Kevin Yates, Marcy Adzich, Donavan Barrow, To Catch A Fish Takes Luck, 2008

Materials: Used ice hut, various found objects

Team Kevin consists of Kevin Yates, Marcy Adzich, and Donavan Barrow. These three artists collaborated to create monuments to fishermans luck using an old ice hut and Lots of hot glue. Their plan was to construct an elaborate rickety chamber that would pay homage to ice fishing and the elements of luck that surround the sport. To Catch a Fish Takes Luckalso included architectural anomalies like a tree falling through the building, in the exploded woodstove in some graffiti painted on the outside of the dilapidated and well-used hut. The interior included a fortune-telling fish (stripped of its plaque amount and wiggling on the floor) in many found objects that reflected the culture of the ice fisherman. Teen Kevin wanted to crudely fabricate a kind of cathedral/funhouse hodgepodge that would seem to have been built expressly for a hilarious, fortune-telling fish.

Artist Bio:

Kevin Yates‘ art practice and research revolve around creating sculpture that functions like film stills: objects that hold space like a pause so the viewer can examine and inspect. Hes particularly interested in crime scenes, in the cold relationship that exists between tragedy on screen and the scrutiny of the viewer. To echo this gaze his work often takes the form of highly realistic miniatures. These miniature objects are expressed both as real physical objects but because of their inaccessible scale, they read also as an image. He has previously held positions in the Department of Art at the University of Oregon, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and the University of Victoria. Yates has exhibited throughout Canada and the United States and been the recipient of a number of grants for research and travel.

Jeannie Thib, Cache, 2008

Materials: Used ice hut, hand-cut fabrene, wood

It is strange how an artist, a good one, can turn up everywhere. It takes so little to trigger a memory. I looked through the frost patterns on our sunroom window one freezing morning last week and marveled at how the frost had appeared to embroider and thereby essentially redesign the tool shed standing just outside the window. I made a photo of it, because it looked enough like Thibs modified-ice-hut work, Cache (2008), to prompt my revisiting of that work I never saw in person and the rest of Thib’s remarkable production.

Cache was a temporary, site-specific work, commissioned for the annual Ice Follies that was truly a reaction to the site of Lake Nipissing. When the artist looked out the hut that had been appropriated for her she decided to wrap the dilapidated blue hut in a rough wooden grid.

The process involved her enclosing an already existing ice hut in a cube membrane of a frost-like, semi-translucent white tarp made of fabrene, hand-cutas was usual with Thibin a repeated ornamental pattern that continually modified and was, in turn, continually modified by changing light conditions and intensities. The art enveloped the structure and seem to retrieve the cube, bringing it back to its essential objectness. Cache also examined the connections between the simulated, the artificial, and the natural.

Overall, there was much about Cache, that was quintessential Jeannie Thib.

Artist Bio:

Jeannie Thib is originally from North Bay but lived in Toronto for many years. Her work is well-known across Canada and internationally. At the time of Ice Follies III, she had been working on site-specific installations and public art commissions along with her gallery practice. She was also interested in the 19th-century faience patterns and how they formalize and decorate across media.

Peter Nickle, Ice Cracks, 2008

Materials: PZM microphones and electrical/audio cables

Ice Cracks by Peter Nickle is a sound art installation is that operated from a small recreational vehicle parked adjacent to the lake. Inside the vehicle North Bay artist, Peter Nickle assembled the audio recording gear he needed to record, amplify in playback the sound of the ice. These groans and cracks were recorded by three microphones that Nickle planted directly into the ice for the duration of the show.

Artist Bio:

Peter Nickle is a North Bay audio artist, musician and sound engineer who owns dozens of guitars and literally tons of electrical machinery. He has also shown his photography in the Blue Sky region and currently works as Assistant to the Technical Director at the Capitol Centre in North Bay.

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:

Donald Lawrence, born in Calgary, Alberta (1963), holds 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.

Derek Knight, Duncan MacDonald & Melissa Smith, H. O. M. E. S: Expedition Model, 2008

Materials: Ice hut, fabrene tarp, and aluminum poles.

Derek Knight, Duncan MacDonald & Melissa Smith are a recently formed collective of artists from St. Catherines. For Ice Follies they created a research station in the form Im an inflatable iceberg. Their pseudo-organization, The Great Lakes Institute, officially proclaimed Lake Nipissing a great lake on February 23rd, 2008. This pseudo-scientific group create a socially engaged space we are viewers were encouraged to contribute to cultural, biological, and social experiments on a daily basis. Each participant left an object or a story or a comment in a large multi-layered filing cabinet. These momentos were later used to create statistics and research details for the group. The name of this work is H. O. M. E. S: Expedition Model. The acronym stands for: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior, and the station became a battered wind-blown example of what nature will do to scientific observers. Although it was removed in late March, the research station was meant to have an afterlife as a floating observation unit on Lake Ontario.

Artist Bio:

Duncan MacDonald is a contemporary interdisciplinary artist who works with audio, performance, video, photography, drawing, and diverse media to explore the uncanny and the commodification of the corporeal sensorium. MacDonald has taught at both The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Brock University. He has taught drawing, foundation, art history, cultural theory, interdisciplinary studio, video art, intermedia, interdisciplinary workshop, sculpture, and audio art. His artworks have been exhibited, performed, and recorded throughout Canada, the US, Europe, and South America. Collaborators on this project with MacDonald, Melissa Smith, and Derek Knight work as artists and educators in the St. Catherines region of Ontario. Derek Knight teaches at Brock University and Melissa Smith teaches at Ridley College.

Nicole Dextras, Resource, 2008

Materials: Frozen Water & Wood

Resource was a new structural installation work by environmental artist Nicole Dextras from Vancouver, made of tower ice letters that melted and morphed with Lake Nipissings elements. The lake and the water labeled as a singular business term did raise valid and present questions regarding our environment, the most pressing concern of Canadians before the economic bubble burst, and our societys history of exploiting all natural resources available. During the installation process, Dextras further pointed out issues of ownership of water from a political perspective in local, national, and international terms, particularly with the polar ice melting and our environment drastically changing.

The letters are large, seven-foot-tall, produced in plywood, and filled with water on-site (crews pumped lake water into the letters). Once the water was solidly frozen the plywood was removed. A transparent lucid quality of the sculpture seemed to visually connect the ice plateau with the sky. The sun, light, and darkness changed the visual appearance of this project in the most beautiful ways throughout each day. This piece reflected on the ephemerality of nature, of architecture, and of our natural resources, with the water from the lake used in the letters eventually returned to join the elements natural cycle.

Following Ice Follies 2008, Nicole Dextras Resource became an iconic image of the event.

Artist Bio:

Nicole Dextras received her diploma in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver. A professional artist with is a studio on Granville Island, she exhibits for work regularly in both Canada and United States. Dextras art practice revolves around environmental art, mixed media, and photography. Publications of her work included Vancouver Review Magazine, On-Site Review, and MAP Magazine in Australia. She has been the recipient of national and provincial grants and she is a founding member of the BC Book Arts Guild. Recently Dextras was invited to create her ice words for a residency on Toronto Island.

Christine Charette and Jeremy Bean, Rewind in Fast Forward, 2008

Materials: Wood, Plexiglass, found objects, and mannequin

The ice hut Christine Charertte and Jeremy Bean created for the Ice Follies 2008 Biennial consisted of a wooden representation of a crystalline mound, a pod frozen in time, and a figure in silhouette. Inside, the structure explores found mini-exhibits sealed in niches and creches myth, historical artifacts, and the wonder of discovery. The display cubes are packed with relics from different eras, remarkable objects, without rhyme or reason, a sort of collection trying to make sense of earth’s human and imagined past.

Artist Bio:

Christine Charette is a process-oriented artist who manipulates pop culture artifacts, i. e. found objects, drawings, low-tech printing materials, and fabrics to create myths and stories. Collaborator, Jeremy Bean is a builder and artist living in North Bay. He is extremely influenced by architectural accidents and makes holistic structures that reflect his awareness of global power systems. Charette lives and works in North Bay, Ontario with her two daughters, Charlotte and Cheyenne. Her art practice includes mixed media, collage, fabric art, installation, video and painting. She is presently working on her bachelor of arts degree at Nipissing University.