An Urban Sketcher Hits the Street

With the Wolfe Island Gallery  closed indefinitely, the idea came to me to use the main Street in the Village of Marysville to exhibit large versions of the sketches I did last winter and spring of the islands and village.  The exhibit title is FARM VILLAGE LAKE as the 24 drawings describe the cultural landscape of Marysville, Wolfe and Simcoe Islands. I reflects my ongoing fascination with development patterns and how they are changing the Ontario Landscape.

The drawings went up in time for Canada Day, including a couple of title sheets which give the url for an explanatory web site.  I deliberately worked fast, standing, with a broad marker to keep the energy of the small original sketches.  I pleased that the scale and number of panels gives the exhibit the right amount of presence on the street.

So far the tyvek is holding up well and villagers assure me that its unlikely that any will be stolen, although I'm sure they'll be a little fatigued by Labour Day.

Marysville Village

Marysville is very much a "village" in terms of a cultural landscape.  The side streets are narrow without curbs, there are mature trees everywhere and generous space between buildings.  Most lots have several buildings, most of which have wood siding and there are many steel roofs.

Along with some gentle topography and twists in street alignments, the overlapping shapes offer many compositions to sketch.

Inca Terraces

Those busy Incas!

The Inca empire was not much more than 140 years old before the Spanish conquest and to see what they constructed in that brief time is incredible.  What struck me while visiting was the intentionality - the planing.  Their projects were not iterative ....successive waves of improvement, rather they were implemented with a high standard of workmanship towards a master plan.  The experts recon Machu Picchu was build over a period of 100 years - sort of like starting a final drawing in one corner and filing the page, except for that each stone took hours to carry and fit.

These terraces were constructed to optimize  crop space - what the crops were and why they couldn't be grown in the valley lands, I haven't learned, but can only assume there were compelling reasons to go to so much effort.  And here they are 600 years later - truly a cultural landscape.