https://vangrimdecorpssecrets.com/en/ Isabelle Van Grimde Dance Company Invited Royden Mills and Sean Caulfield and Blair Brennan to Collaborate for “The Body in Question” A Major Exhibition at UQAM Gallery in Montreal and at Enterprise Square in Edmonton ( University of Alberta ) with Funding from the Canada Council for the Arts

Sean Caulfield and Royden Mills Collaborated over a period of Seven years : http://www.seancaulfield.ca/

The sense that the barrier between what is inside of our body membrane and what’s is outside of our skin is separated by an impermeable protective membrane is simply false. The air we take in is only one physical thing that brings outside out and factors within us in. The barrier between the inside of my body and the outside is not just punctured by my breathing tubes, it’s pierced by my ears , eyes, excretion openings, and more of course: virus, micro organisms etc., and then there are radio waves, magnetic fields, x-rays and don’t forget neutrinos that do not even slow down as they race from across the universe not even slow down as they pass through the earth and our bodies too. Carl Jung described even our thought in terms of belonging to a collective consciousness and so surely ideas, states of mind, and perhaps even the optimism that allows us to pull ourselves out of bed in the morning are tied intertwined to the many people and forces around us? The Higgs Boson or “God Particle”, string theory and many other models of science would at the very least suggest that if you are sick then my world and my body is at least a little more sick too. If you are sick, then I am beginning to feel suffering at least a little already because my community is weaker for it. Of course spirit can gain great optimism from belief in a god that is described as being a part of each of us and then we start to add the other side of the equation in terms of what ties us all together to into gaining health and being well, and there is no doubt at all in my mind that Art Saves lives. It is not merely decoration. It allows us each to feel less alone and it allows us to feel we are with liberty that we might not otherwise have thought to imagine for ourselves. If I hear a song and it might be a very sad song rather than an up-lifting song as my mother preferred, and that song allows me to feel as if that singer was singing exactly how I feel, I will feel less alone, furthermore, that the artist chose to get up out of bed rather than stay home with the sheets pulled over her head…well that could all add up to me seeing an alternative to relenting and giving up on the grand struggle with inevitable moments of self-doubt that we all eventually must face. We build our mythology and methodology for life out of things that promote our potential, and the evidence that art provides as a document testifying to the existence of some other soul aspiring and be infinitely inspiring. I had nine nieces and nephews before I was ten years old and playing and being some kind of teacher or role model (starting at five years old) made me believe I might have been a good dad. Not being able to have Children made Linda and I go through experiences that were at least as influential on me as my childhood surgeries and long hospital stays. I used to think some of this was exceptional circumstances but I now see how each of us share variations on quite similar sensations of inner and outer physical bodily experiences loss, grieving and adjustment. I was trained in the modernist era of high aesthetics and avoidance of references beyond the essence of the art work itself. There has likely never been an art school in the world more focussed on that philosophy than the University of Alberta had from mid 70’s until early 90’s. My good fortune was to meet and enjoy mentoring from Isla Burns and Catherine Burgess and Al Reynolds and from Sir Anthony Caro himself; and these great senior people challenged me to forget style or trends and to humbly describe whatever I valued about being alive. It seems obvious; but so pervasive was the focus of the aesthetic discussion that sometimes other things got lost. So many great contemporary artists here in this region are amazing examples that an artist’s life is like anyone else’s; an important service to the community. People like Clay Ellis, Ken Macklin, Joseph Reeder, Ian Cook, Liz Ingram, Lyndal Osborne…. and later close work with Walter Jule made me feel that the questions about being can be made real and open to access by others through studio life. Contemplative poetic moments with art of any kind can transcend the barriers between us and allow us to feel less alone.The arranging of words is a beautiful thing, literature is so obviously an art form. It is an art form as versatile as needed to describe how to assemble an airplane as it is to describe our anxiety over having or not having a legacy through children. But words don’t best describe everything about being alive. For example, words about gliding across ice one foot touching the inside of a skate made of the skin of a horse, screwed to a steel blade is not ever the same as actually awakening to that concept in the middle of doing it! Certain aspects of life are even ruined by too many words. I fear saying things that trivialize the significance of all that has been committed to. Setting up a physical based experience can be destructive of poetics of an idea. And talking about an idea for too long can ruin the pleasure of an actual experience just as certainly. I wish people be able to feel respected enough to feel and think for themselves while being with my work. They might then own and take away a memory that is beyond some literal target that I had hoped might stretch them, but might actually only limited them. These words I write here are a kind of dangerous literature threatening to confine the audience’s imagination and remove liberty that I do love about the spiritual power of art.It is in the poetics of physically being that I feel most present and alive. Weight. Physical pressure, movement, etc…infinite sensations all with conceptual poetic connotations , no? Do I deserve to have a life in sculpture? Have I earned a special enough sensitivity to material? And what if I feel the common currency of our particular era of contemporary art (words) often eliminates the audience from having their own connotations with a particular art work? One of my most influential and most admirable artist friends is Sean Caulfield and for years his talks have been (and continue to be) great gifts to the audience; he simply supplies just enough supporting information using his words to allow academic minds to walk away satisfied….but he manages to not say too much so that the art work is laid impotent for a visitor to his work to feel whatever they might in their own way….! Great poetry using words, enters the eyes as text and delivers a charge to the heart that makes us feel like the idea was exactly our own. Is there a possibility that I could deliver that kind of revelation using physical matter through sculpture using no words? Walter Jule talks about the importance of that and lives his life with a vitality that demonstrates this so very well. Meditation, contemplation and framing micro moments of lucidness seem to break down barriers between our inner feelings and those around us. Art is such a force in helping society with that. Younger artists Like Kirsty Templeton-Davidge, Kasie Campbell and Carson Tarnasky, Carly Greene, Chantel Schultz and more, are building Edmonton’s art scene in new ways. But regardless of how great trends develop in any era, certain things about surface texture, weight, hollowness, etc. are physical human events that are not covered by long paragraphs about relational-ism or haptics or certainly words about abstraction….I go to a symphonic musical concert to lose my body, but what are the places I go to feel bodily presence and feel a sense of being?….this web site uses photographs of sculptures that have worn my body down to make. I would be most pleased if you feel compelled by these images to see any of the things called sculptured physically….by taking your body in person. And I would hope that on doing so you go away feeling like the physical experience was not captured by academic words like “Haptic” or “ Physiological” or “Relational” or even “Abstract” or “Referentially Charged”…I Hope the feeling outstrips the grammar of words such that only being well with the feeling of being present. Being well, here, alive and present… seems so simple but yet powerful and worth the exchange….and should be more than my words can describe. — The sense that the barrier between what is inside of our body membrane and what’s is outside of our skin is separated by an impermeable protective membrane is simply false. The air we take in is only one physical thing that brings outside in and inside out. **The barrier between the inside of my body and the outside** is not just punctured by my breathing tubes, it’s pierced by my ears , eyes, excretion openings, and more of course: virus, micro organisms etc., and then there are radio waves, magnetic fields, x-rays and don’t forget neutrinos that do not even slow down as they race from across the universe as they pass through the earth and our bodies too. Carl Jung described even our thought in terms of belonging to a collective consciousness and so surely ideas, states of mind, and perhaps even the optimism that allows us to pull ourselves out of bed in the morning are tied intertwined to the many people and forces around us? The Higgs Boson or **“God Particle”,** string theory and many other models of science would at the very least suggest that if you are sick then my world and my body is at least a little more sick too. If you are sick, then I am beginning to feel suffering at least a little already because my community is weaker for it. Of course spirit can gain great optimism from belief in a god that is described as being a part of each of us; and when we start to add the other side of the heaven equation in the terms of what ties us all together becomes perforated and so complex that probably no one philosophy, language can contain or fully explain what we feel as true and what may yet be discovered beyond our body or mental ability to comprehend. Within and beyond the great efforts of science to build rules to gaining health and being well, and there is no doubt at all in my mind that Art Saves lives. It is not merely decoration. It allows us each to feel less alone and it allows us to feel we are with liberty that we might not otherwise have thought to imagine for ourselves. If I hear a song and it might be a very sad song rather than an up-lifting song (as my mother preferred), and that song allows me to feel as if that singer was singing exactly how I feel, I will feel less alone, furthermore, that the artist chose to get up out of bed rather than stay home with the sheets pulled over their head…well, that could all add up to me seeing an alternative to relenting and giving up on the grand struggle with inevitable moments of self-doubt that we all eventually must face from time to time. We build our mythology and methodology for life out of things that promote our potential, and the evidence that art provides as a document testifying to the existence of some other soul aspiring and be infinitely inspiring.
The fact that music can deliver feeling to a human heart, soothing and uplifting tunes is so very true and measurable but what is surprising is that in every kind of art even dissonant sounds , darker things can carry comfort in a way. This leaves a lot of room for artists to serve society not just an example of cheery upbeat paintings but solemn ones and we can reach people we love and maybe help our community in a wide spectrum of ways. Art saves lives, one at a time.
I had nine nieces and nephews before I was ten years old and playing and being some kind of teacher or role model (starting at five years old) made me believe I might have been a good dad. Not being able to have Children made Linda and I go through experiences that were at least as influential on me as my childhood surgeries and long hospital stays. I used to think some of this was exceptional circumstances but I now see how each of us share variations on quite similar sensations of inner and outer physical bodily experiences loss, grieving and adjustment. Everyone faces dark challenges and everyone seeks ways to find ways through. Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Philip Glass, Mark Rothko, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgois, Catherine Burgess, Sean Caulfield, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Bernini, Mozart, Alex Janvier, Jane Ash Poitras…all used their art making process to search for ways through darkness search for simply layers of meaning not available in any other process to them.
I was trained in the modernist era of **high aesthetics** and avoidance of references beyond the essence of the art work itself. There has likely never been an art school in the world more focussed on that philosophy than the University of Alberta had from mid 70’s until early 90’s. My good fortune was to meet and enjoy mentoring from **Isla Burns** and **Catherine Burgess** and **Al Reynolds** and from **Sir Anthony Caro** himself; and these great senior people challenged me to forget style or trends and to humbly describe whatever I valued about being alive. It seems obvious; but so pervasive was the focus of the aesthetic discussion that sometimes other things got lost.
So many great contemporary artists here in this region are amazing examples that an artist’s life is like anyone else’s; an important service to the community. People like **Clay Ellis**, **Ken Macklin**, **Joseph Reeder**, **Ian Cook**, **Catherine Burgess, Isla Burns, Liz Ingram,** **Lyndal Osborne**…. and later close work with **Walter Jule** made me feel that the questions about being can be made real and open to access by others through studio life. Contemplative poetic moments with art of any kind can transcend the barriers between us and allow us to feel less alone.
The arranging of words is a beautiful thing, literature is so obviously an art form. It is an art form as versatile as needed to describe how to assemble an airplane as it is to describe our anxiety over having or not having a legacy through children. But words don’t best describe everything about being alive. For example, words about gliding across ice one foot touching the inside of a skate made of the skin of a horse, screwed to a steel blade is not ever the same as actually awakening to that concept in the middle of doing it! Certain aspects of life are even ruined by too many words. I fear saying things that trivialize the significance of all that has been committed to. I hear the great Connor McDavid and many professional hockey players infuse each interview response with ten or more uses of the word “obviously” and I think these stars of sport do that because the whole interview is so short and word-smithing so challenging that they seek ways to try to book mark what is beings said as trivializing a sport played at a pace where a nano-second makes the difference between a goal and an “error”. I still love hockey for it’s chaos and the way certain souls learn to trust intuition, luck, god, science, superstition and any other word that could be used to describe being well in the fractals, and strategy, physical pain, threat of life altering injury and extreme rewards that come in that sport.
Setting up a physical based experience using merely words, the art of literature can be destructive to the poetics of an idea. Someone once said to describe a sculpture with literature is like describing architecture with music. I forget who but I feel that talking about an idea for too long can ruin the pleasure of an actual experience certainly Or as McDavid might say, “obviously” can trivialize the nuances of what we are trying to describe using words. In hockey as in any thing done at such a level to be considered art.
I wish people be able to feel respected enough to feel and think for themselves while being with my work. They might then own and take away a memory that is beyond some literal target that I had hoped adding my words to might stretch them, but…. might actually only limited them. These words I write here are a kind of dangerous literature threatening to confine the audience’s imagination and remove liberty that I do love about the spiritual power of art.
Demystifying art was a stated goal of artists and many art teachers I listened to in the ‘90’s. As if their words would do so in all clarity. I’ve become so used to brilliant orators ruining the art experience that they might have produced for an experience in a physical art gallery that I have wanted to just burst out crying at the talks. It’s almost as if a great violin player would need to prove their value and intentions with the music by speaking about it.
**It is in the poetics of physically being that I feel most present and alive.**
Weight. Physical pressure, movement, etc…infinite sensations all with conceptual poetic connotations , no?
Do I deserve to have **a life in sculpture**? Have I earned a special enough sensitivity to material? And what if I feel the common currency of our particular era of contemporary art (words) often eliminates the audience from having their own connotations with a particular art work?
One of my most influential and most admirable artist friends is **Sean Caulfield** and for years his talks have been (and continue to be) great gifts to the audience; he simply supplies just enough supporting information using his words to allow academic minds to walk away satisfied….but he manages to not say too much so that the art work is laid impotent for a visitor to his work to feel whatever they might in their own way….! Some musicians speak way too much in between songs, no? Gordie Howe seldom said anything about his play, preferring to speak through action, Haley Wikenheiser likewise, Maurice Richard …less.
Great poetry using words, enters the eyes as text and delivers a charge to the heart that makes us feel like the idea was exactly our own. Is there a possibility that I could deliver that kind of revelation using physical matter through sculpture using no words? Walter Jule talks about the importance of that, and lives his life with a vitality that demonstrates this so very well. Meditation, contemplation and **framing micro moments of lucidness** seem to break down barriers between our inner feelings and those around us. Art is such a force in helping society with that. Younger artists Like **Kirsty Templeton-Davidge**, **Kasie Campbell and Carson Tarnasky, Carly Greene, Maud Madsen, Chantel Schultz**, **Kaitlyn Konkin, Hannah Walter, Jayda Colon,** and many more, are building a new art scene in new ways. But regardless of how great trends develop in any era, certain things about surface texture, weight, hollowness, etc. are physical human events that are not covered by long paragraphs about **relational-ism** or **haptics** or certainly words about abstraction….I go to a symphonic musical concert to lose my body, but what are the places I go to feel bodily presence and feel a sense of being?
….this web site uses photographs of **sculptures** that have worn my body down to make. I would be most pleased if you feel compelled by these images to see any of the things called sculptured physically….by taking your body in person. And I would hope that on doing so you go away feeling like the physical experience was not captured by academic words like **“Haptic”** or “ Physiological” or **“Relational”** or even “Abstract” or “Referentially Charged”…I Hope the feeling outstrips the grammar of words such that only being well with the feeling of being present. Being well, here, alive and present… seems so simple but yet powerful and worth the exchange….and should be more than my words can describe.

Bassinet…is the lid opening or closing…how hard the material…somber and yet inviting enough to crawl in and want to be sealed…or left vacant a monument to a vacancy…? What is missing? — Bassinet
…is the lid opening or closing…how hard the material…somber and yet inviting enough to crawl in and want to be sealed…or left vacant a monument to a vacancy…? What is missing?

Collection of the Art Gallery of Alberta , the forces within are bursting the lid, resisting the containment but still very much reacting in the series leading out of Bassinet. What monument is left for a form that might have been contained and pres… — “Inside Out”, Collection of the Art Gallery of Alberta , the forces within are bursting the lid, resisting the containment but still very much reacting in the series leading out of Bassinet. What monument is left for a form that might have been contained and presented in one’s life time but never came?

Almost Wholehttps://belgraviaedmonton.ca/belgravias-arts-park-artists-reflection-from-royden-mills-on-almost-whole/ — Almost Whole
https://belgraviaedmonton.ca/belgravias-arts-park-artists-reflection-from-royden-mills-on-almost-whole/

2001 Alberta Biennial of Artwhat if the audience breathes through the sculptural bodily form with life giving forces of air? What if two strangers sticking there energy into an orfice could heal us? A gallery bugle, communicable diseases? If I have … — 2001 Alberta Biennial of Art
what if the audience breathes through the sculptural bodily form with life giving forces of air? What if two strangers breathing a tone as their energy into an orfice could heal us? A gallery bugle, communicable diseases? If I have a problem does society too? Serious and humorous paradoxical in one?

Hospital beds have side rails that keep you safe within…getting out and getting in can be a ceremony of hope I suppose. You make the most of what comes your way…collection of State University of New York Plattsburgh NYcreated at Triangle Workshop wi… — Hospital beds have side rails that keep you safe within…getting out and getting in can be a ceremony of hope I suppose. You make the most of what comes your way…
Collection of State University of New York Plattsburgh NY
created at Triangle Workshop with great thanks to the amazing sculptor, Jon Isherwood.

Dyscorpia: …sometimes collecting belongings from a hospital room is forever life altering…the body of a loved one seems weightless…could I adjust the bed and send the spirit off? Did the thin curtain around the bed just move? What do his belongings… — Dyscorpia: …sometimes collecting belongings from a hospital room is forever life altering…the body of a loved one seems weightless…could I adjust the bed and send the spirit off? Did the thin curtain around the bed just move? What do his belongings mean to me now?

5B8CA028-8D1A-458D-886A-08575568DB9A-951-000000754E2933EE.jpeg

F5F3191F-9000-4BB2-9A86-0F6F768B5BB6-951-0000007552E5A824.jpeg

Open : it can host four people breathing into it, closed, it’s just a contained volume trapped by surface passages…

Collection of Grounds for Sculpture . Hamilton New Jersey USA. Squeeze in as you can. Squeeze out again to a larger fresher world.

Inside a Dissonant SocietyCollecting of the Alberta Foundation for the ArtsUniversity of Lethbridgetwo dissonant bells within struck only with your knuckle fills the space within such that consciousness is consumed by the interior perception, slowly… — Inside a Dissonant Society
Collecting of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts
University of Lethbridge
two dissonant bells within struck only with your knuckle fills the space within such that consciousness is consumed by the interior perception, slowly the sound fades and the exterior sounds of everyday society come sneaking back in and we exit to a fresher more expansive world…like leaving an oxygen tent or a hospital room…no longer safe and tucked into protection but also free and alive to open potential.

Dyscorpia 2.1. Turn the crank and send physical invisible energy skyward. Is the spirit energy physical?

Dyscorpia 2.1. What tools do more? What examination leads to micro moments of significant historical or moving potential?

Honourable older brother…what a guardian you seem, like a safe place to retreat to but not without your own internal dark corners and history…will you let me in? If I climb in and climb the ladder or open that drawer what might I know of your experi… — Honourable older brother…what a guardian you seem, like a safe place to retreat to but not without your own internal dark corners and history…will you let me in? If I climb in and climb the ladder or open that drawer what might I know of your experience. If, for even a second I could wear your presence and peer even out one of your eyes, what point of view would I see?

“Sean’s Introspection” the space is locked except to the use of one fantastic artist. What if they had a space to use and curate for the rest of their life? Not just a three week installation but indefinite control of a venue….I made it for Sean C… — “Sean’s Introspection” the space is locked except to the use of one fantastic artist. What if they had a space to use and curate for the rest of their life? Not just a three week installation but indefinite control of a venue….I made it for Sean Caulfield and another for Blair Brennan.

Perceptions of Promise: a collaboration with Science in an effort to feel what it might be like to be reaching beyond known limitations and structural orthodoxies for cures and improvements using one’s own mind and energy based on maybe only one cle… — Perceptions of Promise: a collaboration with Science in an effort to feel what it might be like to be reaching beyond known limitations and structural orthodoxies for cures and improvements using one’s own mind and energy based on maybe only one clear and maybe seemingly small idea.
chelsea art museum new york ny

Blair’s Introspection at Borden Park Edmonton 2014

Uncertain Exertion: a sculpture to apply your body to, how much? How fast? Is it true that all humans are most satisfied by arriving at doing or feeling something that they previously didn’t think they were capable of?