Sunday, July 18, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Panoramic Trains
The Ocean Limited (East Bound) at Sackville, New Brunswick, August 13, 1998, was made in 1999 and was the first work in the Panoramic Train series. It was followed in 2001 by Aulac, New Brunswick, May 24, 1998. The set was completed in 2002 with Montreal Commuter (train) de banlieu.
What sparked my interest in making panoramic train images was the realization that I had never seen a picture of a whole train before. The first picture in the series came about when Penny and I were artists in residence at Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick in the summer of 1998. I was making large pictures of microwave relay towers at the time, but as Sackville is on the CN main line, I heard train whistles blowing day and night, sometimes in my dreams. I suppose this put the idea of making a train picture in my mind. With this object I went to the Sackville train station on August 13, 1998 and photographed VIA’s Ocean Limited passenger train as it appeared that day. I had just a few minutes to photograph every car before the train departed.
I thought at the time I would make a photo collage, but back in Ottawa, I figured out a method using plywood sections and different found materials including soup cans, linoleum, aluminum and spray paint to make a painted construction of the Ocean Limited as I saw it on August 13, 1998.
About a year later I decided I’d should to do a picture of a freight train as a partner for the passenger train. As it’s pretty well impossible to photograph a moving freight train, I researched in a Canadian railway magazine and found a picture of a crew change on an east bound CN Freight (148) outside Moncton, New Brunswick on May, 24th 1998.
Using this picture which shows locomotives 5637 and 5740 as the beginning of my train, I documented all the other freight car names and numbers on two trips back and forth between Ottawa and Halifax on the Ocean Limited in 2000.
The freight train is both a composite and real document of CN freight 148, as it appeared on May, 24th 1998. I situated or “posed” the train on the long marsh at Aulac, New Brunswick, which is just outside Sackville, New Brunswick. People who know the area will recognize the distinctive, “Stirling’s Buy Apples” sign in the first panel of the piece.
The third panoramic train work, Montreal Commuter (train) de banlieu, was constructed in 2002 particularly for my Railway Lands exhibition at the Canadian Embassy Art Gallery in Tokyo. The construction doesn’t represent an actual train consist, but a possible and very likely one. I photographed the locomotive and car numbers in the Alstom, Point Saint Charles Yard on different train trips in 2000 and 2001.
The Ocean Limited (East Bound) at Sackville, New Brunswick, August 13, 1998, is in the collection of the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville. The piece has been shown at the Owens, the Confederation Arts Centre in Charlottetown, PEI, and Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax. Aulac, New Brunswick, May 24, 1998, has been show at the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge and the Confederation Arts Centre. Montreal Commuter (train) de banlieu,
was shown at the Canadian Embassy Art Gallery in Tokyo.
What sparked my interest in making panoramic train images was the realization that I had never seen a picture of a whole train before. The first picture in the series came about when Penny and I were artists in residence at Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick in the summer of 1998. I was making large pictures of microwave relay towers at the time, but as Sackville is on the CN main line, I heard train whistles blowing day and night, sometimes in my dreams. I suppose this put the idea of making a train picture in my mind. With this object I went to the Sackville train station on August 13, 1998 and photographed VIA’s Ocean Limited passenger train as it appeared that day. I had just a few minutes to photograph every car before the train departed.
I thought at the time I would make a photo collage, but back in Ottawa, I figured out a method using plywood sections and different found materials including soup cans, linoleum, aluminum and spray paint to make a painted construction of the Ocean Limited as I saw it on August 13, 1998.
About a year later I decided I’d should to do a picture of a freight train as a partner for the passenger train. As it’s pretty well impossible to photograph a moving freight train, I researched in a Canadian railway magazine and found a picture of a crew change on an east bound CN Freight (148) outside Moncton, New Brunswick on May, 24th 1998.
Using this picture which shows locomotives 5637 and 5740 as the beginning of my train, I documented all the other freight car names and numbers on two trips back and forth between Ottawa and Halifax on the Ocean Limited in 2000.
The freight train is both a composite and real document of CN freight 148, as it appeared on May, 24th 1998. I situated or “posed” the train on the long marsh at Aulac, New Brunswick, which is just outside Sackville, New Brunswick. People who know the area will recognize the distinctive, “Stirling’s Buy Apples” sign in the first panel of the piece.
The third panoramic train work, Montreal Commuter (train) de banlieu, was constructed in 2002 particularly for my Railway Lands exhibition at the Canadian Embassy Art Gallery in Tokyo. The construction doesn’t represent an actual train consist, but a possible and very likely one. I photographed the locomotive and car numbers in the Alstom, Point Saint Charles Yard on different train trips in 2000 and 2001.
The Ocean Limited (East Bound) at Sackville, New Brunswick, August 13, 1998, is in the collection of the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville. The piece has been shown at the Owens, the Confederation Arts Centre in Charlottetown, PEI, and Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax. Aulac, New Brunswick, May 24, 1998, has been show at the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge and the Confederation Arts Centre. Montreal Commuter (train) de banlieu,
was shown at the Canadian Embassy Art Gallery in Tokyo.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
On Trains and Going
On Trains and Going was the name of my first Railway Lands show in 1990 at the Owens Art Gallery of Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Though the title at first suggests the state of being aboard a train and traveling, I meant the phrase metaphorically to suggest how the train as a temporal marker, embodied the action of going.
As a boy of eleven or twelve I would often pass the hot afternoons and long evenings of summer under the Mumford Road bridge in Halifax smoking good sized cigarette buts scrounged from the Eatons parking lot, watching trains go by. I used to wonder where the people in the sleek black and grey coaches were going. I tried to look in the windows for faces, but never saw any, just polished glass reflecting back the horizon and sky.
The train was a profoundly mysterious object. All I knew about it was its destination, Montreal. “That train is going to Montreal”, I though to my self. I could still see the train in my imagination with its zebra stripe locomotive charging ahead as it cleared Bayers Road Bridge in the hazy distance and turned out of sight at Rockingham, on its way around the Bedford Basin. What lay beyond the Basin, I had no idea and my imagination failed me, just endless, epic miles to Montreal. Some day I knew that I would take that train and all would become clear, but I knew instinctively that once I went and was going, that I would be an adult and could never go under the bridge again to smoke cigarettes and wait for trains.
As a boy of eleven or twelve I would often pass the hot afternoons and long evenings of summer under the Mumford Road bridge in Halifax smoking good sized cigarette buts scrounged from the Eatons parking lot, watching trains go by. I used to wonder where the people in the sleek black and grey coaches were going. I tried to look in the windows for faces, but never saw any, just polished glass reflecting back the horizon and sky.
The train was a profoundly mysterious object. All I knew about it was its destination, Montreal. “That train is going to Montreal”, I though to my self. I could still see the train in my imagination with its zebra stripe locomotive charging ahead as it cleared Bayers Road Bridge in the hazy distance and turned out of sight at Rockingham, on its way around the Bedford Basin. What lay beyond the Basin, I had no idea and my imagination failed me, just endless, epic miles to Montreal. Some day I knew that I would take that train and all would become clear, but I knew instinctively that once I went and was going, that I would be an adult and could never go under the bridge again to smoke cigarettes and wait for trains.
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