| May 18, 2016


An abandoned old car sits in a field. Not an unusual sight on a back road in Lanark County, or anywhere else in Eastern Ontario.

Did someone try and fix it up but then give up when they could not get parts? It's an old car, a white 70s era Cadillac, a beauty in its day but now it sits, waiting to be swallowed up by grass and brush like so many other relics of the past.

But this is no ordinary Cadillac. It is an art installation, one of six new pieces in the open-air art gallery that is Fieldwork, located on Old Brooke Road just east of Maberly.

The gallery, which is located in a field and the surrounding woods, features pieces that are created each year. In addition to the new pieces, older pieces remain for years, sometimes deteriorating as the weather takes its toll. In one way or another, they respond to or reflect the landscape that surrounds them.

The Cadillac is called Dreamcar. It is not really abandoned, although it is a 40-year-old car that was purchased and driven to the site by artist, Marco D'Andrea. It is outfitted with a sound system that is triggered by the approach of a person. The car is meant to be experienced from inside, as the viewer settles into the car, listening to ambient tones and watching the landscape.

Dreamcar is not the only new piece that turns the idea of things left behind on itself. Jolie Bird's What's Around Me is a series of shiny, golden objects strewn about a small clump of trees. The gold is thread tightly sewn around an empty can, a rock, and other objects, bringing value to things that are normally tossed aside.

Land/Mark, by artist-poet Chris Turnbull, is a rock at the edge of a field, tainted by graffitti. But the piece is really a comment on the meaning of text. The words are: “You are th erratic is”. One of the intentions of the piece is to stimulate the viewer to think about the physicality of words, whether they are on paper, on a screen, or on rocks and structures in the modern landscape. It is not intentional, but a wooden sign with the word “Private” painted on it to mark off the edge of the public portion of the field is located next to the Land/Mark.

Ways, by Janina Meidzick, are wrapped billboards, flanking the outhouse on the site, appearing as if they are in between uses. The old message has been cleared out and the billboard is covered, waiting for a new message to be created.

Tripods, a piece by the RSSY Collective (Jerrard and Diana Smith, Gayle Young and Reinhard Reitzenstein), makes use of the breadth of the field. It features a large wooden tripod at one end, with a plumb line using an old axe to hold a straight line at the very centre of the space, a long tapered rule at the other end, and a screen with fabric representing a map in the middle. Tripods symbolises the way land was divided up when settlers arrived in this country, so it also makes reference to the 200th anniversary of Tay Valley Township, as the ways land was divided in that era remain in place to this day.

The final piece in the show was made during a field trip by students at the Brooke Valley School. The students used natural materials, under supervision from parents at the school, to create a circular maze, a play structure of sorts at the edge of the field. The piece is called Nowspot, and it is similar to the things kids have built at the edges of fields for generations, perhaps centuries - out of sight of parents, who were engaged in the struggle to survive. It has a rough beauty, a fairy-like quality. Kids were playing in it on the opening day of the Fieldwork season, as they will over time, until it too, deteriorates and melds into the landscape, just like all other structures do.

Fieldwork is open for visitors at any time during the summer. It is located at 2501 Old Brooke Road on the property where the project’s founder, potter Susie Osler lives with her partner and co-conspirator, Cam Gray.

Fieldwork is run by a collective of artists. Later this summer, two events are planned in collaboration with the Ottawa Writers Festival. On August 21, at 3pm, a reading will take place in the loft of the barn near the site featuring work created on that weekend by a number of invited writers. Finally, on Saturday, September 24, starting at 2pm, regionally known storytellers will be featured in Storyworks: Tales Rooted in the Land.

For tickets and information about both events, go to Fieldworkproject.com.

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