Bob Drouin
Title: ‘December 12, 2009 12:33p @ Point Pelee’
Digital Print
16″ x 11″
2009
]]>
Bob Drouin
Title: ‘April 5, 2009 2:57p @ Leslie Street Spit‘
Digital Print
16″ x 11″
2009
]]>
Digital Photograph. 18″ x 12″. 2010.
AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE: As 18″ x 12″ Archival Print. Signed and Dated on rear. Limited Edition. Unframed.
Including S&H and taxes: $249.00
]]>
Acrylic on Canvas. 36″ x 24″. 2008.
]]>
Acrylic on Canvas. 40″ x 36″. 2008.
]]>
Acrylic on Canvas. 14″ x 12″. 2009.
]]>
DELUGE – Front View – Words by Bob Drouin
I’ve noticed in this and the other bronzes that you have a highly developed sense of form. It is a pleasure to just let one’s eyes feel the plasticity and slide along the surfaces, and imagine fingertips and hands doing the same. There is a richness of surface texture and visual texture that might best be described as sensuous.
But one cannot not get seduced by the formalities for there is clearly a restless content animating them from within.
There is a duality to this piece just as there was in Romance – again a from within, and/or from without quality. In both cases I sense the young woman is not yet fully in the phenomenal world, but rather emerging.
From the front she appears as though attempting to awake, to emerge from her dreams (thoughts) and free herself of some torment that threatens to swallow her up. She has a look of anguish. The threat is of drowning psychologically: of being pulled back into a pool of fears teaming with ghosts and monsters. She instinctively lifts her head up and opens the way for the air of life to enter, and the whimpers of fear to vanish, for she’s trying to be strong, as solid as brass. She will not succumb – at least not tonight. With one more gasp she will awaken again, and as her hair rises off the pillow she will forget and move on, having won this night’s struggle. But there is also fragility about her – the tension around the eyes, a diminishing of the cheekbones and jaw, a tatteredness of the hair that shows the true gravity of her situation.
Have you watched a person dying? In the final hours, their look is very similar to your sculpture. The eyes close and the jaw hangs slack, and the tongue lies gently in the mouth. The hair is disordered. There is a tension around the eyes very similar to what you have shown, but within the last hour of life, that tension starts to vanish. The skin on the forehead smoothes out, and the years unwind before your eyes. While being pre-occupied with the poetry of these changes, we fail to see they mean that all body strength has extinguished; and the head, no longer supported as it has been for a lifetime by the muscles of the neck, begins a slow imperceptible descent forward, eventually cutting off the air pipe, and bringing on death.
Your sculpture girl is not at risk of dying anytime soon, but without help, I would not predict a long and full life.
From the side I see an individual emerging from the collective pool of whatever this universal deluge is all about. The deluge may be the original waters in Biblical terms, or the primordial pool, or the big bang or what ever metaphor one chooses for the Source of all being. Before our eye, she is being born into our time, taking in her first animating breath, emerging whole and fully ready to be the individual she already is and always was. She arrives in our plane strong and solid and knowing, for she is not changing in character, just in form.
I’m sensing something else in this work that is causing me to take possession of the image to the point where it is almost no longer your creation, but mine. When I used to meditate, at the bottom of my journey, at the lowest and calmest point, I found myself in complete darkness listening to the gentle splashing of a small brook running over rocks. Very peaceful. Now amplify this to the opposite extreme, and you have Niagara Falls in broad daylight – my only and greatest fear! (This is true. I have a crippling fear of the falls. To me it is the voice of God.)
The texture of the brass running down the back of the woman’s head reminds me of Niagara Falls, so I am making a strong connection to the grand scope of DELUGE and creation, and I can’t help but see that the woman is the womanifestation of God emerging from the waters of the Niagara River taking in that first breath of air on a vast scale, and I watch from the shore paralyzed by the vision and my proximity to it.
Of course, I recognize how much the two dimensional presentation has to do with this perception, but I like it. The picture from the side presents a very powerful image to me, but I think the actual sculpture might be able to accomplish the same if viewed from a similar angle. I would like to see it. Is it around here.
Misconception -Words by Bob Drouin
Unlike the statement above, the sculpture Misconceptions is not meant to produce misconceptions, but rather to begin to clear them up: to confront those who may have misconceptions about women and try to broaden their understandings. It is not meant to be cute or clever like my silly double entendre above. It is a serious work with a universal message, and a personal stake.
I’ve given Misconceptions a lot of thought, and have determined there are many ways to be misconceived by it. I would be misconceived if I thought it was only about beauty, though it is beautiful. I would be misconceived if I thought it was about sexuality, though it certainly has a seductive and sensual quality. I would be misconceived if I thought it was about nurturing, though it is about nurturing, but not in the usual mother/infant sense. I would be misconceived if I thought it was for my tactile pleasure (curves and softness, warmth and response) and found myself upon drawing too near, feeling not skin, but hard, cold brass. Finally, I would be misconceived if I thought of it strictly in formal terms, for it has a content and purpose as weighty as the material from which it is made.
Why do women’s faces and breasts still set them apart and leave them subject in these times to objectification and victimized at the hands of men (and some women too)? Misconceptions!
Tammy, you have presented some of these misconceptions so well that you actually mock the attitudes behind them. One need only examine the work to see how you make your victims step on the carpet, before pulling it out from under them!
Ready to step up and have a look guys? I’ll be your guide.
Yup.
Well, it’s not surprising that the piece has more than one side, for aren’t women duplicitous?
What? …Oh yeah, yeah.
It is not surprising it has more than one point of view, for aren’t women changeable?
You know it! Mobili, mobili.
It’s not surprising that the face is elusive, for aren’t women unpredictable?
Who knows what they’re thinking!
And it ‘s not surprising that the breasts are firm, full, and nicely textured especially where it matters most, for aren’t women supposed to have nice tits?
Oh yeah, Great big hooters! WOOOHOOO!!
And it’s not surprising that the nipples are animated and erect, for how else does a woman tell us what she really wants.
Oh yeah, and she really wants it. (sounds of heavy breathing)
But, what about the surprising number of breasts? Too many breasts around and a man gets nervous, right?
Uh?
I count seven in the photos, but I think there might be more, and that many breasts is just not funny – it’s emasculating!
(thud, thump, flop)
Guys. Is anyone still with me? Guys?
Nice piece Tammy. It is a bold, inspired, conceived and executed with great skill, and infused with a combination of serious purpose and wit that makes it impossible to ignore. It is enlightening, and insulting and I think I’ve learned a great deal about you by spending some time with it.
It’s also far more serious than my piece is, but I’m in a good mood tonight, and couldn’t help myself. I’ll edit out the goofy stuff and resend it when I’m in a more serious mood. I hope I don’t offend.
]]>
Concept: This is another interactive piece, when lifting the piece people hold it like they would a rifle. The weight of the piece insists on two hands, and often people’s legs separate and become firmly planted in the ground as their body becomes stiff.
This piece was an exploration on the idea of tools versus weapons. Our own hands function as both, and that which is capable of helping us is also capable of harming us.
The tip of this weapon is grinned and polished to a sharp point, is it a tool, or is it a weapon?
Bronze, Clay, and Wood
Romance of the Rose-Words by Bob Drouin
First impression:
A flower made of stone; something delicate, alive and desirous of change
which against its nature has been frozen in time, and weighed down upon
it’s self; it’s true content denied by the form to which it has yielded.
I remembered it as being chunky, primarily a piece of rock with just
enough of a hint of flower to it to make me think flower more than rock.
It left me with a dark feeling that even its creamy whiteness could not
overcome.
A cage of thorny vines surrounding the flower adding further oppression
to an already painfully oppressive situation; the vines and thorns there
to deny the flower any possible escape short of death – (but isn’t it
dead already?) – and creating an environment so void of hope that even
death disguised as death would still be trapped.
Dripping over this sad situation is a thick coating of sweet, sticky
looking resin. This puzzled me all weekend. Was it honey to take away the
bitterness? I tried to visualize the work without the resin. It would
lose much of its unity and would become perhaps too raw to be
approachable. I tried to see the resin as something more than just a
formal element there to unify the work and pretty it up, but short of
connecting it to something Linda Blair might have spewed out in the
Exorcist, I could not reconcile it to the rest of my feelings for the
work. Having verged on insult, let me go on to say I think the work is
stunningly beautiful, and painfully painful, sensitive, profound and
charged. I thought, if it were my work, I would not have included the
resin, but I see a great sensitivity to the use of the visual materials
in your works and expression, and I think perhaps the resin is a form I
am just not understanding. Therefore, any fault I find with the resin I
should be prepared to take responsibility for.
Next first impression:
The flower is far more delicate and fragile and alive and changing than I
had remembered! It is not rock-like at all. In fact it denies rock. As
for alive and changing, before my fresh eyes it evolved from a stone
flower, to a flower; then to an oyster mushroom coated in garlic and
olive oil, warmed and waiting to be devoured; and finally it evolved into
the sensuous fold upon fold of a woman’s labia, drenched in – well, not
in garlic and olive oil!
That menacing, thorny wrapper now clearly is there to keep the viewer
out. Eyes only, and only if the lights are on. Such a willful barrier
cannot be penetrated without suffering pain. But, that sticky, gooey,
honey-like resin drenching and coating everything draws us in as bees to
a flower. This work is the kind of strong statement men fear and rage at,
(note my first interpretation). Thank goodness for the artistic soul.
Tammy, this is a stunning work. The use of materials is strong and
sensitive. The content is multi leveled – seductive, emotive, ponderous.
With refection, I can read further narratives into the work, but they all
become variations on a theme already presented