Royden Mills Studio Collaborations

Collaborations with other Artists and Royden Mills Studio

Isabelle Van Grimde dance company from Montreal invited Brian Webb and Blair Brennan along with Sean Caulfield and Royden Mills to participate in this collaboration. The resulting performances , installations , sculptures , drawings, prints, videos, and photographs all testify to the fertility and dedication and perhaps even the value of experiencing the world through our bodies.

The Body in Question(s) was a remarkable exhibition featured in Montreal and Edmonton with videos living on through the web.

The Focal Cone is a heavy steel tool that has a beautiful large lens that the human can see through as they push the tool around. The scientist’s tools are expensive and the weight of their effort is worth feeling in a physical metaphor. The tool will rotate in a circle, drawing a trace of the movement in the dust of the earth. The human can see magnified the point where the circle pivots, just as a Scientist is often focused on a target or cure. The paradox of art and science is that perhaps it is on the periphery of this focus where extremely interesting serendipitous accidental discovery happens. Could such events / forms be almost more interesting than the plan?The cone reflects that aspect of the paradox in the interlaced wooden forms that are not at the focus of the funnel shape but caught on the outside edge, near the top…as if they were excluded by the pouring of energy through a once overflowing funnel. One scientist that I met spoke of a research grant he got for a 7 million dollar microscope and the weight of that impressed me all the more as he talked about needing to adhere to the predestined purpose described by the grant application. He felt that the orthodoxy of his scientific funding system almost excluded the potential to accidentally go beyond the scope of what we could imagine in his research. I tried to make a sculpture that reflected something I learned about the life of my new scientifically gifted friend.

Perceptions of Promise

shown here at The Chelsey Art Museum in NYC

This was a collaboration with Sean Caulfield where I tried to activate a plane of existence that the audience had to reach into physically, while mentally passing within as they generated electricity to ignite light within an elaborate vessel. Upon doing so, the intricacies of Sean’s small single drawing within was magnified and illuminated. On the wall near by were four beautiful drawings seeming to me to be exactly as valuable as any mathematical proof has ever been. One of the visual and conceptual themes that I felt within the surreal macro-micro landscape of Sean’s work, seemed to be very much about consciousness of what is beyond our known planes of existence. It is notable that I worked on this sculpture as news of my sister passing arrived and in the middle of it all I spoke in Eulogy at her funeral and then returned to work on this contained space.

Within and Without

Surface Tension was a huge collaborative two person exhibition with Sean Caulfield at Gallery 501 in Sherwood Park . He drew intricate traces of his mental considerations of what it feels like to try to come to terms with the complexities of existing ( my words ). The nature of being and knowing scientifically certainties is contrasted with an artist’s evidence of effort and commitments even in the face of being somewhat less able to be certain. In my collaborations in this show with one of my favourite living artists, I tried to draw the audience in and cause them to realize the detail and the efforts that this great artist goes to to reward studies of micro-moments of thought and micro moments of being in regards to infinitely more macro landscapes. The range of scale in this exhibition was remarkable. Lenses magnified Sean’s micro drawings, all 20 feet of them and the sculpture projected gallery lighting onto the paper that reminded me of the sun through a lens….and so the vulnerability of the paper seemed akin to the fragility of the traces of our thoughts. Commitment to making these pieces with little chance of it ever having a home or being acquired is something I feel was significant. Like paper drawings fragile ideas can be as true as any truth and yet go unwitnessed or perish due to any of the natural elements.

19th century science often had tools of wood and steel and glass. The thin paper seemed very at-home running through this installation.

“want”

in one part of the gallery was a giant steel and wood parachute. It was the same form as was used at a much smaller scale in a sculpture called “”Uncertain Exertion” . These small versions of “Want” made of paper and wood offered people opportunity to crank a lever that demanded physical exertion. The goal was not obvious nor described but many came to arrive at propelling the small parachute airborne. The most satisfying experience in life is always when we arrive at doing something that we previously didn’t know we were capable of. To want something and to get something is a relationship of scale, no? The exertion was more than most expected and so naturally was the degree of satisfaction.

Uncertain Exertion: ….a set of caged paper parachutes wait their turn to be floated on a column of air produced by cranking bodily power into a focus. It was harder than most expected but not a one didn’t smile upon achieving the experience. Our wants….our hopes…our ideas all have a weight. Can much be achieved that is satisfying without taking a mix of the ethereal realm of ideas into a collision with the resistance of reality? What if the large wood and steel form?

Tricycle Artist Group:

Catherine Burgess, Walter Jule, Royden Mills

When Walter Jule asked me to join Catherine Burgess in an artist group that would work with ISL Engineering on an exciting project, I thought how wonderful it would be to work with two of the great influences on my development and the development of the art scene in this entire region! Catherine hired me to work for her many years prior and some of the things she told me about her process changed everything about what I had thought possible of personal investment in art making. Walter Jule has taught me so much about a way of being that can be grounded and true and connected to philosophy in ways that bridge aspirations to things only delivered by going beyond imagination. We built models and proposals and finally created “Prairie Walk” in Sherwood park using wonderful recordings done at both Prairie wetlands and prairie grasslands among 14 huge stones along a 1/4 mile walkway done by ISL Engineering. Terry Miles and the team fit well with Tricycle and we also completed “Momentum” for the County of Strathcona. These contemporary public art commissions were integrated with the design features and were well received critically and by the general public as well. I would do anything for this team and have enjoyed some exceptional memories with this team.

Volunteer Plaza Design for County of Strathcona

Prairie Sound Garden: County of Strathcona Canada

Amber Bracken photo of Mills