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Upcoming
Beauty Rest: Recent Poem Drawings from Iceland opening reception: Saturday, November 9, 3-5 Niagara Artists Centre 354 St. Paul St. St. Catharines, ON www.nac.org |
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My recent work marks the shift from image to word and then back to image again. It is a kind of sideways drift like a car leaving the pavement, or a ball joint floating in a hip socket. It feels a little wobbly, uncomfortable, and even risky at times. It is this experimental edge I explore whether at my studio, or in front of a notebook, trying to find the connection to line things up somewhere between my writing and my visual art so they feel right.
The idea of an inner edge also motivates me, the breath coming from the inside, on which words travel to the outside and the connection of the breath to the physical body; the flesh. I draw a lot of inspiration from this inner landscape.
'-But the voice is a breath pumped from the lungs by the pulsing of the heart. It is sounded in the throat, shaped by the teeth and thrown into the world like a stone skimming atop the waters'
-Herbert Richardson
The idea of an inner edge also motivates me, the breath coming from the inside, on which words travel to the outside and the connection of the breath to the physical body; the flesh. I draw a lot of inspiration from this inner landscape.
'-But the voice is a breath pumped from the lungs by the pulsing of the heart. It is sounded in the throat, shaped by the teeth and thrown into the world like a stone skimming atop the waters'
-Herbert Richardson
flesh made word
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Mori McCrae was born in Toronto in 1961. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art (Drawing and Paintiing- 1986) winning the Forsythe Scholarship in her final year.
For the last 20 years, McCrae has lived and worked in the Niagara Region. She is a founding member of the Jordan Art Gallery (2001), where she currently exhibits her work. The gallery actively promotes artists from the Niagara Region. The artist has received numerous exhibition assistance grants from the Ontario Arts Council, as well as an International Residency Grant (Ireland) and three Artists in Education Grants for working in local schools to create large scale mosaic murals In 2011 McCrae was awarded an artists residency at the renowned Cill Rialaig Artist Residency in Ireland where she expanded her practice to explore the limenal shift between word and image. In August of this year (2013) she attended the Sim Residency in Iceland to explore this relationship further. 
Flesh Words
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Iceland Rite 2
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Kites
The kite form interests me as a visual expression of the temporal world. Using iconic images and symbols on kite shaped drawings I explore the impact of this finite and infinite journey.
For these drawings I use a clear but resilient plastic of archival quality called Duralar. In keeping with the properties of a kite, Duralar’s qualities of lightness and transparency convey impermanence yet the weight of symbols and icons create the push/pull that explores the connection of form to content.
The kite form interests me as a visual expression of the temporal world. Using iconic images and symbols on kite shaped drawings I explore the impact of this finite and infinite journey.
For these drawings I use a clear but resilient plastic of archival quality called Duralar. In keeping with the properties of a kite, Duralar’s qualities of lightness and transparency convey impermanence yet the weight of symbols and icons create the push/pull that explores the connection of form to content.
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Sweet Hurricane
Hurricane Sandy edges east
spitting along the seaboard
like an unwanted guest
who cared less for company anyway
On gleaming axels, we barrel backroads
windshield wipers chomping
while leaves pile high as mattresses
thickening the ditches
A dim delirium ensues
the days and nights unpinned
tip together
then slide like pooling paint
paynes grey shot through with devilled yellow
This waterworld exumes a distant day
long before this fearsome storm waylayed
Fixed beneath a paisly sky
the trees disrobe with decorum,
shedding leaves one by one, to fall alone
or in pairs that spin togther barely touching
A revolving cone of time and place
forms a footed pin point,
an imperitive replete with speech-
to sit beneath a tree in last leaf and say something
“You’re swell - too soon, come back, forgive me”
the words succumb
to a swirled pink tongue,
given, like candy from a baby
Hurricane Sandy edges east
spitting along the seaboard
like an unwanted guest
who cared less for company anyway
On gleaming axels, we barrel backroads
windshield wipers chomping
while leaves pile high as mattresses
thickening the ditches
A dim delirium ensues
the days and nights unpinned
tip together
then slide like pooling paint
paynes grey shot through with devilled yellow
This waterworld exumes a distant day
long before this fearsome storm waylayed
Fixed beneath a paisly sky
the trees disrobe with decorum,
shedding leaves one by one, to fall alone
or in pairs that spin togther barely touching
A revolving cone of time and place
forms a footed pin point,
an imperitive replete with speech-
to sit beneath a tree in last leaf and say something
“You’re swell - too soon, come back, forgive me”
the words succumb
to a swirled pink tongue,
given, like candy from a baby
