Retro-active: Two Decades of Sculpture by Lou Lynn

Retro-active: Two Decades of Sculpture by Lou Lynn

Grand Forks Art Gallery, June 13 – August 15, 2009

By Simone Keiran

Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region Magazine, Summer 2009. Ed., Shelley Ackerman

Lou Lynn, Sculptor (Photo by Janet Dwyer)

Hand-tools have always fascinated artist, Lou Lynn, particularly the union between a succinct form, such as the semi-circular sweep of a prehistoric ulu whose handle runs parallel to its blade, to a specific practical function: a knife which was not used to stab but—depending on how the handle was held—to slice or scrape with a rocking stroke of the wrist. Her metal and glass sculptures suggest implements such as the ulu, auger, chisel, trowels, rasps and other forms.

“I’m not actually inspired by tools,” she emphasizes. “The form is more important, how shape determines how tools came to be used.”

Through her work, a key moment of suspense emerges. It lies between discovery of the object and the ‘eureka!’ of when its practical purpose is realized. For the person who beholds this strange object, that moment holds creative possibility and spans the chasm between desire or need and conception.

So Lynn’s sculptures are designed not to be functional. Or rather, their function is not directed towards specific material results. Edges which evoke digging or gouging are left blunt; corkscrews twist off peculiar angles; skewers end in bulbous nobs, not points. Someone might scheme up some useful purpose for them—“I could use that to do such-and-such”—but it is the process of imagining that use which the sculpture conveys, not the actual implementation of it. Lynn’s work aligns to a conceptual framework.

The evolution of an implement’s design also fascinates her. Not just how the tool’s conceived, but its refinement by each successive generation of makers. This would be the stage where advancements in technology and materials allow for innovation, and utility is streamlined as concessions to comfort are accommodated in the object’s shape, weight and texture. The craftsperson stamps the piece with individuality, marking it distinctly as his or her work, until wholly anachronistic elements appear as embellishments. An engraved line which once signified a ferrule—the place where metal was crimped to wood or antler—became a decorative, textured groove instead, or a handle acquired an unexpected fillip that served no other purpose than to be pleasant to hold and behold. In this manner, the creative cycle is complete, transforming from functionalism into the celebration of form, from material into immaterial, from the mundane into the inspired. Lynn’s pieces play on these elements, accentuating their individuality while they reiterate the ubiquity of tools.

Retro-active, a selection of works which span Lynn’s career over the past two decades, reveals a similar process of artistic technological and material advancement. Her studio is based in Winlaw, a village in the Slocan Valley region of British Columbia, north of Castlegar. She has lived in the West Kootenays since the 1970s and was drawn by the interest and openness towards the arts which flourished in the region. Her exhibitions have taken her as far afield as China and Scotland. She has won international acclaim and numerous awards.

“My earliest pieces in Retro-active, those from the 1990s, were made out of sand-cast aluminum—a process called the lost-styrofoam method—and industrial cut glass. The designs were pre-formed in styrofoam and then buried in sand. The molten aluminum was poured in, the styrofoam burned away, and once the piece cooled, it was burnished on some surfaces, left rough on others, then fitted with glass components. I took that series as far as I could until the material limitations forced me to explore new methods. Limitations like how the glass was always flat.”

Although the thickness of industrial-cut glass pulls it away from a strictly 2-dimensional sensibility, complex 3-dimensional shapes such as cylinders had to be created by stacking pre-cut layers and gluing them together with glass epoxy. “Also, the lost styrofoam method releases highly toxic fumes. I wanted to get away from that.”

Lynn enrolled in the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle, Washington, where she expanded her control through the process of kiln-casting glass through the lost wax method. Her shapes acquired more sophistication.

In 2006, she shifted from sand-cast aluminum to lost wax bronze, the next evolution of her work, one which brought out a quality which she calls, “the marrying of disparate elements.” The brown warmth of bronze juxtaposes against pale green coolness of glass (colouring agents are not added.) The transparency of glass, or when etched, the translucency of that medium, combines with the opacity of metal. Fragility balances against the sturdiness. Smooth and rough textures, straight edges and curves interplay.

The pieces which Lynn crafted for her 2007 touring exhibition, Objects and Implements, were exceptionally large—not at the massive scale of Claus Oldenburg’s garden trowels perhaps, but enough that the sense of an onlooker’s physical scale was reduced. This magnified details within in the work, drawing the viewer in for closer inspection and introspection.

The thirty-eight components of Tools as Artifacts, the new piece created for Lynn’s Retro-active tour have returned to the size one might find in an ordinary toolbox or utility drawer. They can be held in the hand. When displayed at eye level along the wall of a gallery, however, they extend 34 feet in length. Instead of size, this sculpture reduces human scale by sheer numbers. Instead of drawing the spectator in—although each individual piece holds enough detail to absorb interest—Tools as Artifacts invites the spectator to step back and contemplate the breadth of diversity in design.

The parade of objects in Tools as Artifacts also reminds us of encroaching obsolescence. Hand-tools are being replaced by ever more complicated machinery and robotics, or as Retro-active curator, Helen Sebelius writes, “Displayed as artifacts, the tools, with their peculiar and whimsical qualities, offered inspiration in her later work where she questions the dubious function of hand tools in a time when hand-work and longevity fall second to machine-made and throw-away.”

Their simplicity provides a haven from humanity’s uneasy symbiosis with technology, where it seems we cannot function without it. Where tools were once extensions of our physical appendages, simple and strong, now they have become extensions of our consciousness, subtle and all-pervasive. Under Lynn’s skilled artistry, we see that is, in fact, what they have always been.

Retro-active will show at the Grand Forks Art Gallery from June 13 – August 15, 2009, after which it will proceed to the Yukon Arts Centre Public Art Gallery from September 10 – October 25, 2009. In the fall of 2009, Lou Lynn will also unveil a new work at the International Canadian Pavilion in Korea, then proceed to Australia, where an exhibition and profile of her career will be featured in Intral Arts magazine.

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