Avery Ascher

CREATING WORKS WITH BOTH AESTHETIC AND TECHNICAL INTEGRITY THAT SPEAK DIRECTLY AND MEANINGFULLY TO OTHERS IS AN ONGOING GOAL.

Tension always exists between the concepts I want to express and my technical capability to execute them.

The greatest joys come in those moments in working on a project where intent and execution blend seamlessly, intuitively.

A Word to the Writer/Artist

Inhabit the inner life,
draw in its scent, draw up from its wells,
descend into each crevice.
Attend, with humility of the novice
to what spruce and birches tell.
Sink into moss, your tread wide.

Take refuge in the inner life,
let time and heart and distance
dull the shards of argument;
run your finger along the belly of content.
Separate form from substance.
Gather strength: prepare to testify.

Share out your inner life,
let secrets rise like worms after rain.
Carry the spark from one camp to the next,
teach from the sacred text;
reveal beauty, and the legacy of stain.
Donate remembrance, sharp as a knife.

Avery Ascher

tHREE HARES / JANUARY 2018

The Three Hares is an ancient motif that has crossed many nations through history. The earliest known examples appear to be caves or grottoes in western China, but the motif may originated further west. Once in China, it appears the motif travelled the Silk Road west once again, accruing differing meanings from the peoples in each place where it arrived.
The first of the three images below shows my original drawing. The second shows initial work done to carve the image into a plate of artist-grade linoleum, and before the plate was inked. The third shows a print pulled from the inked plate.

2017 northern juried art show
Ammonite series - 2nd place drawing & printmaking

Ammonites are an extinct group of marine mollusc animals. They are more closely related to today's octopuses, squid and cuttlefish than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species. I picked up a fossilized ammonite from Madagascar at a store in Toronto a few years ago and remain fascinated by the beauty of their construction. This series shows the transition from the natural spiral geometry underlying the ammonite form through to completed fossil. This artwork is 40"W x 11"H, with individual images 6 3/4" x 6 3/4".

This is the first image in the series, showing the initial geometry for constructing the logarithmic spiral form. I learned how to do this from a YouTube tutorial. The logarithmic spiral is widely found in nature (other examples include the seed patterns of a sunflower, and the horns of an antelope). The logarithmic spiral's many unique properties -- including that it can be stretched, rotated or inverted and always stay the same -- have inspired mathematicians, artists, philosophers and others through the ages.

NORTHERN EMERGING ARTISTS MENTORSHIP
october 2016 through april 2017

Together with 8 other northern Manitoba artists, I participated in a mentorship guided by Manitoba artist Diana Thorneycroft. I focused on drawing and printmaking, and also learned other new and exciting techniques in different media.

Smoke painting 1.
Image size 22 3/4"W x 16 3/4" H.
Smoke, wax, charcoal, India ink, coffee.

Moon on water I.
Image size 5"W x 9 1/2"H.
Mezzotint intaglio print.

Smoke painting 2.
Image size 22 3/4" W x
16 3/4"W.
Smoke, wax, charcoal, India ink.

Doorway I.
Image size 5"W x 9 1/2"H.
Mezzotint intaglio print.

Waves 1.
Image size 9 7/8" W x
7 7/8" H.
Drypoint intaglio print. Drypoint creates characteristically soft, velvety lines.

Cat scan x 9.
Image size 5 7/8"W x 8 1/8" H.
Linoleum relief print.

This was an interesting exercise we did at the January session of the mentorship. Each of us chose a personally meaningful motif and repeated in a variety of sizes, ways and media on kraft paper. This is the symbol for north used on compasses and maps. I used black acrylic paint, black charcoal, India ink, white chalk, white gesso, and red and yellow pastel.

'RE-BECOMING II'
NORTHERN JURIED ART SHOW 2016

Re-Becoming II
70" H x 21" W

This fabric work was awarded first prize in the Fibre Art category at the 2016 Northern Juried Art Show in The Pas. It incorporates traditional felted wool duffel fabrics and felt.

The above photo was taken at the show venue, a gymnasium where the lighting does not show the colours as true.

True colour tones can be seen in the 3 detail images, and in the gallery photo ( courtesy Wayne Arthur Gallery), to the right.

$600 available at Wayne Arthur Gallery, Winnipeg

'transformation'

In November 2015 I held a solo show at the Northern Visual Arts Centre (NorVA) in Flin Flon, Manitoba. Artworks and poetry in this show explored various contexts and interpretations of ‘transformation’ … natural agents of change such as spiders weaving their webs, instinctual activity that transforms the world every minute of every day… humans as agents of change, for example in transfiguring the world’s Arctic regions through global warming caused by burning fossil fuels … and the poignant intersections of humanity with the natural world, instants in time with the power to validate our intuition and offer us transcendence.

Also explored are concepts of fluidity and transition between different states and planes of existence, and of moving out of and beyond the physical realm. The Japanese aesthetic known as ‘wabi-sabi’ informs much of my work. Wabi-sabi is “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete”, and where “things are either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness” (quotes from Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, by Leonard Koren). Overall, the works invite reflection on the processes of creating art and poetry, of giving ideas physical or temporal form through various media and means of expression – some ephemeral and others more substantive. In this larger sense, the show itself embodies ‘transformation.’ Below are some images of the works in the show.

Birch Dryad Elder - birch bark

Sky Dress - textile

Stasis - driftwood

Sun and Moon - driftwood

Arctic Canary - textile

This piece incorporates traditional felt duffle fabrics used in making parkas, and also trims traditionally used around the cuffs and bottoms of parkas. This work expresses the immense changes to the arctic environment happening due to changing climate, including melting of multi-season sea ice on a scale in recent decades never seen before. Intact ice and snow, and the traditional lifestyles that has supported, breaks up and gives way through the piece to open water, represented by the sheer fabric.

'Arctic Canary' (also known as 'All aboard CCGS Harper to a glorious, ice-free north') is approximately 65" W x 70" H. I used a polar bear pelt hanging in the Sam Waller Museum in The Pas, Manitoba to guide the overall shape and dimensions of this work, although my work is a little smaller than the real thing.

METAL WORK

This artwork is about 10 inches diameter and is designed to hang on the wall. The dark colour on the copper was achieved with a chemical patina that I painted on. Then I worked the surface very lightly with fine-grit sandpaper to bring out highlights.

WHAT TIME IS IT?

I enjoyed the challenge of making each letter. Some were easier to make in upper case and others worked best in lower case.

This was a fun project that plays with the idea of time. The main body of the 'clock' is hand-formed and hammered from 19-gauge copper sheet.

On the clock face are letters I hand-formed from thick wire, and attached with brass snare wire. The 'hands' are found objects -- a rusted hinge and a couple of steel hooks.

I donated this project for NorVA's 2015 Square Foot Fundraiser.

Manitoba Arts Council Grant Project:
'Building the Bowl'
I am focusing on a series of original works being funded through a Craft Grant I was awarded from the Manitoba Arts Council. The title of my grant project is 'Building the Bowl'. I am using different methods of metal fabrication to create a series of vessels.

LATTICEWORK BOWLS
My first projects were what I call 'latticework bowls'. I started by cutting strips 1" wide x 12" long from 19 gauge pure copper sheet, then started 'weaving' them together. I drilled holes through the overlapping layers using a drill press, and then used a hand riveter to put industrial copper/brass rivets in.

I numbered the rivets/joins, and documented what was happening in a notebook and in photos as I went along.

I made two latticework bowls, modifying some things the second time around based on what I learned from the first one.

Here is the first bowl, completed. Once the latticework (left) reached about 11" square, I cut out a flat circle/disk using a manual bench shear (basically like a large paper cutter for metal). Then I heated it using a small torch, formed and hammered it through several cycles to create the bowl shape and volume.

Here are the two bowls together. I call them my 'medieval breadbaskets.' The one on the right has not been immersed in 'pickle', a mild acid solution that dissolves the fire scale from using the torch. The left-hand one has been pickled.
I am very grateful for the support I am receiving from the Manitoba Arts Council.

STAPLED BOWLS
This is the start of my first 'stapled' bowl. Two layers of copper sheet are overlapped vertically, with lines to guide placement of the staples along two vertical rows. Then I cut out a 8.5" diameter circle/disk.

I hand-formed staples from thick wire, and inserted them into holes I'd measured out and drilled using my drill press. Then I hammered the staple ends down on the other side using a hard rubber mallet.

I heated and hammered the circle/disk through several cycles to create the bowl shape and volume. As the curvature of the bowl increased, this put correspondingly more stress on the staples and they started to pull out.

Utter structural failure resulted. This could be for several reasons, e.g. the wire for the staples was maybe not robust enough, and also where and how they were placed. The next set of photos show how I changed some things based on what I learned.

Here is the start of the second bowl employing the stapling technique. Modifications include 4 rows of staples instead of two; staples closer together; staples placed closer to the overlapping edges on both sides of the piece; and using heavier gauge wire for the staples.

This photo shows the flip-side of the piece, i.e. how the staples look on the other side. The staple ends were hammered down in a side-by-side pattern. I liked the visual effect this created, and and decided to use this side as the featured side in creating the bowl.

In this photo, the piece has now gone through 4 cycles of heating and hammering, and volume and depth are starting to be created. The staples and edges are holding together strongly. It will take another 3-4 cycles of heating and hammering to get the desired depth and volume for the bowl.

TABBING
The technique to the right is called 'tabbing'. I started by cutting equilateral triangles 3" long on each side. These were cut from slightly thinner gauge copper than I use for the bowls.
Then I cut slits along the sides and inserted the tips of adjacent triangles to start making an interlocking pattern.

Here you can see some triangle tips that have been inserted and are being bent back to start making the tabs.

The idea is to not only bend the tips back, but tuck them underneath the bottom of each slitted edge, then hammer them down.

It's tricky work, and some tabs ended up more structurally sound than others. But it makes an interesting pattern on the other side. This is a test piece to try the tabbing technique.

FOLDED SEAM BOWL

This technique uses the same principle as the strong seam typically found on the inside of legs of jeans. Five pieces of copper sheet were folded and then hammered together in this way while flat, then a circle/ disk cut, and then heated, hammered and formed.

TEXTILE - 'vanishing point'

Full view (above) and detail (right) of 12"x12" work in NorVA's Square Foot Auction September 2014. This was created by successively layering sheer fabrics then fine netting over the dragonfly silhouettes.