Ice Follies 2008

Donald Lawrence, One Eye Folly, 2008

Materials: Used boat, metal tiles, wood

The One Eye Folly by Donald Lawrence is a camera obscura that was constructed on top of a small rowboat. The work is configured as a piece of microarchitecture that is a hybrid form between a boat and a shed; the premise of ice follies (created by Dermot Wilson) being to create something inspired by the notion of an ice-fishing hut. The boats hull is overladen with a structure that is clad inside and out with salvaged stamp tin ceiling tiles. On the outside, a couple of hatch-like windows are evident, together with an old shed door as a means of entering the boat/shed. A set of oars protrudes from inside of the structure, and a small tin hood is added onto the front. Shaded by the hood is a small aperture, or opening, which allows light into the structure, thereby casting an image inside of the view that is in front of the boat/shed and turning the boat into a camera obscura. During Victorian times camera obscuras (from the Latin for dark room) in the form of a small pavilion were typical at seaside resorts; inside, visitors would enter into these structures to take in a view of the surrounding beach and town. For Ice Follies, the camera obscuras view was across the frozen surface of Lake Nipissing, towards the city of North Bay any other artists works. For future voyages, the hatch set into the bottom of the boat (to allow for ice fishing) Will be wedged tightly shut in the boat/shed maybe rowed about in a manner somewhat more akin to the boats original purpose.

Artist Bio:

Born in Calgary, Alberta (1963) Donald Lawrence has a BFA from the University of Victoria (1986) and an MFA from York University (1988). He lives in Kamloops where he teaches in the Visual Arts Program at Thompson Rivers University. Through such bodies of artwork asThe Beach(1985), Romantic Commodities(1993), The Sled(1995), The Underwater Pinhole Photography Project(1997), andTorhamvan/Ferryland(2005), Lawrence uses combinations of photography, sculpture, drawing, and installation to relate stories of travel, exploration and mechanical invention to a broader interest in the meeting place of urban and wilderness culture and to his specific interest in sea kayaking. This is an interest that has taken him to Alaska, Maine, and twice to Scotlands Outer Hebrides with his folding Klepper kayak. Lawrences recent projects include participation in Witness Marks: the Exotic Close to Home, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; CAMP(sites)at Banffs Walter Phillips Gallery, Proximities: Artists Statements and Their Worksat the Kamloops Art Gallery, and Image and Apparatus at Museum London.