In May, the exhibition Traces, previewed at Capilano
College's Studio Art Gallery in March, opens at the Pohjanmaan
Museum in Vaasa, Finland. It shows the work of Edmonton
artist Steven Dixon and two North
Vancouver artists, Marja-Leena Rathje and Bonnie Jordan.
A preoccupation with continuity and transformation ties the show together. This
consistency is a considerable achievement, considering they touch on such diverse
periods of time. Dixon uses the nineteenth-century technique of photogravure
to make photo-based prints documenting the inside of a disused mine, which the
earth is slowly reclaiming. Rathje etches photo-derived images of ancient inscriptions,
sculptures, and land formations, allowing the etching process to imitate the
effects of age and weather. And Jordan uses the layering capabilities of Photoshop
to explore a personal mythology which combines ancient motifs with found objects
and things she has created, all "overlapping, exposing, and concealing
information."
Rathje and Jordan talked to Arts Alive's Michael Boxall about their work and
how they approach it
Arts Alive: How did Traces come about?
Marja-Leena Rathje
I applied to have a show in Finland, which is where my family came from, in
mid-'98. The curator asked me to find a couple more Canadian artists whose work
related to mine.
Steven Dixon was substituting for Wayne
Eastcott at that time, and I saw a connection between his work and Bonnie's
and mine. Because of the length of the application process our work has moved
on, and I think the connection is even stronger now. Traces is about the time
factor, and marks or tracks, and things left behind. It's about looking to the
past, but trying to find a connection to the present as well.
It just dawned on me is that while much of the work is about humankind's marks
and history and impact on the environment, none of the work actually has a human
figure in it. And yet the presence of the human is very strong in all of it.
That's maybe the biggest connection of all.
Bonnie Jordan
It's treating things that symbolize people being there. They put you in a state
where you're willing to go back, maybe centuries back, and look at things from
that perspective. People seem very willing to do that if they are looking at
a symbol instead of an image of a person.
There is one living creature in one of your works, Bonnie. It's the image of the sheep standing behind a gate which you photographed on your first trip to Ireland, where your father's family came from. What does that do?
Jordan
It's like a stepping stone or a portal, a symbol of knowledge that I felt was
there. Trying to get to it at that time was almost as difficult as trying to
talk to the animal. It's a symbol of information that was there for me to find
if I went for it. There's so much at that site, which was the site of an old
castle. I felt that just below the grass were all sorts of artifacts that I
could discover, and from them piece together what went on there.
Rathje
That's like an experience I had when I went to Italy. The most moving thing
for me was to come across ruins, especially unexpectedly. An old Etruscan village
was being excavated, and when you walked around this place you could just feel
the energy or the aura or whatever you want to call it. That made much more
of an impact on me and my work than anything else I saw. It's that sense of
really ancient history, of realizing that people actually lived there -- maybe
even my ancestors.
Jordan
There's a presence about such places when they've been virtually untouched and
not used as a tourist attraction. It still is what it was. Many people say that
just from being there they feel a sense of what the place was and who was there.
I think that's the kind of communication all three of us are talking about and
trying to make visual.
Rathje
I used the hoodoos, those sandstone pillars from Alberta. To me they too have
a certain kind of an air about them. But they're not made by man, they're made
by nature. This piece I called Nexus, because that means "connection."
I'm trying to play off these connections between nature's works and man's. It
would be lovely to take a hoodoo and place it next to Stonehenge or somewhere
like that and compare the two.
What are the stick-like human figures you use?
Rathje
Those are from Finnish rock paintings. And the top image is the top of a shaman
drum from the Lapland area. That again is going back to my part of the world.
Actually, I think I'm a closet anthropologist!
It's hard to understand what such things meant in their original context,
to the people who first made them.
Jordan
It's interesting because symbols get picked up by so many people and they change
over time. And their meanings can change, too. I always remember a story about
a woman who was putting a pot roast in the oven while she was talking to a friend.
The friend noticed she cut the ends off, and asked why. The woman said her mother
has always done it that way, though she didn't know why. So she called her and
asked. And the mother said she just did it because her pot was too small.
Do you think that printmaking is particularly well suited to examining the
past in this way?
Rathje
I'm sure a painter could deal with the same subjects in their own way. But printmaking
has been my choice for almost twenty years. I like the kind of effects I can
get, the strong textures. And I actually echo the process of the working of
time on the materials. I etch the plates right down so they are almost like
a three-dimensional product, like the product of the erosion I am describing.
That's the way I've been working for the last eight years. It didn't start out
that way.
How did it start out?
Rathje
In the Meta-morphosis series, which I finished in 1998, I was taking imagery
of man-made works that had been weathered by nature. I started to etch the plates
in such a way that I was actually mimicking the erosion. The longer you let
the acid eat away at the metal of the plate, the more interesting the results
are. Especially with copper; it forms funny little bubbles and breaks away.
Some of this I discovered by accident when I worked it. So I said, I'll do more
of that, and more. I'd do progressive etches; I'd print the plate before I re-etched
it, then do another edition after etching it a bit more, and then another. I
was very interested in the way the acid worked into the metal, which is beautiful.
And I could see the connection again, between the process of acid and the process
of nature. It wasn't a preconceived thing for me. It just evolved.
Bonnie, how has tour process evolved?
Jordan
I've always been interested in layers and in mixed media. Making things like
the masks of my own face that I used in these prints really excited me. I used
to work with multiple-plate images, printing one on top of the other. Then I
found the computer, which made it so much easier to get where I was going. I
could show the parts of what was behind this layer, show the information that
I wanted to show through and what I didn't want to show through. I could really
manipulate the images. It's still a mystery, and the parts that you can't see
are as important as the parts that you can.
I could also scan in things like the masks and manipulate them further and combine
them with the other information -- photographs I'd taken while I was traveling,
that sort of thing. Things that had been touched or made. I'm interested in
people tracks. Going back to Irish history, on the Internet I found a letter
that had been written by one James Jordan in King's County during the 1798 rebellion.
There weren't many Jordans in the area at that time, so the chances of him being
a relative are quite strong. This man could be my fifth-generation grandfather.
To actually have his handwriting, so many generations later -- it's those kinds
of things that I find really exciting. It's like finding live images.
Some of your work uses up to thirty overlapping layers. Did it take a long time to learn to use Photoshop to that extent?
Jordan
I was very fortunate because my partner is very good at it. When I was learning he was able to help me through the rough parts so I wouldn't through it through the window in frustration. Patience with that kind of thing is not my forte. It probably took me a couple of years to get to the point where I really felt comfortable, where I could just go through my process and not run into problems that I would find hard to solve. That doesn't mean I have anywhere near a full knowledge of the programme, because it's so in depth. But I have enough knowledge that I can walk around within it and discover things and be safe enough not to get myself into trouble that I can't get out of.
Rathje
I think you're about a hundred miles ahead of me. I'm totally self-taught with
Photoshop, so I haven't learned very much. You learn what you need, then you
carry on with what you need to do. Actually I haven't used the computer for
a long time, at least not to manipulate the images. I made the plates, and I'm
printing them and changing them and printing them again. I haven't worked with
the programme for a while, so when I go back to it I'll almost have to re-learn
it.
When did you become an artist?
Rathje
I've always been one, even as a kid. One house we lived in had an attic, a storage
place. I had my little artist's loft up there, full of drawings and things I'd
cut out of papers and magazines. It was my dreaming place and my drawing place.
I'll always remember how sad I was when my father boarded it up and took away
the stairs because we needed the space. Actually, he was very much an artist
at heart, but one who wasn't able to fulfill his dream, which was to be a violinist.
But because of World War II he had to stop his violin studies. Then he got married
and had a family and emigrated, and he was too busy just trying to survive.
Some of those genes are in me, and I've been able to carry on. I've been fortunate
in being able to do that. Life is a lot easier for me than it was for my parents.
Jordan
We always had a lot of music in our house, but I was the only one who drew as
well. I did a lot of portraits. In fact I still consider everything I do to
be portraits -- a deeper kind of portrait, but still a portrait. I was in a
little town of two hundred people on the Prairies. There really was no art information,
no teaching. It was a Roman Catholic community, and oddly enough it was the
nuns who noticed that I really liked to draw and would get me to do things for
the church, Stations of the Cross, things like that. They would encourage me
that way. Actually, when I think about it, they were very supportive. If it
hadn't been for them I wouldn't have had any information at all.
Who are the artists you admire?
Rathje
I wouldn't say there was just one. There are various people who have excited
me at various times. A lot of them are women artists. I'm not a feminist. I
don't make a point of going to only women's shows or anything like that. I just
happen to have fallen in love with certain women artists' work. And when you
find out that a piece of work that you like is by a woman, it's wonderful, because
women have been so underrepresented in art history. At the Vancouver Art Gallery
a few years ago there was a woman called Aganetha Dyck, a Manitoba artist. Her
works were done in wax. I went back two or three times because it was so exciting.
The wax was put there by the bees. She would set up these constructions and
let the bees go to work and build honeycombs. She had wedding dresses, and a
series on purses. The sensibility and the different material made that a really
memorable show for me. Among printmakers, Jim Dine was an early influence. But
it's not just one person.
Jordan
When I think about it, there are female artists who stand out. But the biggest
influences have probably been male. That's just the way it happened. I liked
Robert Rauschenberg. And Marcel Duchamp -- for his irreverence.
© michael boxall 2002, originally published in arts alive, may/june 2002, vol. 7 no. 8.