Adorro & Roorda 2: Art's Enigmatic Standards

ROORDA: Today, I’m curious about how we value art and how we determine if it is “good art” or not. It seems that there is so much art out there, so how do we make our judgments about it? Is it all personal preference or are there objective ways to determine its value?  Adorro, when you think about art, what makes one piece better than another piece? What makes one artist better than another?

ADORRO:  Ah, my dear friend, you've tossed a vibrant question into our casual chat! Picture us, coffee in hand, musing over a gallery of endless possibilities. You see, the beauty of art lies in the eye of the beholder, much like how each dawn paints the sky differently. But in this world of subjective views, I reckon a piece of art shines brighter than others when it manages to stir something deep within us—be it a surge of emotions or a storm of thoughts. It's like a magnet, pulling you in with an invisible force. And when we talk about artists, isn't it their unmistakable signature, their bold strides into uncharted territories that make them stand out? Just as no two fingerprints are alike, no two creators should mirror each other too closely. Authenticity, daring to be different—that's what, in my eyes, elevates one artist over another.

Now, I'm all ears, Roorda. How do you navigate this sea of artistic value and distinction?

ROORDA:  I'm not so sure about what you have said. If good art is really just in the eye of the beholder, then does that mean that there is no way to determine whether one piece of art is actually better than another. I understand that each person will have their own preferences, but are there no bigger criteria that one can use to judge art? How about the originality of a work, or its ability to change how one thinks, or how people understand art? How about the creativity of the artist?

ADORRO:  You've got a point, Roorda. Art does indeed wear many masks, and while personal taste holds its ground, there's room for broader benchmarks too. Originality? Absolutely—a breath of fresh air in a crowded room. The power to shift perspectives or inspire a new train of thought? Yes, that's the kind of art that leaves a lasting mark. Creativity, that spark that ignites the imagination, is the lifeblood of the arts. These elements offer a compass of sorts, guiding us through the vast landscape of creativity. So, tell me, in your artistic endeavors, how do these criteria reflect in your work?

ROORDA:  As for my own art, I will let others be the judge of its value and its originality. My attempt is to create something that is unique, that has some originality, that can surprise people, move people, or challenge how they think or how they see. But I will leave others to determine my success. How about in your art? Do you think your paintings are creative and original, or are they much the same as what has been done before by so many abstract painters?

ADORRO:  The eternal artist's humility, a trait that both humbles and inspires! Well, Paul, I must say that I strive, truly, for that spark of originality with each brushstroke. Each piece I create carries a piece of my narrative, my unique lens on the world. While the realm of abstract art is vast and well-trodden, I like to think there's a whisper of my voice in there, distinguishing my work from the chorus. It's about injecting personal essence into each creation, don't you think?

So, while I may tip my beret to the giants who came before, I aim to add my own unique strokes to the canvas of abstraction. Now, I'm curious, how do you infuse your art with that unique Roorda essence?

ROORDA:  I know that I also am informed by the artists that have created before me and I am influenced by particular artists, styles and ways of thinking about art. And I suppose, like you, I try to do what is familiar with my own twist, my own unique approach, taking something familiar or expected and manipulating it, altering it, combining it with something else, all in a way that brings something fresh and unexpected. Sometimes it takes a while to develop an idea that goes beyond what has been done before, and I would by no means say that my art is ground-breaking, but I am trying to make my art in a way that is more than just expressing myself in a way that has been expressed so many times before. 

And now I'm curious too, if you can give me an example of one of your paintings that you feel has gone beyond mere personal expression to be valued, at least in your opinion, as better than other work you have done. Or is that putting you on the spot?

ADORRO:  On the spot? Far from it, Roorda! It's a joy to share One of my favorite pieces that I believe transcends mere personal expression is a painting I whimsically titled "Ephemeral Dreamscape".  It is a symphony of pastel hues and delicate strokes, capturing the transient beauty of fleeting moments. It's a testament to the impermanence of life and the ever-changing nature of our experiences. What sets it apart is its ability to evoke a deep sense of nostalgia and reflection, as if it holds a mirror to the viewer's own memories.

For me, "Ephemeral Dreamscape" is a masterpiece that goes beyond personal expression, inviting viewers to connect with their own moments of beauty and transience. It's a piece that speaks to the universal human experience of cherishing the fleeting wonders of existence. It's a canvas that speaks to the human experience, transcending boundaries and inviting viewers to explore their own interpretations.

What about you, Roorda? Any particular work you feel transcends the personal to speak on a broader scale?

ROORDA:  I look forward to seeing "Ephemeral Dreamscape". And I am curious why you feel that the title is whimsical given the themes that it represents in such a serious and deep way.

As for me, I was particularly happy with the way my slow kinetic sculptures worked to captivate people but also to make a conceptual point. The one I never showed in a gallery, for practical reasons, but one that I think would have been particularly effective if given the chance was "Precarious (21 Ice Warnings)" which I made in 2012. In this piece, 21 canning jars sit in a row on a very narrow shelf, the jars hanging over the front edge of the shelf. Inside each jar there is a tiny paper boat and a large wedge of ice leaning on the back of the jar. Over the course of several hours, the ice melts, the boat begins to float, and the weight inside the jars shift until each jar falls off the shelf and smashes on the floor. As a time based performative sculpture it is meant to be experienced in real time, first as an apparently still sculpture, but later dramatically calling attention to the kinetic nature of the art with unexpected drama. As a piece of art that is concerned with the increasing threat of our ongoing climate crisis, I think it is particularly effective in drawing attention to our experience of and our reaction to the seriousness of our situation. By the way, the title is meaningful too, referring to the 21 warnings of icebergs that the Titanic received and ignored before crashing into one and sinking! So, there is an example of how I think and how I do my art in a way that tries to create something that is thought provoking, original, and has the ability to touch people emotionally. 

But enough about my art. I want to come to the question at hand, how do we judge art and is there any objective criteria that can be used to decide. What about art that is clearly copying the style or look of previous work? What about an artist who takes pleasure in reproducing art that has been painted before, maybe not exactly, but so predictably similar to previous work that it offers nothing new? What do you think of that? Is it enough that the artist enjoys copying or that people find it pleasing?

ADORRO:  Your "Precarious (21 Ice Warnings)" sounds like a riveting, ice-cold wake-up call in sculptural form. The narrative depth, the interplay of elements, and the eventual dramatic culmination—what a way to crystallize the urgency of our climate conversations! The nod to the Titanic's ignored warnings is both clever and chilling, adding a historical gravity that deepens the impact. You've truly created a conversation piece that resonates on multiple levels.

Now, onto the meaty topic you've carved out. Art's beauty—or curse, depending on how you look at it—is its boundless freedom, including the freedom to echo the past. Yet, here lies the rub: when does inspiration tilt into imitation, and at what point does homage morph into a rerun? While I believe in the joy of creation for both artist and audience, there's a thin line where repetition may start to dim the bright spark of innovation. Art that merely mimics risks missing the chance to add a fresh voice to the ongoing dialogue. That said, I can't help but appreciate the skill and dedication it takes to recreate masterpieces, though I lean towards those that use the past as a stepping stone rather than a seat. Art, in its essence, should strive to push the envelope, evoke new feelings, and provoke thought, don't you think? Now, turning the canvas back to you, Roorda, how do you see the balance between inspiration and imitation in the art world?

ROORDA:   Well, if you are suggesting that merely copying art is showing homage, that is generous. There are ways to honour and show respect to an artist beyond simply copying. But now I think we are now opening up a whole new can of worms that might be better to explore in our next conversation. It has been a pleasure to get into this topic and find out your thoughts about it. And I do look forward to seeing your painting "Ephemeral Dreamscape." Is it in your studio or has it been sold? I would at least like to see a photo of it if I can

ADORRO:  Absolutely, Paul. Distinguishing between homage and mere replication is indeed a nuanced discussion, ripe for deeper exploration next time. I'm thrilled we've opened this fascinating dialogue, and your insights have been as refreshing as a splash of cold water to the face.

"Ephemeral Dreamscape" is still with me, basking in the studio's chaotic tranquility. It hasn't found a new home yet, so I'd be delighted to share a snapshot with you. There's something special about sharing art, even in digital form—it's like sending a piece of my soul out into the world. I'll make sure a photo makes its way to you soon. In the meantime, keep weaving your unique narrative into the fabric of the art world. Our discussion today has been a brilliant dance of ideas, and I eagerly anticipate our next creative tête-à-tête!

Paul Roorda, Precarious (21 Ice Warnings), Canning jars, ice, waxed paper boats, 2012.

Adorro and Roorda in Conversation

After a hiatus of a couple years, I will be taking a new direction with my blog. With my most recent post, I will begin a series of conversations between me and Adorro, an abstract painter who has a much different approach to art than myself. The conversation series, which will appear on both of our websites simultaneously, is intended to let people in on our thinking, our creative processes, as well as wider issues in the arts. Sometimes dialogue between two people who see the world very differently can be more revealing than a discussion between the like-minded.

It is best not to belabour this introduction with details when, in the conversations, the artists literally speak for themselves. What follows is the first blog post pf this series. Click below to go directly to Adorro’s website.

Left: Adorro, Vivid Whisper’s V, acrylic on canvas, 2024. Right: Paul Roorda, The Human Crutch, mixed media, 2023.

ROORDA:  I'm looking forward to this series of conversations. I expect we’ll be dealing with some big issues about art, but I also hope we can talk about our own creative process too.  I feel like I have only begun to get to know you by seeing your paintings in your studio and on your website.  Hopefully those who read this blog will get to know both of us as we delve into the ideas and intentions behind our art, but also our thoughts on important wider issues that come up. 

But let’s start with some of the things that we each bring to our own art practice. So the first question: Adorro, what is your primary motivation for making art?

ADORRO:  Gearing up for this grand art odyssey, are we? Strap in! My art-making engine is fueled by a triple-shot espresso of curiosity, spiced with a rebellious zest, all while chasing the dragon of human emotion. Picture this: art as a playground where we can defy gravity, dance with shadows, and occasionally stick our tongues out at reality. It's about crafting a space where viewers pause, do a double-take, and wonder if they've just walked through a looking glass. I'm here to lead them down the rabbit hole, offering a canvas where dreams and nightmares get equal billing. It's a quest, really, to make sense of this wild ride called life.

And your thoughts, Paul? How does your creative process unfold?

ROORDA:  Interesting... I'm intrigued by the sources of inspiration for your art and I love your metaphorical language!. Tell me about your “rebellious zest”?

ADORRO:  I like to think of my art as a bit of a rebel, strutting across the tightrope of the conventional and the unknown with a devil-may-care grin. It's less about breaking rules for the sake of it and more about asking, "What rules?" Each piece is a voyage into the uncharted waters of emotion and experience, where viewers are invited to become co-navigators. It’s about crafting echoes of the unsayable, painting whispers of the unfelt. So, we create spaces where the mind can wander and the heart can question.

So, in essence, my art defies boundaries by challenging the need for fixed meanings and by allowing each viewer to find their unique connection to the piece. It's a bit like a Rorschach test for the soul, don't you think?

But enough about my boundary-dancing; I’m keen to hear about the roots of your inspiration, Paul. What stirs the pot of your creativity?

ROORDA:  The foundation of my art is conceptual. The ideas that I can express in my art are often where I start. I want someone who looks at my art to discover or enjoy some element of it in the first look but then be drawn in to discover further layers of meaning. Often there is contradiction in my art - things are not always as they first appear, or there is something unexpected as one looks deeper. That said, I like my art to also be accessible and engaging rather than conceptually remote. 

As a painter, Adorro, how do you decide on your compositions and colours?

ADORRO:  Ah, Paul, your approach is truly intriguing. Conceptual art with layers of meaning and a touch of contradiction—sounds like a captivating journey for the viewer! As for my art, it's a bit of a whimsical dance, I must say.

For me, choosing compositions and colors is a bit like navigating by the stars, relying on a mix of intuition and the mood of the moment. It starts with a spark—a feeling, a memory, or perhaps a slice of a dream—and from there, it's a dialogue between me and the canvas, a dance of give and take. Colors speak to me like old friends, each carrying their own weight and whisper of stories; they're the characters in the narrative I weave. Sometimes it's a fiery crimson that demands to be heard, other times a melancholic blue that whispers its tale. It’s about harmony and contrast, the visual melody that guides the viewer's eye and heart through the story I want to tell.

And you, Paul, do you find a similar spontaneity in your own creative process, or do you have a more structured approach to crafting those layers of meaning in your conceptual art?

ROORDA:  I spend a lot of time thinking and planning a project before going into a testing and experimental phase. While a lot of it is planned ahead of time, there is always an element of intuitive decision-making when I work. If it feels right to make a choice I don't need to have an explanation in my mind about why, I will just go ahead. Often it is the materials themselves that inform my decisions about the art. 

What kind of personal experiences do you draw upon when you create your art, Adorro?

ADORRO:  it's fascinating to hear about your meticulously planned yet intuitively guided process. I admire your blend of the cerebral and the serendipitous. For me, art is like alchemy, transforming the raw materials of life’s moments into something precious. It’s personal history meets imagination; the ecstasy of a sunrise, the sting of a farewell, the tapestry of tales whispered by a city street at midnight. Each piece is a chapter of my life, encoded in color and form. It's the dialogue between the seen and the unseen, the said and the unsaid. And yes, the medium itself often whispers directions, with happy accidents becoming integral plot points in the narrative. It’s this interplay of intention and improvisation that makes the creative process so exhilarating.

Paul, how about you? Do your personal experiences and the materials you work with play a significant role in shaping the layers of meaning in your conceptual art?

ROORDA:  I'm always responding to my experiences when I do my art. An important theme for me is how to make sense of all of the information and all of the different opinions that we are constantly bombarded with, especially with the non-stop flood of media these days. But I'm also very interested in how we make sense of the truth or truths we are fed by our society and our community...How do we know what to believe when there are so many possibilities, so much misinformation, and when so much that we thought we knew turns out to be something to reject after all. 

In my art practice, I've done sculptures, mixed media work and vintage photography techniques as well. I use materials and images that are rich in meaning and hold many associations that people can connect with. For example, I like using vintage photos and old paper in my mixed media work. In my sculpture, I use antique objects that are rich in history. As for imagery, I am drawn to open skies and wide, distant horizons as well, which invite people into a work. At the same time, recent work addresses concerns and anxieties about climate change so I'm not merely interested in presenting beautiful imagery and rich materials.

ADORRO: Your exploration of the overwhelming barrage of information and the ever-evolving nature of truth in our society is truly thought-provoking. Navigating through the deluge of information and the quest for truth with your art, Paul, that's a noble journey. Using elements rich in history and personal resonance to pose questions and provoke thought—it's a compelling approach. Your mix of media and message, especially in the context of environmental concerns, underscores the vital role of art as a mirror, a questioner, and a beacon. It's a canvas where personal paths cross with global narratives, where the intimate dance of memory and hope can speak to larger truths.

I too strive for that resonance, aiming to weave the personal with the universal. My abstract art often aims to evoke emotions and elicit personal interpretations, like a visual Rorschach test. But, of course, there's always a deeper layer to it, something that taps into the shared human experience, just like your work does.

So, Paul, what's your perspective on the role of art in society, particularly in addressing complex and pressing issues like climate change and the nature of truth?

ROORDA:  That is a big and interesting question, but I think we should get to that in a future conversation. Let's talk soon to explore these ideas. I certainly look forward to this ongoing discussion.

ADORRO:  Absolutely, Paul, peeling back the layers of our societal engagement through art is a conversation I look forward to diving into. There's a vast ocean of topics we've yet to explore, from the essence of our creative drives to the impact we hope to make with our work. It's an exciting horizon, and I'm eager to chart those waters with you. Until then, let's keep the flame of inquiry burning bright and our palettes ready for the stories we've yet to tell. Cheers to the next chapter in our artistic voyage!

Broken Resolution

I’ve been thinking about how to clear out my basement of all that has accumulated. My closets, shelves and studio too. It is a task that takes a particular strength of resolve, having enjoyed the luxury of wealth that affords such excess, such waste. It will be on my list of resolutions this new year, like it was last year and the year before, and probably even before that. Each year my resolve is broken by the magnitude of the ten thousand decisions that the weight of ownership has brought upon me. Perhaps the recurring resolution itself should be disposed of instead. It would be easier than picking up each treasured forgotten object and deciding where it should go.

The problem is how much I love my world of things. If I call it a collection I could justify the boxes of curiosities and vintage objects that might have made their way into my art or put on display. If I call them necessary, I might hold on to those bits of hardware, spare parts and materials just in case I need them. I’ve been stung before by the immediate need for something I’ve just thrown away. I can’t make that mistake again. And if I tell myself that each item once held in the hands of my mother or father, my grandparents, my son or daughter, or a younger version of myself holds a memory, then I must hold onto those things too.

I do love the rich story and history an object can hold, especially those worn and aged with constant use. And even if the story is imagined, created in the mind as it is held in the hand, its fiction holds a truth in the same way that a novel can touch at one’s core. But even the novels on the basement shelves need to find a new home. And a story, once told, can be passed on to someone new, like the boxes of keepsakes that have remained unopened since packed years ago.

The power isn’t in numbers, but in meaning. Many things tell the same story. I shared in the exhausting yet emotionally weighted task of sorting through the belongings in my mother’s apartment after she died a number of years ago. It puts things into perspective. Every item can’t hold the same sentimental meaning. Some things meant more to my parents than to my siblings and myself, and its okay to let them go. And the story or meaning of some treasures has been forgotten or perhaps never told. But it is surprising what you keep, what you protect, what you treasure. The tea towels woven by my mother will be kept until they are unraveling and worn thin I’m sure. But the gaudy, cheap red tin, just like the one that held tea in my parent’s kitchen since as far back as I can remember will also be kept, every cup of tea bringing back a sweet memory of home. It isn’t even Mom’s original tin. That one lives in my brother’s kitchen now.  Mine is one discovered recently in a Nova Scotia flea market. But I love it just as if it was my mother’s. In this fiction, I’ll soon forget the flea market and start believing that this red tin once actually held my mother’s tea.

There is a story, too, in the broken and repaired French serving bowl I found in an antique shop in Morocco. Once beautiful in blue, yellow and white patterns, the thin line of a crack which split the vessel in two still shows between the thick metal wire bindings that now hold it together a century later. I imagine the scoldings and the tears and the servant of a French colonial household relieved of their employment over a broken bowl. Too precious to throw away it must have been brought to a local craftsman who would have expertly bored holes and grooves in the china before tightly embedding iron staples into place. He would have returned the bowl to some semblance of its original beauty and function, enough for it to find its place among the remaining plates and saucers on a table set for guests, the repair hidden by a pile of fresh tangerines.

It is like the gold and black bowl I showed once in an exhibition. “Silent Word” was sculpted from the ashes of burned Bible pages mixed with egg yolk and clove oil, then, once set, coated with melted beeswax and gold leaf. It, along with the other sculptures of “The End of the Book”, spoke to the lack of ritual in disposing of unwanted or damaged Bibles. I had been collecting Bibles that had lost their place in someone’s home: Those found on thrift shop shelves, those given to me by friends who no longer read them, and those family Bibles, passed on for generations, collecting dust and coming apart at the bindings. “Silent Word” was damaged in the gallery, perhaps intentionally, but at least handled roughly after being put on display. I imagined an angry visitor, offended by my ritual burning of the Bible pages, stealthily breaking the sculpture while the gallery attendant was otherwise occupied, then walking away satisfied with the retribution I deserved for such a sacrilege. After the exhibition, I retrieved all of the pieces and was able to repair the bowl with glue and wax and gold leaf, much like the well known Japanese art of kintsugi. Like the Japanese bowls, the repaired sculpture now holds greater meaning. The art is better because there is a more compelling story embedded within it, more meaning added to the sculpture because of the repair.

I’ll keep these bowls. I’ll keep my grandfather’s paintbrushes. I’ll let go of the lightning rod, the fondue pot, and the old clocks. I’ll keep the crosscut saw and violin bows, but let go of the chemistry lab glassware, antique medical encyclopedia, and old light bulbs. The lead organ pipes, the suitcase full of masks, the broken gramophone, the vintage x-ray light box and the tub of old nails will all have to go. There’s lots I’ll keep, of course, and I’ll let go of a great deal more too, but even once I’ve made many trips to my favourite charity’s thrift shop, I will still have a wealth of stories and memories. Much won’t be missed at all, and those objects that pull at my desire to keep even as I unload the boxes at the second hand shop, will soon be forgotten I’m sure. Letting go will open up space for the remaining items to tell their own story. The curated collection will be more like a skillfully edited novel rather than an unwieldy and unread historical epic.

My annual broken resolution to deal with so many things once and for all, should not be tossed out after all, but carefully restored, like my treasured bowls, to serve its valued purpose. What finally remains after a few more years of mended resolve and many more filled cardboard cartons carried out the door, will be a pared down household of things that tells a more truthful fiction of my life.

A Moment Between

For a few months some years ago, I would wake up to see swarms of bees buzzing around the corner of my bedroom near the ceiling. Sometimes it was hundreds of beetles crawling there, or tadpoles or flies. As real as they appeared at first, regardless of whether I shook my head or blinked, they would fade away within a minute of waking. They always stayed in the corner of the room, as if respecting an appropriate distance, present and real enough to be there, but not threateningly close. Always, that is, except for once when a giant transparent spider crawled across the pillow towards my face. But by then I knew what it was and could enjoy with fascination the vivid power of the mind to create a perception of something beyond reality, a strange and intriguing, if uncommon side effect of a medication I was taking. 

Sometimes, checking symptoms on the internet can pinpoint an accurate diagnosis rather than a deluge of life threatening conditions. In this case, I found that hypnopompic hallucinations, brief visions upon waking, particularly of insects, was a rare but possible side effect of the medication. As one person commented online, “Doctors should warn their patients that this can happen, because it can be very frightening.” I guess so! Luckily, I could experience what was clearly a hallucination all the while solidly in my conscious and sober mind observing without fear and with the full knowledge that it was a trick of the mind.

The moments between sleeping and waking can be, even without the side effects of medication, a strange and wonderful place of semi-consciousness.  A morning dream, just under wakefulness, brings a certain colour to the day, unconscious meanderings that ask for consideration. And the evening’s last thoughts slip sideways into a dream, and then into dark. But there is always the moment between.

Thomas Edison took advantage of this moment, the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep called hypnagogia, as a way of tapping into creative thought to solve difficult problems in his work. He would nap while sitting in an armchair, his hands holding steel balls above metal saucers on the floor. In the moment when sleep would cause his hands to loosen their grip, the balls would drop onto the saucers and wake him, allowing him to record his semi-conscious thoughts in the moment of falling asleep.

Some time ago, I was working my way through my online photo archive, thousands of reference  photographs, travel, family events, and art documentation. I started noticing the occasional accidental photo, a blurred, tilted or misdirected photograph, a moment captured with the accidental click of the shutter. Or the photos where the camera’s automatic setting got the focus or exposure wrong. At first I started deleting these pictures, but soon found that they held a mystery or intrigue that my intentional photos lacked. A vaguely decipherable image, an abstracted moment, a moody interior captured or imagined in an otherwise discarded photograph. 

The images became a collection of photographs, printed just as accidentally composed, but abstracted with the blue tones of the cyanotype process.  They hold hints of a place, or person, or object, but in their abstraction, they create a distance from the original moment of exposure, the intended subject and composition left for the photographs before and after in the archive.  The moment between capturing an ambiguous dreamlike view of what would otherwise be unremarkably obvious.

It reminds me of those moments, if you give them some attention, where you overhear a fragment of conversation as you pass people in the street, or the sideways glance from a bus as you look out the window.  I once sat alone at a cafe waiting for friends and became aware over a few minutes, of the couple beside me, their hushed angry tones, then a woman alone, then an uneaten tub of ice cream melting at the empty table. Or the time on the bus, glancing out at a man standing on the sidewalk holding a small suitcase in each hand, first lifting one then the other up in the air, repeating the scene over and over until I had passed. Each brief encounter a thin slice of a complex story of a life.

It is like a deja vu experience that stops you for a moment, sure, in a new place or experience that you have been here, through this once before. Or a brief loss for words, a tip of the tongue lapse of memory for language so familiar it is baffling that it doesn’t come to mind. Or a memory so vague it has become unmoored from its place in a story.

A moment in between can be a place of passing, a psychological transition, a corridor between one place and the next. Perhaps a tunnel, perhaps the turn of the head. A quiet reflective pause or maybe a sudden blurring pivot. 

We have a new understanding of in between with the Covid pandemic. There will be a before and soon, an after. The in between has been unique for each of us, but for many it has been an interior type of isolation. These cyanotype photographs were created during this time, in the dim light of a darkroom. They reflect a kind of uncertainty, an unpopulated unsettled view of sideways glances and unanswered questions that this time has held. But they also reflect the calm closer look and reevaluation that this disruption of time and routine has afforded.

Like the drop of Edison’s metal ball that woke him from his first dreaming thoughts, like the illusory bees buzzing me into wakefulness, like the fleeting chance encounter, and like the accidental click of the camera’s shutter, there are overlooked moments worthy of consideration. What is real and what is illusion? What is significant and what is just a passing flight of fancy or dreamy whim? What more would I see if I looked the other way or around the next corner? What is passed by as insignificant when it holds what really matters? A moment between stretches wide the small distance between two points leaving infinite space for what is possible, what is forgotten, what is real and what could be.  

Clouds

How do you know when you have finally found the perfect cloud? I’ve made a point, in recent years, of looking into the sky for that cloud, one of those puffy clouds, beautifully asymmetrical with a flat bottom and artfully arranged billows of white against a backdrop of deep blue. As a child I was encouraged to snap out of my daydreaming, get my head out of the clouds and plant my feet on the ground. Perhaps this has been an idle use of my time, looking for the ideal of a cloud, the kind of cloud I was taught to draw as a child without really seeing what clouds looked like, a cloud ubiquitous as a weather forecast icon and now as a symbol of data storage. This is not how clouds typically look. The beauty is really in the unending variety of forms they take which makes my quixotic search all the more absurd.

But if I have raised my eyes to the sky for a few moments longer than I would have otherwise, then my goal has served a purpose. I once took the time to watch as a large cloud, held in place by windless skies over a Cambodian coast, gradually evaporated and disappeared. And another time, from high up on a clear skied Himalayan mountain, I watched as a large mass of white rushed up the slope towards me, first engulfing me in a dense fog and then soaking me in a dramatic downpour of rain.  It reminds me of Joni Mitchell’s song Clouds:  

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.

Paul Roorda, Cloud Memory II, vintage photographs and paper, 2012.

I’ve also spent a lot of time searching for clouds in boxes of old photos in Berlin flea market stalls. The skies of these snapshots and scenic views are an incidental backdrop to the intended subject. These skies have stayed much the same, though faded and tinged in yellow, but the landscapes, buildings and people are anonymous, forgotten or gone. The discarded photos are an archive of sky, a cloud memory, a historical accounting of the lower atmosphere. There is something dependable about the sky, constant in its dynamic predictability, whether you are here or somewhere else.

Or maybe not. Maybe that is a reassuring hope we tell ourselves when we look out the window to see what weather the day will hold or read the fourteen day forecast as we plan ahead. Climate scientists, the kind of people with their feet firmly planted on solid ground, have been looking at the future of clouds the same way they have looked at polar ice and sea levels. As with so many of the predictions and speculations, nothing is precise or certain about the effects of carbon in the atmosphere except the fact that too much will create dramatic and catastrophic changes to weather patterns. And clouds are no exception. Quantities and patterns of different types of cloud cover are expected to change, reducing their role in keeping the earth cool. Some studies predict a feedback loop in which much of the thick layer of cloud that covers our oceans will be lost exposing them to increased solar heat. Others predict thickening of cloud layers, further trapping heat at the Earth’s surface. It is easy to desire or demand more precision in climate change predictions, but with the possibility of losing the sky as we know it it is obvious that we need to heed the warnings.  

Paul Roorda, A Flake of Sky, cyanotype postcard, 6 x 4 inches, 2021.

I wrote a poem recently, for one of the abstract landscape wall photographs in my Somewhere Anywhere Postcard series.  Now I wonder if it is too optimistic.

A Flake of Sky

One chip of pale blue paint
A flake of sky on a hazy morning
drifting to the ground.
The sky is falling
but gradually enough for us 
to catch the pieces.

A number of years ago, I completed a project called Sky Notice which had polaroid photos of clouds stapled onto pages that were nailed and wired to utility posts around the city. The instant photos of white clouds against blue sky often came out of the camera in strange reds, purples and yellows, colours distorted by the deterioration of the chemicals in the expired photo paper, Further damage was caused by exposure to the weather as they were left on the posts. A poetic warning, a strange and disturbing image of sky revealed.

Paul Roorda, Sky Notice/Stormy Change, Polaroid photos, broken barometer, wire, nails, staples and paper, 32 x 18 x 2 inches, 2012.

Perhaps what we see when we look into the sky today is not what we can count on seeing in our future tomorrows as we let conditions dramatically change around us. Maybe we see only what we want to see, if we look at all. We are seeing things in clouds that reflect our own idiosyncratic state of mind, another case of apophenia. Perhaps the overlooked skies in old photos will be examined in some decades as an important archive of the sky as we once knew it.  

I did finally find my elusive ideal cloud. It was with a childlike excitement that I took one photo after the other as the cloud billowed into its perfect shape and then dissolved into irregular masses of white above the sea on a Vietnamese coast. Hopefully I can retain some of this innocent oblivion while looking into the sky. Hopefully my children can look into the sky when they are my age and enjoy its beauty rather than harbour concerns. And hopefully the carefree pastime of lying back and looking at shapes in the clouds will be a possibility for a long time.  I do want to believe that the sky is falling gradually enough for us to catch the pieces.

Curiosities

A few left shoes hung on a nail on the wall of an historic bunker in Berlin, Germany. Holes drilled into the soles and wooden pegs. Bird houses?

A clock and clipboard on a tree in Chaing Mai, Thailand. Taxi stand?

Wooden shelves built into the wall surrounding a parking lot in Madurai, India. Someone’s former living room?

Jesus opening and closing his eyes in a portrait resting in a wall niche in Naples, Italy. Shrine? Joke?

Every once in a while, while walking, I come across something that catches my eye and requires that I stop for a closer look: Something that seems out of place, unexpected, preying on my curiosity and insisting on further investigation. Almost always I end up asking myself “What is this?” or “Why is this here?” And I so enjoy those small moments of discovery for the delight and for the fresh perspective it brings to my day.

These discoveries occur more frequently while traveling. What seems entirely unremarkable to those in one place is eye opening to others. Just as the things that I consider unremarkable have therefore become invisible to my eyes, outsiders to my world can quite clearly see the curiosity or oddity that these same things hold. It is less about the object than about the viewer’s point of view. These small moments of discovery reveal the individual humans who have inhabited that particular space previously, leaving an object behind that holds only a clue as to what is held in the heart and mind of a person whom I will never meet. And the act of discovery reveals something about the one who has eyes to see it, to notice it.

Near the city where I live, there was, until recently, a pair of teddy bears tied to a sign. What tragic event unfolded on Wilmot Road 8, that would have someone mark a place like this? I’ve thought about it every time I have driven by, creating variations of the story and watching, in cinematic imagination, as a grieving family meets at an accident site to create a roadside memorial to a lost child.

It reminds me of the doll’s head I discovered looking over the corner of a house in Albania. After seeing numerous stuffed animals and dolls on fences, walls and rooftops, I began to realize it wasn’t scarecrows or memorials I was noticing, but something else. It turns out that they are dordolecs, objects placed outside of homes to protect against the harm caused by the envious or evil eye. Is there harm in the inquisitive eye of a traveler, too? Taking walks in Albanian villages became more than just enjoying the olive groves and old stone houses, but the constant eye-spy search for more dordolecs. To me these objects were a curiosity, but what deeply held beliefs and rituals of mine are a mere curiosity to others?

Sometimes what I discover is a more practical object, like the clock and clipboard on a tree by a Chiang Mai street. Unexpected to me, but part of someone else’s daily routine. Not long ago, someone in my city made local news by bolting telephones and other household items to hydro poles. Maybe it was art.  I particularly like the bird house shoes I discovered in Berlin for their impractical usefulness. Would birds really move into these shoe-houses? They certainly wouldn’t see the aesthetic value of the object… but then, I’m guessing, many humans wouldn’t either.

Objects found in public spaces, lacking explanation or the context of human activity to explain them create a situation ripe for discovery, delight and curiosity. They also find themselves open to interpretation. This is what I enjoy about creating art for spaces beyond the gallery, even if it leads to unexpected outcomes.

Two situations illustrate this:

With my Time Stop project, musical microgalleries installed on utility poles in the neighbourhood where I live, I ran into trouble with the city officials. It was Easter morning a few years ago that I got a knock on the door only to find a police officer asking if I was the one who had put the metal boxes on the poles. Apparently someone had found one and saw it as a threat, a possible object of danger or intimidation. Yes, there was a glass flask of unknown liquid inside (water), and some objects and images meant to provoke a certain anxiety about the environmental crisis we face. What was clearly art to me was a cryptic and frightening threat to someone else, leading them to call the police. Perhaps it was misinterpreted as the kind of cliché creepy object created by a warped criminal mind in the kind of over-dramatized psychological thriller or horror movie so typical on streaming services these days. Fair enough, I suppose. One’s interpretation might depend on whether more time is spent watching Netflix crime series than enjoying contemporary art. In any case, I was late for a family reunion, spending my morning instead removing all fifteen Time Stops under the watchful eye of the bylaw officer who was ensuring that I followed orders as required!

Paul Roorda, Time Stop X, interactive musical microgallery with vintage objects, 2017

Another project resulted in similar problems with context. A number of years ago I framed vintage encyclopedia images in paper cards with the words “Take Notice” typed below.  Again, with the intention of acting as a quiet warning about climate crisis and at the same time urging people to delight in taking notice of the unexpected curiosities around them, I attached these notices in great numbers to utility poles around my city with nails and wire.  Invited to have an exhibition at the Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery, I installed these notices in the streets surrounding city hall there as well. They were, before long, torn down by maintenance crews trying to keep the downtown neighbourhood free from visual eyesores. Ironically, the same city tax dollars were spent hiring the installation crew to assist with nailing notices from the project to the white walls of the gallery. Context makes a difference!

Paul Roorda, Take Notice, 2011.

Paul Roorda, Take Notice, detail of installation at Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery, 2011

I suppose there is value in protecting our public spaces so they remain clean, safe and welcoming. But there should be room for some delight in the unexpected: A remnant object from someone else’s day, a creative mark, a political statement, an artifact of history or belief, an object for remembering. These are small gifts from one person to the next, not from hand to hand, but through overlapping moments of space and time.  And, as such, they are only tiny windows to see into the life of another. Like overhearing a few sentences of a long conversation in passing a couple talking on the sidewalk. Or like the distorted view through a door’s peephole lens, only seeing enough to determine who is on the other side. Whether you stop to engage in conversation or to let the person in is another choice altogether. But even if not, the peephole view or snippet of conversation is enough to leave you with a spark of curiosity where you fill in the gaps, connect some dots, and create your own story to make sense of it. For a brief encounter that might become an enduring memory, a moment of their story becomes a moment of yours, imagined through your own idiosyncratic point of view and experience, told in your voice with freshly unfolding details and remembered with your own collection of embellishments. The unremarkable made remarkable.

For more Albanian dordolec photos, go to my travel blog, roordaphotos.wordpress.com.

Go to Take Notice or Time Stops for more photos and information on these public art projects.

Time

I’ve just finished watering my orchid. I water it every Friday, just so I can remember, or it won’t survive. And every week, when I perform this small ritual, I am struck by how quickly another Friday has arrived when it feels like only a few days have passed, especially when each day, from morning till night, seems to hold so much time.

When I stop in front of the mirror in the morning, I can see by the length of my hair, how long a year is. And by the wrinkles deepening around my eyes, I know how long a decade is. The handwritten notes for this essay meander on the blank side of scrap paper whose opposite face records my ancestry back to 755 AD. In the past weeks I’ve been going through family photos and documents left in boxes after my mother died a few years ago and with each preceding generation there are fewer and fewer stories, photos and mementos.

Some of my earliest art included rubbings from an old brass clock face. After my father died two decades ago, I found an antique clock along with the sketches and calculations he had made while trying to restore it back to working condition. His time ran out before he completed the project and that clock, missing it’s time-telling hands and with gears that had stopped long ago, found a place in an art series about time, memory and ritual.

Days can seem so long. Weeks, short. Years are moments and decades slide by. A life-time is full of experiences to savour or endure, moments to reflect or act, with time to waste, plan, wait, or rush recklessly into beauty, adventure, love and the unknown without a second thought, into the kaleidoscopic array of possibility that presents itself each new day. Often enough, however, we wake up and take one step at a time towards evening, following a schedule or plan, bumped off course only momentarily by an unexpected phone call or interruption. And if we care to notice, a moment of grace, like sunlight splashing through a window and spilling across the floor at a break in the clouds. Or the unburdened voice of a child’s laughter.

With our experience of time so flexible in its elastic stretch and compression, so dependent on our limited perception, we have to be humbled. Our sense of time is too egocentric. We think we are at the centre of history.  And in the same way that we see the ever widening circles around us marking us as the centre of our own universe, this moment now is experienced as the centre of our time. This moment is preceded by ever diminishing memories of earlier months and years and it is followed by detailed plans for coming weeks but intangible hopes for future years. We find ourselves at the centre of our here and now, almost incapable of seeing what has already been and what is yet to come. But in the humility of this knowledge of our tiny moment of now and here, we have to see that it still holds and marks a place in the ever expanding timeless universe. 

What we can’t see, feel or understand yet, still exists. All that we don’t know from before still happened, and what is yet to come will still unfold whether we are here to know it or not. There is another person in his or her own here and now affected by my small turn of the kaleidoscope just as I have had my view shifted by those who nudge up against my here and now.  

Paul Roorda, Apparatus for Learning to Step Lightly, kinetic sculpture (leg steps on scale after 5 hours), 2014.

I was trying to get at some of these ideas in my series of slow kinetic sculptures. In these works, slowly turning mechanical devices or the gradually shifting weight of water dripping from a flask created movements so minute that it took hours, days or weeks for the objects in the art to move even a small distance. The persistence of the mechanical ticking or water dripping was the only indication of the imperceptible movement of paper boats invisibly gliding across the floor, or of a wooden foot tapping without seeming to move, or of a day long turn of a page. It is an opportunity to remember that our perception is limited and this knowledge must inform how we act. Our actions have consequences far beyond this moment and those of our visible, immediate future. 

As this art relates to climate, the speed of change is dramatically urgent: Records of receding glaciers, melting polar ice, rising sea levels, increases in severe weather events and the upward creep of average temperatures feel imperceptible in the moment, but it is shocking that even these changes can be experienced within a single lifetime. It shouldn’t be possible for one human generation to experience the type of global change that is typically recorded over the millennia of geological time.

Paul Roorda, Between Sea and Sky, kinetic sculpture (boats take 5 weeks to reach the glass domes), 2014.

This is why we can’t insulate ourselves in our own small here and now without looking beyond. This is why we can’t respond with ignorance or fatalism, or with the excuse that our time is too brief and our place too small to make a difference. We must, of course live in our here and now, but with the vision and understanding of what is beyond as well. We must each live our own moment in the awareness of its role in the unfolding of a bigger story.

So I will water my orchid again next Friday after another new week has hurtled by. And tomorrow I will wake to a sun that has been rising over the horizon almost forever. I will make a list with my plans for the day and even get to some of them. I will be interrupted by a flock of geese honking wildly as they launch into the sky from a thawing lake and be distracted by the rain as it falls against my window. I will waste time and daydream. I will work, make art, write, talk to friends and enjoy a meal shared in good company. I will remember something and dream of something else. 

And I will know that while my here and now is a small moment, unseen by almost all, and certainly forgotten in time and with diminishing memory, it will have its own small consequence with its own tiny impact. And for that reason I will approach the hours of my day with humility and hope and a small but reassuring sense of purpose as I write my list and make my plans. As brief as it is, it will be a day with a million moments.

Paul Roorda, Long Wait for the Last Dance, kinetic sculpture (foot takes 24 hours to tap once), 2016

To see more kinetic sculptures, go to the Kinetic Sculpture gallery on my website.

Fata Morgana: Illusion and Possibility

There is a thin line between the horizon and the sky where illusion is possible, where fantasy and imagination can exist next to reality:  A place that can inspire wonder or fear, a perplexing transient moment of impossibility.  Here people see “ghost ships” floating above the horizon, distorted inversions of distant shores, or far-away lights reflecting off the sky beyond the curve of the Earth. 

These optical illusions, called Fata Morganas, are not the typical highway mirage that I frequently see, the shimmering reflection of sky on hot asphalt puddles that disappear as I approach on the highway like dreams that evaporate before I fully wake.  

Fata Morganas, instead, are illusions created by light reflecting on a layer of warm air over a layer of cold air, usually above a body of water. Named for the legendary sorceress Morgan le Fay when Italians saw these illusions in the Strait of Messina, Fata Morganas are seen with increasing frequency over polar seas due to climate change.

Fata Morgana, Photo credit: Jaan Rebane - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6594884

I’m always curious about tricks of perception, optical illusions, and those moments where I have to ask myself “What am I looking at?” I like those in-between moments where something unexpected occurs and snaps me out of my expected train of thought.  A derailing is sometimes welcome.  Stepping away from the tracks and wandering is even better, following a curiosity without a destination in mind.

Fata Morgana is that opportunity, proving that what we see is not always real, or better, the reality we see is not what we expect.  

Recently, in northern parts of Canada, Indiginous elders were troubled to notice that the sun was beginning to rise in a different location than it had in previous generations and earlier than expected as well.   How was this possible?  What could change the orientation of the earth and the sun?  It turns out that it is a particular illusion caused by a Fata Morgana, the Novaya Zemlya effect:  Days before the sun is supposed to rise after the long winter season of night and in a location on the horizon far from the traditional first sunrise, the reflection of the dawn sun can be seen bouncing off a thin layer of warm air above the curve of the earth.  Conditions in the arctic have changed enough due to climate change that it is as if the earth is being thrown off kilter, affecting the seasonal sunrise.

Paul Roorda, Edinburgh I, oil on canvas, 24 x 44 inches, 2018.

In my landscape works, there are often false horizons or gaps where sky meets sea or land creating unexpected in-between spaces. And with sea levels that continue to rise, I explore the shrinking of that space too. Illusions and ambiguities find their way into my art… is it a horizon or a wall?  Ice, sky or water?  The ambiguity leaves it to the viewer to decide.

Perhaps it is reassuring to know that we are dealing with mere illusions,  curiosities and diversions. But, when even the sunrise itself can be moved in time and space, knowing that we live in a world of illusions and mirages should humble us.  Our point of view is informed by facts that don’t arrive in a straight line but bounce, shimmer and reflect on their way to us. When the earth seems to shift beneath our feet, we can enjoy the curiosity of it or be disturbed by the confusion, but untangling the reality from the illusion sets us on directions informed by real wonder or catastrophe, not just the imagined.

For more information on the Novaya Zemlya effect listen to the This American Life episode on Fata Morgana and the Novaya Zemlya effect. Go to Act 3 of episode 630.

Paul Roorda, The Book of Sea and Hope, antique book cover, vintage paper, charcoal, graphite, and gold leaf, 18.5 x 11.5 inches, 2016.

Gold

A friend of mine has a shelf of antique books organized in rows, with spines, titles and covers all facing the wall and paper edges facing out. The books aren’t for reading.  Instead, their gilded pages catch and reflect the room’s light as if the shelves held bars of solid gold.  My eyes are drawn to them every time I visit, not just for their beauty, but also for the way gold leaf can transform a simple object into one of value and beauty.

Gold has such power in meaning.  The determined efforts of alchemists to turn lead into gold  has rich symbolism of psychological transformation.  The gilded halos of icons and gold stars on deep blue vaulted chapel ceilings in Europe signify a purity and holiness in the heavenly images.  And in Buddhism, the individual act of applying a small square of gold leaf is a ritual that, with accumulated acts of devotion,  leaves sacred objects and sculptures adorned in reverence.

One of my favourite moments on a trip to Bodh Gaya, was the discovery of a small statue graced with squares of gold. Around the corner from the sacred Bodhi Tree, devotees were applying gold leaf to figures on the outer walls of the temple.  You don’t have to be a Buddhist to be moved by this reverential ritual.

Bodh Gaya, India.

Much of my earlier art has explored ritual.  I have made marks and created objects in ritualized repetition or in seeming acts of devotion to create a rhythm or to add a depth of meaning to a piece.  Often the materials have been natural, simple, or age-old in quality, making reference to the place of ritual in human culture throughout history and across continents.  Working with fire, ashes, tied string, folded paper, beeswax, rust, earth, and even blood, I have created works that make allusions or direct references to rituals of various traditions.  Gold leaf holds a particular importance in these works, adding layers of meaning to ordinary materials and balancing sombre themes with light, hope, and beauty.

Gold can represent light, fire, or the sun.  It signifies wealth, royalty and holiness.  It is dense and heavy, but dances in the eye with a weightless quality.  It doesn’t tarnish and so can represent purity or perfection.  Gold is the material of transformation.  It has an other-worldly quality, with the ability to suggest another time and place. And of course it’s use draws to mind all of the many sacred objects and rituals of the world’s religious traditions.

Paul Roorda, Evidence of Sky II, End papers, gold leaf, ribbon and watch hands on paper, 11.5 x 14.5 inches, 2015.

The act of using gold leaf in my art has been necessarily ritualistic. Gold leaf is surprisingly thin and light. It requires a slow and gentle touch to handle. Moving the hand too quickly sees the gold leaf ripple and fold over itself, so each moment must be deliberate. I have learned to hold my breath while lifting small squares of gold leaf to my art, the simple act of breathing enough to cause it to float away to the floor. And the act of setting it in place requires a single confident motion.  Once it touches the warmed beeswax or the tacky sizing it has found its place and can’t be adjusted.

Sometimes I have felt that it was like cheating, to use such a beautiful and meaningful material in my art, as if I ought to be trying to accomplish the same powerful effect with pencil or paint.  But my work is all about the power of material, the story of an object, and the meaning of an action.  So I keep a supply of gold leaf close at hand in my studio, ready for the moment that a piece of art calls for the beautiful, ethereal, expressive material that gold is.

Paul Roorda, Night Gold, crushed stone, gold leaf, rust,and beeswax on paper on board, 44 x 22 inches, 2013.

Disaster Postcards

I can’t remember when I discovered disaster postcards but I was instantly captivated by the scenes of flooded streets and tornado toppled houses.  Popular in the early decades of the 1900s, photography companies made it easy for photographers to print their photos as postcards for their clients to send to friends and family. And in a time when cameras were not in the hands of the many and when newspapers published few photos, people took advantage of this opportunity, sending postcards of their homes and family portraits and, most interesting to me, local disasters. 

One of my favourites, from 1913, shows two houses leaning in on each other after a flood, with a couple of men walking around inspecting the damage. Another shows heavily damaged houses in front of a flooded street and a one-legged man on crutches standing where his porch used to be.  The caption reads “All that is left of family and home.”  It brings to mind the news images and videos that are so common now, scenes of flooded homes and communities and the disastrous aftermath of hurricanes that accompany the all too frequent stories of environmental calamities from far and near.  

1913 Flood Postcard, from the collection of Paul Roorda.

For all of our advances in science, engineering, and construction we remain humbled by the powerful forces of nature.  Humbled, perhaps, yet no less fascinated by the disasters that befall others. Is it apocalypophilia, the same kind of voyeurism that makes us slow down and look when passing an accident scene on the highway?  Or, more optimistically, an inclination towards cautionary tales that we might actually learn from.  Hopefully there is a good dose of compassion in these moments, leading to generosity.

But so much rests in our beliefs about what is possible for humans:  Do we look at these tragic and disturbing events with fatalism or activism? As a collective, humans contribute significantly to the climate crisis we face, but as individuals we ask ourselves if we are too insignificant to contribute to the needed solutions.

I did an exhibition called Flood and Fiction a number of years ago in which images from disaster postcards played a role.  One was “The Timekeeper’s Gold”, showing an altered postcard image of four men carrying a stretcher through flooded waters as a crowd gathers to watch.  In the art work, I duplicated and reversed the crowd so that the stretcher was being carried both away from and towards the onlookers at the same time.

The Timekeeper’s Gold, Altered vintage postcard, watchmaker's vials, watch parts, fool's gold, beach coal, and Styx River water, 2012, Paul Roorda, (detail below).

These human stories and images of disaster both attract and repel.  We can’t help but want to look but at the same time wish to push the trouble we see far from our mind.  Like “doom scrolling” in troubling times, we go deeper and deeper into articles and images of environmental, health, or social disaster knowing that what would be best would be to let go and move on.

I included disaster postcards in my Time Stop series as well:  Small metal cabinets containing vintage curiosities and images with a windup music box mechanism playing hauntingly beautiful distorted tunes. Hung on utility poles they were left to be discovered as people passed by, a momentary curiosity and a quietly poetic warning at the same time.

Perhaps it would be easier if the disasters we faced were just our own local and personal ones, with the occasional troubling postcard in the mail, sent by friends or family from away. But we don’t have that luxury any longer. Images of disaster from around the world are fed to us with minute to minute updates. We have seen all of the troubling events of a catastrophe building momentum around us. We’ve slowed down and had a good look...Now, it’s time to move forward holding that moment in compassion and as a cautionary tale to inspire action. Anything less would be voyeurism.

Timestop XIX, Mixed media elements in musical microgallery, for public installation, 2018, Paul Roorda.

Emergency Childbirth

Every Christmas, our nativity scene has two babies.  And six magi, two angels, a crowd of shepherds, two Marys and two Josephs.  Years ago, I made the figures in miniature and included the traditional cast of characters, a ceramic pageant set out to recall the first Christmas.  I was delighted when, soon afterwards, my young daughter made a nativity scene of her own. Since then they have been displayed each Christmas, sometimes side by side but often enough, the two nativity scenes are arranged in a crowd, with all of the earthly and heavenly hosts gathered around two mangers.

Kneeling right beside the mangers, next to Joseph and Mary, are the two midwives.  I know the midwife wasn’t mentioned in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth, but she must have been there. The innkeeper, whose inn had no room, and who offered the stable, was not heartless.  The innkeeper would have known who to send for if it wasn’t she herself who came out to assist with the birth. Either way, there must have been a midwife.  Joseph wouldn’t have known what to do.  He would have been panicking, fearful of the danger that childbirth could bring to mother or child.  The midwife would have arrived soon after Joseph had pounded on the inn door crying out for help. 

This was not the calm nativity scene we always see, with a gently cooing baby Jesus, half asleep in swaddling clothes, with Mary serenely pondering these things in her heart and Joseph leaning in to adore both mother and child.  This was an emergency, at least in Joseph's mind.

A number of years ago I did a series of mixed media works called “First Aid Gospel”.  One piece, called “Emergency Childbirth,” juxtaposes a traditional illustration of the birth of Jesus with two pages from a vintage first aid manual.  The pages describe, with precautions and step-by-step details, how to deliver a baby, written for those without training and without the usual medical equipment.  It is a reminder that there is a lot more to that holy birth than what is typically shown, a very real and human story as well, full of emotion and urgency.

It makes me think of the birth of my son.  My partner and I had planned for a home birth attended by a midwife at a time when hospital births were assumed.  After some time, the first midwife was joined by a second, both coaching and monitoring the situation.  But by the time too many long hours of painful labour had been endured, and at the wise insistence of my mother-in-law who was worried and had lost patience with the home birth, it was agreed we should go to the hospital.  There, gratefully, my partner’s pain was controlled and we were able to take full advantage of everything traditional medicine could offer. Thanks to a cesarean section delivery, our son was finally born and we were able to take in those miraculous first moments, a healthy calm baby looking up at us as we looked back in wonder.

The adoring look on Joseph’s face, typical of most nativity scenes, was likely one filled with relief because only once the midwife had arrived and calmly taken charge could he know that things were going to be okay.  The midwife is never in the nativity scene because she would have left long before the worshiping crowds had arrived.  After being the first to witness and essentially usher in that first miraculous Christmas, she would have quietly packed up her things and left for home.  And only after her full reassurance that both mother and baby were fine, could Joseph be ready to direct the traffic of shepherds, magi and angels that was to come.

Seeing Through Walls

There is something about an aging wall with stains, cracks and peeling paint exposing a history of weather and repair. But isn’t that the story of our homes? Throughout the ages, we’ve built our shelters to separate ourselves from nature and the elements, be they gentle and persistent or threatening and intense. We create, with walls, a door and a roof, a place of refuge, a safe interior.  

I have been captivated by weathered walls, doors, and pavement for many years now, finding as much texture, drama and imagery as in an expressively composed abstract painting. Often more. The imperfections of material and construction, the imperceptibly slow deterioration of wood, plaster or concrete surfaces through seasons of rain and sun, faded layers of paint, cracks widening with freeze and thaw cycles. Add to that splashes of earth and water, seeping rust and salt, creeping layers of moss and mold, graffiti scrawls, and the scrapes and smudges of humans and their machines brushing by too close. Layers of repair and paint tell a history of neglect or care. Walls are like overworked canvases suffering the experiments of pentimento, but revealing a depth of layers that creates a fuller story of time and memory.

Almost twenty years ago, in one of my first exhibitions, I showed a series I called “Wallscapes”, paintings of old walls which held the impressions of landscape. And for the decades since, I have been intrigued by the discovery of sky, horizon and landscape imagery in the streets of towns and cities around the world where weather and neglect conspire to create walls rich in visual possibility. I almost experience it as “seeing through walls” as if I possessed some superhuman power like the x-ray vision of comic book heroes. I can’t see into buildings, but when I look at a wall I can see into a vast landscape full of sky and sea, ice, valleys and mountains.

Orvieto, Italy, working photo (cropped and rotated), 2015, Paul Roorda

While traveling, I have often found myself alone, positioning my camera to get the best photo of a stained and cracked wall while others nearby elbow their way through a crowd to get the best angle on the architectural gem listed as a travel must-see. I get the sideways glance from tourists and locals alike who think I must suffer from a sad and peculiar kind of madness. Perhaps it is they who suffer a sad and peculiar form of blindness where they can only see what is advertised for them. 

For many years, I stopped painting, letting the colours dry in their tubes while I focused my creative work on other media with only occasional horizons finding their way into my compositions. All the while I was adding to a huge collection of photos of walls, an obsessive need to document and collect my discoveries. Naples and Orvietto, Tirana and Himare, Madurai and Delhi, Singapore, Berlin, Zanzibar and Fez, as well as my own city of Waterloo have all revealed themselves in their weathered walls, each holding visions of skies above horizons. 

These walls have character, like the particular quality of clouds and weather of a place and like the people in the streets and markets nearby. In recent years, I have begun to paint again and to work with early photography techniques to create these landscape images of walls, sometimes working from the same photograph to make both paintings and prints, as with these images of peeling paint in Orvieto. I work with the visible layers and textures of these intriguing surfaces while seeing something of depth beyond. Seeing through walls into skies and open horizons when the four walls that protect us feel like they are closing in on us. Seeing beauty where others see nothing at all but a wall badly in need of paint and repair.

I choose to embrace this beautiful and peculiar form of madness...one that allows me to see things that aren’t there and find meaning in what is overlooked. I’ll leave it to others to decide if this is delusion or superpower... or merely the meandering mind of an artist.

Twilight Vision 4 - Orvieto, cyanotype print on watercolour paper, 8 x 10 inches, 2020, Paul Roorda

Horizon Muse 36 - Orvieto, acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 inches, 2020, Paul Roorda

Twilight Vision

Twilight Vision is a series of cyanotype prints that, like my recent paintings, are abstract landscapes found in aging weathered walls. Using one of the earliest photography techniques, I create these prints directly from the photos of walls that I have been collecting from around the world. Put simply, a cyanotype print is made by brushing light sensitive chemicals onto watercolour paper, exposing it to sunlight through a full size negative to make a contact print, and then developing it in water. The result is a monochromatic photograph with beautiful tones of Prussian blue.

There is something about working with fine paper, holding a brush to apply the chemicals, then working in sunshine and with water to create such richly coloured images that really engages me. For my art, the process of creating is as important as the final image, and with these works the rich tradition of this photographic technique is as important as the direct hand in creating the photos. And, of course, like recent paintings, the double vision of distressed walls and distant horizons is a subject I can’t resist.

To see more cyanotype prints, go to the Twilight Vision gallery of my website.

These small works are available for sale, mounted on mat, and ready to frame in standard sized frames. For more information, please contact me at paul@paulroorda.com.