One of the new exhibits at the Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM) offers a look at relationships among people and how difficult it can be to restore them after they are broken.
Relative Bonds is by Weyburn artist Regan Lanning. A reception was held Friday night at the EAGM, and a large number of family and friends were in attendance.
She earned the right to have the show after she won the Ev Johnson Memorial Adjudicated Art Show organized by the Estevan Arts Council in November 2018.
During the past year, she has been working hard to increase the number of painted ceramic platters from the five she entered in the art show to 30 that art part of the Relative Bonds exhibit.
“I’m really proud of the work,” said Lanning. “It was over a year of hard work and plugging away and I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
The platters are ceramic and hand-built. She believes clay is the perfect medium for her work because it is both strong and brittle. Relationships are the same way because they aren’t perfect, they suffer damage by existing and they often are harmed unintentionally.
“It’s up to us, what do we do with those hurts,” she said. “Do we try to repair that? Or do we try to minimize the damage.”
Then she painted people who are close to her on those platters. She sorted through photos, which was a time-consuming process, as most of the photos pre-date social media or digital photography, so she had to look through large numbers of old film pictures to find the ones she wanted.
After drawing and painting the images on the platters, and completing numerous steps on each plate, she tossed them to the ground, causing breaks symbolic of damage to relationships. It was difficult to control the breaks, but Lanning said she developed a technique of what she called “an angle smash.” Then she began partially repairing the breaks using an adhesive and barbed wire.
“There’s a few types of breaks that you see in the works,” she said. “Some of them are very jagged. They’re abrupt. They’re sharp edges. They can cut you. Other breaks were more cuts. They were surgical. And those also mirror relationships. Sometimes you have a relationship and it’s everything, and then it’s done.”
Other times there might just be a chip like in a tea cup. The damage might be repairable and the platter salvageable, or it might be permanently damaged.
“It’s a testament to the reality of relationships, and that most of our relationships likely have fractures somewhere in them, and we make a decision on whether or not we want to fix that relationship or if we want to toss it in the garbage and walk away,” said Lanning.
Barbed wire was selected for repairs because of her agricultural background. When she was growing up, there was a lot of barbed wire around, because it kept people in and out of areas, but it also fixed things.
“It was everywhere. It was so everywhere that you almost stopped seeing it. It was invisible, except for every now and then that barb would catch you.”
And even in the process of piecing the platters back together, she had cuts on her arm from wrestling with the barbed wire.
“I’ve been cut multiple times with barbed wire, so it seemed like the perfect medium to show repairs.”
A large number of family and friends were in attendance for the reception. Lanning said she was pretty stunned to see the turnout, as some of them hadn’t indicated they were coming.
“There’s a lot of people who are on those plates out there in the audience today, and I guess that speaks to our love.”
Relative Bonds will remain on display at the EAGM’s Gallery No. 2 until Jan. 10, 2020.
