Artist wants kids to see beauty around them

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2018 (2983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been a bit of a rough stretch for my good buddy Jordan Van Sewell, one of Manitoba’s most renowned artists.

Over the past six months, Jordan, 63, who has been producing brilliantly whimsical ceramic sculptures for 45 years, has had to deal with the loss of two brothers and one of his closest friends.

Last December, his brother Brent succumbed to cancer, and then another brother, Tim, died from complications from throat surgery on Valentine’s Day.

Last month, his longtime friend Robyn Gray, a legend in the local motorcycle community, was killed in a motorcycle crash on Garven Road.

On the day of the tragedy, Robyn had dropped by Jordan’s South Point Douglas studio/home for a visit. The artist would have joined his friend on that ill-fated ride, but he had to leave the next morning for his brother Tim’s memorial service in B.C.

“You make of it what you can,” Jordan told me last week when I dropped in to check on my buddy’s latest project. “I don’t know if I have a greater understanding of life now, but I have a greater appreciation.

“You don’t know how to respond appropriately because it’s not something you deal with all the time. Intellectually, you understand, but it’s an emotional thing.”

Jordan is not the sort of person to wallow in grief or self-pity; he faces things head on, then moves on to the next challenge.

In this case, his next challenge is a complete change of pace for man famous for his ability to turn lumps of clay into hilarious and thought-provoking works of art — he’s written and illustrated a wildly creative book.

Entitled How I Got My Clown Shoes, Jordan’s book, which I’d describe as the love child of Dr. Seuss and Stephen King, will be officially launched Tuesday at 7 p.m., at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Grant Park Shopping Centre.

What’s the book about? Well, that’s an excellent question. It’s sort of an illustrated allegory of a kid who lands a really sweet summer job working for a guy who may or may not be the devil (he definitely has horns), has some offbeat adventures and learns a lot about life and himself.

It’s not what you’d call a traditional children’s book, but it is written in verse and the illustrations are in black and white for a reason.

“I want people to colour it and add their own elements to it,” Jordan told me. “Once you get tired of reading the story, you’ll want to revisit it, and what better way than with a set of pencil crayons? It’s a graphic novel AND a colouring book.”

So, it’s, like, a kids book? Jordan smiles impishly as he ponders that question. “I don’t think there are kids books anymore,” he replied. “Kids are pretty sharp. I like to think there’s sophisticated concepts in here that kids will grasp.

“It’s a philosophy, it’s lowbrow existentialism. It poses a lot of questions. The plot? There isn’t really a plot. The kid goes to work for the devil, although he’s never called that by name. There’s never anything that’s diabolical.

“The kid learns a bunch of lessons; they may not be conventional lessons, but they are lessons. He grows and becomes more worldly. Spoiler alert: the guy gets a really cool pair of shoes!”

While some dark things happened as he put the finishing touches on the book, Jordan’s own recent losses are not reflected in its pages.

“There are aspects of death in the book,” he said. “For example, a bug does get squished in the book.” Which is when he holds a copy up, and reads aloud this snippet of verse: “Accidents happen, can’t be missed/Now and again, a bug got squished/The hound would take it hard/He needed someone to draw a card.”

The idea for a book featuring his rhymes and illustrations first came to life in Jordan’s quirky imagination years back when he produced a one-of-a-kind ceramic sculpture.

“It was initially a piece I had made — a steam shovel with a wrecking ball and the devil operating it,” he said. “The story came about as I was building the piece. It’s an allegory: find enjoyment in all that is revealed to you.

“That would be the message. All you have to do is look and you’ll see what a wonderful world it is. It’s just a story of seeing the beauty in what surrounds us. You see the humour in it.”

In a way, the noted sculptor is breaking new ground, but the book also represents a return to his roots, to the one thing that made him want to be an artist in the first place.

“Drawing was my first love,” he said. “It’s the first thing kids do — pick up a pencil and a piece of paper. That’s what I did until I picked up a piece of clay. I thought it would be nice to put my drawings out in the world, in book form, with a bewildering tale.

“My first love, artistically, was Peanuts comic strips. It was my introduction into drawing, drawing reproductions of Charlie Brown. By age five, I could draw Charlie Brown as well as Charles Schulz.”

What with being a big-shot columnist, I’ll be at McNally Robinson Tuesday night to do a little Q-and-A with my pal Jordan, artist turned author. I’ll be the one wearing regular shoes.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca