If you’re a visual artist, any day is a good day to open a gallery show but printmaker Liz Menard, left, was especially blessed yesterday as winter sunlight flooded into Scarborough’s bucolic Cedar Ridge Creative Centre adding a little extra sparkle to the reception. Menard’s etchings — together with Camie Geary-Martin’s bronze sculptures — will be on display in the gallery through January 28; meanwhile the printmaker also has a show up at Open Studio (401 Richmond) until February 12.
Menard’s Cedar Ridge exhibition is entirely concerned with nature: landscapes, flowers, branches and birds; many of the etchings are tinted after printing with ink washes and/or watercolours.
“I’m following the traditions of Rembrandt and Goya,” says the effervescent Menard, “this is hardcore, there’s nothing computer generated, there’s no photo etching here, it’s all hand drawn.
Menard was in high spirits as she guided me through her show, explaining the process whereby an image is scratched into a copper plate through a layer of resist material and then set with an acid bath.
“I get my copper from Danforth Roofing,” elaborates the artist. “I think I’m their only customer who walks in and gets really excited when I see a four by eight sheet of copper.”
Menard prints her smaller works at home in Agincourt and produces her larger pieces downtown at Open Studio.
Cormorants, specifically the ones that call the Leslie Spit home, are featured in both of the artist’s current shows.
“The work is concerned with nature run amok,” she says. “Is it the city that’s the problem? Is it nature? It’s a fine balance and I don’t think there are any easy answers.
“The irony – I love irony – is that the Leslie Spit started as a dump, then it became an urban paradise and now nature is trashing it. Thirty thousand birds have claimed the Spit and they’ve killed the trees with tons of excrement. But I still find it hauntingly beautiful.”
There was nothing compromised about the beautiful Cedar Ridge setting yesterday (below); if you’ve never toured the gallery and studio it makes a terrific family outing on a weekend afternoon.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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A “moment” well deserved.