It’s easy to forget that every day we run, jump, stand still, recline and perambulate at the bottom of an ocean of air 100 kilometres deep, as birds, bees and butterflies flit about like so many fish and anemones, and trees wave to the wind.
I got what could be called a “refresher course” in this reality the other day while ambling the spacious, bucolic grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection northwest of Toronto. It came courtesy Colour of the River Running Through Us, a delightful outdoor installation piece conceived by the acclaimed Toronto multidisciplinary artist Thom Sokoloski in association with designer Evan Webber, glass artist Alfred Engerer and choreographer Jenny-Anne McCowan.
Colour is a site-specific ensemble, the site being a wooded ravine near the East Humber River inclining down from the main road to the McMichael buildings, the ensemble consisting of 13 near-identical forms – sculptures, if you prefer – artfully strewn the length of the ravine. The forms, each about five metres high, are at once primitive and sophisticated, elemental and elegant. Each is made of a tripod of shaved cedar poles surmounted by a crescent-shaped assemblage of woven dried reeds, the space between the reed ends bridged by a taut thin wire that holds up a canvas orb. At the apex of each tripod is a metal head permitting the reed construction to sway like a weather-vane in the wind. Dangling from the tripod is a pulley to which is attached a bulbous container of plain but occluded glass, wrapped in metal mesh, with a hole in its top, and a jar into which Sokoloski has stuffed organic bits from the site and a piece of paper with a haiku written on it.
At my first glance, the presentation felt decidedly tribal, akin to gliding through a people-less encampment of 13 wigwam frames or a collection of abandoned totems or a riff on the famous moai sentinels of Easter Island. (Sokoloski settled on installing 13 artifacts, in fact, as a way to denote Canada’s provinces and territories at the same time as he chose to restrict whatever flourishes of paint he used to what he calls “the four aboriginal colours” – yellow, red, black and white.)
The great thing about Colour of the River Running Through Us – why do I keep wanting to call it A River Runs Through It, after Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella? – is that it invites a play of associations, eliciting more and more the longer your mind and body wade in its currents. For instance, no sooner had I jotted “Easter Island” in my notebook than I was writing “Big versions of devil nets/True Detective 1,” then “Towers of Cosmic Power,” then “water wells.” Staring at the boat shape shifting ever so slowly in the breeze, I, of course, thought of the good ol’ Canadian canoe – Champlain’s pal Étienne Brûlé paddled the Humber in 1615 as did the indigenous peoples centuries before him – as well as the reed crafts that ply Lake Titicaca in Peru and the Mesopotamian Marshes and the story of the baby Moses in the bullrushes and the crescent moon of Islam and … well, I think you catch my drift.
Then that boat shape morphed into a pair of outstretched, upraised arms, the orb into a head and in short order I was laying on various interpretations of the gesture – a welcome, a warning, a plea, “13 scare-crows,” “hands thrown in despair,” a sign of exultation, praise, triumph, 3-D equivalents of Paul Klee’s famous drawing Angelus Novus, “13 pastors invoking the Holy Spirit before a congregation.”
Whatever the reading, the forms clearly call for some kind of reciprocation. If during your visit you’re inclined to a more formal or ritualistic response, you can write a haiku – the Japanese verse form of three lines and 17 syllables – and place it in one of the 13 glass vessels fashioned by Engerer or at two way-stations, one at the beginning of the ravine, the other at its end. Sokoloski has, as mentioned, helpfully written a haiku for each installation to get the river of verse flowing. “My floating body/in nature’s orchestra score – /fleeting is her love,” reads one. “Dawn’s warmth, fish jumping – /desperate scream, waving arms/the river steals a life,” reads another. You also can “perform” a series of simple “movement meditations” that McCowan has devised for each station. They’re illustrated in a small booklet provided gratis by the McMichael. In addition, the gallery is hosting three free movement/haiku workshops, on Aug. 1, 9 and 15, each starting at 1:30 p.m. and running about 90 minutes.
Of course, none of these gentle exercises is essential to enjoying Colour of the River Running Through Us. All you really need to do is turn off the smartphone, relax, let mind and body float downstream, then wait for imagination and memory to burble forth whatever they will. Ahhhhh … the life aeronautic.
Colour of the River Running Through Us by Thom Sokoloski has had its stay at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont. extended through mid-October.