By Tyler Marr

Joe Fafard showcases new mixed-media exhibit at Mann Art Gallery

Jun 5, 2018 | 10:00 AM

In his new exhibit, Retailles, Joe Fafard explores the worlds of laser-cutting and creative rendering using the byproducts of previous works. 

French for “scraps” or “that which is cut away,” Retailles features a collection of laser-cut and welded metal sculptures accompanied by embossed and woodcut prints. Each piece has negative spaces removed and replaced with small cut-outs of other images. Fafard said the exhibit, which is on display until August 25 at the Mann Art Gallery, was inspired in part by his mother. 

“My mother did all of our sewing and clothes. After she cut the pattern, she had retailles and she would use them to make carpets or rugs,” he said. “I saved up over the years, maybe ten years time, all of these pieces and I always thought I would have a show with them.”

Hidden the large metal sculptures are various images of churches, steeples, cowboys, or smaller versions of the animals themselves. Most are fabricated from large sheets of metal, while others are derived from Styrofoam buried in sand. Hot metal was poured down a tube to the Styrofoam, which eats up the foam and takes its place. Fafard then dug it out and was left with a bronze sculpture. Some of the older, smaller pieces are crafted from wooden moulds, where the wood is burned and removed to erect the piece.

“Whenever I have an idea I explode it into many other ideas, because one leads to another and another,” Fafard told paNOW. “Creativity is the result of curiously. Curiosity is really the mother of creativity. You wouldn’t have any creativity if you didn’t have curiosity, because you would just sit there like a mole.”

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While he does not deliberately aim to have a Saskatchewan influence weave throughout his work, Fafard said it came naturally as his art is based on what he knows best. Living in the province and growing up on a farm surrounded by animals greatly influenced his designs, he said, and farm animals have become a constant theme in his career.

“This is what feeds my imagination, the images we have around here and how we behave,” he said. “I think that is normal that art would resemble the area it comes from.”

When asked what he hopes to invoke in those who attend the exhibit, Fafard said that is up to the individual viewer. He said he strives to get visitors to interpret the work in their own lights based on their own experiences. He called art an “interaction between individuals” rather than a lecture.

“A preacher, that I don’t want to be,” he said. “I would rather be a participant in conversations where you say something and it triggers something in their mind and they respond from their experience.”

Retailles is on display at the Mann Art Gallery until Aug. 25.

–With files from Taylor MacPherson

tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr