The walls of aceartinc.’s main gallery space are usually a platform for exhibiting artists to hang their already-made art, but currently they are part of it. The space is set up as an artist’s studio; there is a workbench, books are strewn about, there is a makeshift loom mid-project, a projector shining images to be painted up on the walls, and empty beer cans and bottles are standing nearby. The work-in-progress style exhibition is called Escutcheon Athletics and the Toms & Bitches of Turtle Island, and viewer interaction with the artist is part of the experience.
“It’s a bit like the alchemist’s lab for the modern age,” says the artist, who has asked to not be named. He feels enough of his identity is in his art already, and prefers to use the name Escutcheon Athletics to identify his art practice.
“Escutcheon is the word in heraldry for shield. I equated that with the body, and since the body was so important to what I was doing, I chose the name to represent the facet of my practice.”
The artist is American, born in England, and currently resides in Winnipeg – although he plans to move to Yellowknife just two days after the exhibition ends. He received his BFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. He feels that his art-making is less about the product than it is about the lifestyle and practice lived and experienced by being an artist.
“I am less interested in the final object of these processes and more interested in watching the finesse and familiarity that the craftspeople have with their materials – for me, this is the art moment. The finished object is but the document of its making. For this reason, I’ve decided to do the making live, to bring the audience closer to the moment of truth, so to speak.
The making isn’t the only part of the process; the experiences and traditions of the artist are contributing factors as well – or, rather, they are the same as the physical process of making. The artist looks at his life with a sense of awareness—of which he says he takes inspiration from Zen Buddhism—and analysis. He has objects (such as his sweatpants or a flask full of ink) that he refers to as “Relics” and meditative traditions that he carries out while working (such as push-ups, pull-ups, blind drawing, and sweeping) that he refers to as “Disciplines.”
“I was really moved by D.T. Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism, particularly the description that many monks experience their first moment of enlightenment by sweeping the floor of the monastery,” says the artist. “I started wondering if it was possible to repurpose my art-making moments into opportunities for this kind of awareness. At the same time, descriptions of this kind of awareness were eerily similar to those I would have during long runs and other forms of exercise.”
While working on a series of drawings where the artist filled pages of typing paper with graphite, he found that he became too attached to making them a certain way. Even in mark making, one can still get hung up on what is considered aesthetically pleasing to the eye – and thus the artist became interested in blind drawing.
“By blindfolding myself I broke the recursive loop of: make a mark, step back, respond, repeat. Halfway through the first [blind drawing], I realized that as soon as I looked at the finished product, I’d open up the loop again. So I made a decision to never look at them, and ten years later, I still haven’t seen any of these.”
By taking on the brand name Escutcheon Athletics, the artist is embracing the fact that he as the art-maker is a character within his own work. The artist is embracing the idea that back-story is as important as the conceptual process—or context—and that is what his exhibition is, for lack of a better word, exhibiting.
Escutcheon Athletics will continue to work within aceartinc. until their closing party on Feb. 15. Visitors are welcome during gallery hours and the artist claims he will play catch with anyone on demand—any time, any place—he even has the baseball gloves and balls on hand in the gallery.
To learn more about Escutcheon Athletics you can visit their blog at AMoralHouseofCards.tumblr.com.
