Field of vision

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This article was published 03/12/2021 (1760 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don Proch has a knack for seeing the potential in raw materials. His approach to art has made him a collector of bits and bobs, and a magnet for other people’s odds and ends.

“An object like this,” he says, standing in his impeccably tidy studio holding a metal cone that could be a machine part or a decor piece. “I don’t know what it is, but somebody gave it to me and maybe it’ll find a home and maybe it won’t.”

To call Proch a mixed-media artist is, perhaps, an understatement. Raised on a farm in the Asessippi Valley, he creates work that’s heavily influenced by Prairie landscapes and informed by a farmer’s sensibility to make and make do with what’s on hand.

His Typeface Mask — one of 30 pieces included in a new solo exhibit running at Winnipeg’s Mayberry Fine Art gallery this month — is a perfect example. The moulded fibreglass sculpture is covered with pieces of animal bone, newspaper letter blocks salvaged from the Russell Banner’s old printing press and baler twine, dyed green and painstakingly turned into a carpet of grass. Astroturf would’ve been easier, but that’s not the point.

“The intensity of the work is almost crazy,” Proch says with a chuckle. “I just wanted to be good at doing something different.”

It’s fair to say he’s succeeded. When Proch enrolled in the University of Manitoba’s fine art program in the 1960s, he intended to study painting, but the medium didn’t stick — “I realized I was a bad painter,” he says.

His attention turned to drawing and then to drawing on three-dimensional shapes. Each of his sculptures still starts with a detailed sketch in a small notebook.

His first solo show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the 1970s was the catalyst for a career that has spanned five decades and established Proch as one of the most influential artists in Western Canada — although, to the pensive, soft-spoken artist, the latter title feels a bit lofty.

“It’s flattering,” he says. “But it does seem like the person saying that is talking about somebody else.”

Sen. Patricia Bovey, an art historian and former WAG curator and gallery director, is less modest about Proch’s impact on the Canadian art world.

“I think he transformed it,” says Bovey, who penned the 2019 book, Don Proch: Masking and Mapping. “The use of found materials… people weren’t doing that at the time, and with the early masks that he did — which, a mask both conceals and reveals at the same time — he was forcing curators and journalists and audiences to look at art differently. No longer was art restricted to being paint on canvas or sculptures made of bronze.”

The subject matter also set him apart.

“He’s always been concerned about issues of energy, place and people,” Bovey says. “He’s one of these very quiet, dedicated artists who delivers very, very current messages.”

Much of Proch’s work deals with the nostalgia of rural farming life and the environmental issues associated with food production and resource extraction. Climate change has always loomed large. His Cargo — Prairie Gold piece, for example, depicts a grain elevator being transported by boat safely away from a storm of chrome, acid-filled rain clouds.

“The landscape is a metaphor for the globe,” Proch says. “And in order to save it we have to become more dependent on things like wind power and away from fossil fuels.”

This month’s show, titled Asessippi Chrome, is the first time Proch has presented a solo exhibit locally since the ‘90s. He has been represented by Mayberry for nearly 20 years and, while the artist is constantly making new work, it’s been difficult to amass enough items for a gallery show.

“Generally, when I finished a piece somebody bought it,” Proch says. “And they were reluctant to give it up.”

Asessippi Chrome has been five years in the making and is a mix of new, purpose-built sculptures and older pieces that have resurfaced from private collections.

“Being able to showcase earlier pieces with current work provides a wider context for the audience to be able to appreciate what he does,” gallery director Shaun Mayberry says. “It’s a lot of hard work and you really only get this far when you’re really good. And I think (Don’s) innovativeness with materials is something other artists admire… because it’s so unconventional.”

While many artists create work in thematic series, Proch views his career as a stream of consciousness that has evolved over time. For the first 20 years of his career he only worked in black and white — using silverpoint, a stylus made of silver, to create graphite-esque sketches. Slowly, he began incorporating neon palates and now uses coloured pencils to create vibrant landscapes. The exhibit captures each stage of that evolution.

“The nice thing about doing the show, just personally, is to be able to see the range of work at one time, which I never do,” Proch says. “It’s a real treat; my hope is that other people see it that way too.”

Asessippi Chrome runs at Mayberry Fine Art, 138-2025 Corydon Ave., from Dec. 4 to 24. Visit mayberryfineart.com for more information and gallery hours.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney