Ice Follies 2006

Lori Grace Johnson, Meander, 2006

Materials: Plywood, wood, ice, wire, fabric

For Ice Follies 2006,  Lori Grace Johnson created Meander a work that fused remnants from our Post-industrial civilization with the natural elements: ice and water. Johnson then housed this frozen remnant in a roughly pyramid-shaped plywood sculpture. From a distance, this structure echoed a distant cupola on the Pro-Cathedral. The reference seemed to be that there was this stone tower after our civilization had fused once again.

While all the 2004 structures were moved onto the site as completed things, in 2006 Lori Grace Johnson built Meander from scratch out on the lake, hauling out (by hand) large wooden prefab panels that she erected into a tall, four-sided pyramidal lean—to both the elements and the work’s visitors in the centre of which she placed a long, vertical column of ice with a passing resemblance to a core sample drilled from the frozen lake surface. Echoing the labors (and possible intentions) of, say, the builders of a structure like Stonehenge, who hauled its massive stones across great distances to the Salisbury Plain for purposes as yer still undivided, Johnson’s work cleaved closer to the sacred end of the spectrum rather than the profane.

Artist Bio:

Lori Grace Johnson is a sculptor and visual artist based in North Bay, where she has been represented by Joan Ferneyhough Gallery for seven years. While maintaining a studio practice, Lori has studied Art History & Culture at McGill University in Montreal, PQ graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1992. In 2001, she received the Emerging Visual Artist Award from the Ontario Arts Council.

Past involvements include “The Autoshow”, a group exhibition along with Dermot Wilson and David Carlin, scheduled for the Whitby’s Station Gallery in 2008, and Georgian College in 2009. In 2007 the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Virtual Museum of Canada presented Lori’s work in “A Retrospective of Artists in North Bay and Surrounding Areas”.

Lori’s art originates in uncalculated impressions of life encounters, dream content, and unbidden image. She operates from the belief that healthy culture is generated by elements of the creative force. The importance of bringing meaning to the third dimension is obtained by deeper connotations from the fifth. And through the tandem operation of technical skill and intellect, Lori’s process of ideation in the discovery and presentation of sculptural form is achieved.