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The 3 R’s of Environmental Art Re-cycle – Re-Shape – Re-Interpret
By Jane Coryell Arts about Town
In honour of Earth Day, Oakville celebrated two artists who revere this planet. Lyn Estall and Sybil Rampen are kindred artists. They don’t work together, but they do know each other. (Lyn studied mono-printing with Sybil, who is one of Ly’s top 6 role models for “Sharing the sheer joy of creative experimentation”). Both artists continually learn and even invent fresh approaches to their many themes and techniques, among which is making art about nature and with natural objects. Their juxtaposition of found objects is always delightful, often amusing, usually though-provoking, and sometimes moving.
Both artists majored in art at university and continued art studies at various centres. Both have had several exhibitions to many locations, in and beyond Oakville. Both revel in experimenting with widely varied materials and methods. Both are highly creative in mixing words and images. Lyn exhibits with Visual Word; Sybil illustrates her own poems and stories. Lyn’s mural painting (i.e.: Oakville’s hospital’s emergency wing) and Sybil’s embroidery (i.e.: Oakville Stitchery Guild Wall-hangings in Iroquois Ridge Community Centre) are testament to their pleasure in collaborating with fellow artists. Both artists “love old things” and subscribe to the concept of Wabi Sabi – the beauty of things deteriorating in their natural state. Like other artists, these two relish the excitement of the AHA! moment of discovery and intensity of complete, total engagement in the act of making art. With those similarities, each artist is distinctive.
Along with other members of The Broken Fence Society (founded by Dave Brooks, an environmental engineer and artist), Lyn is deeply concerned that humanity’s relentless greed severely compromises Nature’s health and places our biosphere under extreme distress. The Society’s Toronto gallery (727 Queen Street East), exhibits paintings, photographs, assemblages, and other art forms, all dedicated to inspiring people to “give serious thought to the future of this planet” and “to help nature survive”. In destroying nature, we destroy ourselves (quotations from BFS Art Calendar 2002)
Like other Society Members, who have also exhibited at Sherway Gardens Gallery, Lyn literally re-invents wheels – especially from clocks and watches. This source is a reminder of the different kinds of Time we and the universe experience – Chronos, as measured passing time, and Kairos, as immeasurable timelessness. The art of Bert Oldenshaw (Hamilton Beach-comber artist who creates rainbows of discarded cigarette lighters) also warns against our irresponsible “throw-away society”. Like him, Lyn finds “gifts from the beach”, especially stones, wood, and cast-offs at Coronation Park. In re-working human and natural discards, Lyn has combined cut-metal wings with a slender tree trunk whose frail roots curl up against the blue canvas backing. (See photo). She hangs it outside on a tree outside Soverign House and photographs it in various hours and seasons, as a piece about, by, and within nature. At Steve Hudak’s Industrial Art Space (Wyecroft Rd. in Oakville), she does her “messy” metal work – welding, spraying, acid-etching, and finding scraps. Her “tidy” work she does in her own studio.
Sybil Rampen, too, loves messy work. She, too, is always discovering and inventing. To create angels in filigree assemblages she gathers milkweed seeds, traps them between layers of plastic film, embroiders the figures, melts the plastic away, appliqués them to a fabric background, then adds paint and other found materials. This same resourceful filigree technique appears in her mythological and biblical series. She uses wild cucumber in its various layers, from lacy exterior to opaque interior. Jack-o-lanterns, wasps’ nets, fish bones, dried pig gut, yucca pods, are recycled into Sybil’s work. “I like mixing everything.” She grins. She loves making books and paper with natural fibres, such as rhubarb – peeled, cut, soaked, rolled, criss-crossed, dried – like ancient papyrus. “You can do lovely things with rhubarb”. Her sculpture, Birdwarm, involved putting pond-weeds apart and adding embroidery seeds to create tiny robins flying in the teepee. Printing fossils on mulberry paper and doing paper or fabric rubbings of wormwood are just two ways Sybil creates natural texture directly from nature.
For these two environmental artists, our natural and manufactured world is an invaluable resource. It provides materials, themes and inspiration for their re-creations. In Oakville, Lyn Estall’s work, whether environmental experiments or delightful cats, is currently in Tu Tu Tango 2075 Winston Park Drive, La Maison Design 136 Trafalgar Road and Julia’s Restaurant 312 Lakeshore Road East. She will have an exhibition with her son and granddaughter at Soverign House August 21 – September 1, 2004. Sybil Rampen exhibits with the Oakville Stitchery Guild.
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