Rare Spirits : Jerry Grey
a personal tribute to vintage elders
Ottawa Art Gallery
Alternating black and white and colour, Jerry Grey's thirty large pastel drawings are nothing less than tour de force when it comes to execution. The ease with which pastel lines and colour smudge and shift before fixing is notorious. To have drawn such large-scale portraits, showing peoples' faces in extreme close-up must have taken hours of careful work (Each is about 24" x 30".). The attention paid to each strand of hair, for instance, drawn largely using fine unsmudged lines, is remarkable.
Grey adds another layer to the narratives woven in her lines by using recordings of each sitter telling an anecdote, sometimes quite personal or sometimes describing the long road to what later became an extraordinary achievement. In addition to the knowledge that some sitters have died since Grey began the project, the inclusion of sound creates another kind of intimacy with the sitter. Headphones on, listening to a story from the person in the portrait, a strange illusion takes shape. It's as if one might be dropping in on a conversation, listening in on the fragment of a longer story.
Her distinguished sitters include: Haida broadcaster and sculptor Bill Reid, teacher and arts lover Trudi Le Caine, the former CEO of the SNC Group, engineer Camille Dagenais, musician and teacher Jean Coulthard, and curator, critic and writer Doris Shadbolt. (At one end of the gallery, the staff (or Grey?) has thoughtfully provided transcripts of the anecdotes as well.)
Using the device of two portraits of each sitter is an intriguing one, recalling as it did for me, stereoscopic photography. Popular in the 19th century, in that medium, two small almost identical photographs were presented side by side, with the only difference being a slight shift in point of view (The images were taken by cameras with twin lenses.). Looking through the viewer (or stereograph) required to see these images literally meant a third composite image was seen by the viewer, one with greater depth and clarity, that gave the illusion of looking out at the scene itself - not a photographic reproduction. It was an image thought to be closer to reality through the virtue of this optical illusion. The irony is that this third image never existed in real time and space but only in the mind and imagination of the viewer.
Similarly looking at Grey's portraits of older, mostly well-known accomplished Canadians, there's a sense that there's another truth concealed somewhere, hidden perhaps between the two. But unlike viewing stereoscopic photographs, there is no device required for viewing and yet the third image also is constructed in the mind of the viewer.
The black and white portraits seem to be much more satisfying, as another visitor to the gallery suggested to me. Even though Grey uses some blue turquoise and green in their shadows, the hues of the full-colour images tend to be too great a distraction when viewed alone. Areas of them occasionally wander off towards the garish spots on the colour wheel and do little for the faces of Grey's esteemed sitters.
The two portraits of Fulgence Charpentier, make a tantalizing example. First, there's the extraordinary story of Mr. Charpentier. A mere glimpse of what we are told is the following fact: a former journalist for Le Droit, he stopped writing his column, something he began after his retirement, only at the age of 101! In the colour portrait, he appears warm with a smile partially formed across his features, whereas in the black and white portrait it's as if he's confronted with some horrific or shocking sight.
The faces Grey draws from life are like maps to the sitter's past and where they were at the time Grey drew them, the recorded anecdotes adding another facet to the sitter's story and character. Grey uses her sitters' age and venerability to splash cold water into the face of our youth obsessed goal-driven culture, underscoring the value of a live well lived—life experienced.
A Classic (and affordable) Collectable....
There still may be time to pick up the Nazi Art Gallery Shocker!!!! Frank Exclusive! edition of Frank Magazine (January 24, 2001). It's a four-page spoof of the latest installment of the Keystone cops saga unraveling at the National Gallery (NG). Frank's shortcomings aside, the spoof of the NG's new web site seeking to find the original owners of art possibly stolen by the Nazis and later picked up by the NG truly is quite inspired. Even the paintings get a makeover!
I humbly suggest we all need a little irreverence in our lives (especially in Ottawa). If the folk at Frank can light a few fires under the bottom of a certain NG personage or personages, dogging us weary NG-bill footing working stiffs who care about art, and make us laugh, I for one raise a pint to them!
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2001
Grey adds another layer to the narratives woven in her lines by using recordings of each sitter telling an anecdote, sometimes quite personal or sometimes describing the long road to what later became an extraordinary achievement. In addition to the knowledge that some sitters have died since Grey began the project, the inclusion of sound creates another kind of intimacy with the sitter. Headphones on, listening to a story from the person in the portrait, a strange illusion takes shape. It's as if one might be dropping in on a conversation, listening in on the fragment of a longer story.
Her distinguished sitters include: Haida broadcaster and sculptor Bill Reid, teacher and arts lover Trudi Le Caine, the former CEO of the SNC Group, engineer Camille Dagenais, musician and teacher Jean Coulthard, and curator, critic and writer Doris Shadbolt. (At one end of the gallery, the staff (or Grey?) has thoughtfully provided transcripts of the anecdotes as well.)
Using the device of two portraits of each sitter is an intriguing one, recalling as it did for me, stereoscopic photography. Popular in the 19th century, in that medium, two small almost identical photographs were presented side by side, with the only difference being a slight shift in point of view (The images were taken by cameras with twin lenses.). Looking through the viewer (or stereograph) required to see these images literally meant a third composite image was seen by the viewer, one with greater depth and clarity, that gave the illusion of looking out at the scene itself - not a photographic reproduction. It was an image thought to be closer to reality through the virtue of this optical illusion. The irony is that this third image never existed in real time and space but only in the mind and imagination of the viewer.
Similarly looking at Grey's portraits of older, mostly well-known accomplished Canadians, there's a sense that there's another truth concealed somewhere, hidden perhaps between the two. But unlike viewing stereoscopic photographs, there is no device required for viewing and yet the third image also is constructed in the mind of the viewer.
The black and white portraits seem to be much more satisfying, as another visitor to the gallery suggested to me. Even though Grey uses some blue turquoise and green in their shadows, the hues of the full-colour images tend to be too great a distraction when viewed alone. Areas of them occasionally wander off towards the garish spots on the colour wheel and do little for the faces of Grey's esteemed sitters.
The two portraits of Fulgence Charpentier, make a tantalizing example. First, there's the extraordinary story of Mr. Charpentier. A mere glimpse of what we are told is the following fact: a former journalist for Le Droit, he stopped writing his column, something he began after his retirement, only at the age of 101! In the colour portrait, he appears warm with a smile partially formed across his features, whereas in the black and white portrait it's as if he's confronted with some horrific or shocking sight.
The faces Grey draws from life are like maps to the sitter's past and where they were at the time Grey drew them, the recorded anecdotes adding another facet to the sitter's story and character. Grey uses her sitters' age and venerability to splash cold water into the face of our youth obsessed goal-driven culture, underscoring the value of a live well lived—life experienced.
A Classic (and affordable) Collectable....
There still may be time to pick up the Nazi Art Gallery Shocker!!!! Frank Exclusive! edition of Frank Magazine (January 24, 2001). It's a four-page spoof of the latest installment of the Keystone cops saga unraveling at the National Gallery (NG). Frank's shortcomings aside, the spoof of the NG's new web site seeking to find the original owners of art possibly stolen by the Nazis and later picked up by the NG truly is quite inspired. Even the paintings get a makeover!
I humbly suggest we all need a little irreverence in our lives (especially in Ottawa). If the folk at Frank can light a few fires under the bottom of a certain NG personage or personages, dogging us weary NG-bill footing working stiffs who care about art, and make us laugh, I for one raise a pint to them!
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2001