some of the biggest challenges you feel artists face today?
In Canada an artist must overcome the inherent social standing of ‘Canadian Artist’ which is only one step removed from ‘homeless person’ or ‘pan-handler’ in the minds of the average citizen. In this milieu, a hopeful creative-type can spend far too much effort seeking to achieve legitimacy when what they really need is to find their peers and get on with the task of making art.

What is special about the arts community where you live? What’s one thing you would change?
I live in the Core Artists’ Co-op in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s only actual Artists’ Co-operative. The larger community here in Gastown is very affirming and often feels like Sesame Street for its friendliness and camaraderie, despite being in the midst of rampant, street level human suffering.

If I could change one thing, I would end the war on drugs. Not very realistic I suppose but it sounds much better than telling you about the people I’d like to kick out of my co-op (the violence-threatening alcoholic, the delusional, violence-threatening homophobic, or the non-participant rich kid who illegally sublets to strangers and doesn’t submit his taxes).

Where can people find you both online and offline:
Online: davidgowman.wordpress.com

Offline: Walk down to Main and Alexander Street. One half block East, stand on the North side and yell, ‘Hey, Fire-Maaaaaaaaann!.’
That should work.