“Orange Alert, Flying the Lake Erie Border Line”
Too Danm Close: Comments & observations from Lake Erie’s north shore.
“In 2005, I found himself waking up in the hamlet of Wainfleet on the north shore of Lake Erie. Outside my front door I’m surrounded by seasonal Americans, my new part time neighbours who own most of the Lake Erie shoreline. From my backdoor the American coastline looms out of the Lake Erie waters, a constant reminder in your face. that America! ia Too damn close!”
In this exhibition of recent work, exhibited at the Carnegie Gallery Dundas, I paid homage to Kurt Schwitters . I was inspired to create art. using oils & found material particularly from the local beaches. I constructed paintings that reflected the world & the environment I was immersed in. What a change to move to the flatness of south Niagara and Lake Erie from Dundas, Spencer Creek, the Niagara escarpment and Cootes Paradise and from living urban to living rural.
There are two parts to this exhibition, “Beach People” & “Too Damn Close….I Can See America From My Backdoor”. “Beach People” about the ways & means of Americans in Canada for the summer and ‘summer’ people in general. I could see the southern teir of New York state from my studio back door even though I was across the street from the beach but I could see between 2 cottages. Daily you could watch the fighter jets fly the Lake Erie border line to make sure we weren’t smuggling terrorists across the lake or something. Who knows what other survellance of the Canadian shore line was going on. Then there was the post 9/11 ever tightening of the border with the Yanks.
Cultural Debris 