Boss Bear
"Boss Bear" by Michael Mitchell, Summer 2009, pp. 40-41
The sculptors John McEwen and Dennis Gill and I are running a small skiff down a wilderness river to Georgian Bay. It’s a peaceful late-September afternoon but I know that we’re being watched by moose, deer, birds and beavers. And while there may well be bears out there too, for sure we’ve got one in the boat. McEwen welded up Ragged Ass Bear from a box of steel stars several years ago just for the pleasure of it. Now, after a few seasons standing in the long grass behind his studio, that bear is finally on the move.
I have a small island at the mouth of the river. At one end stands a high, domed hump of the Canadian Shield that’s come to be known as Sulkers’ Rock. What better place to put a bear in charge? When we arrive I call a friend up the coast for help, and a half-hour later, three beer-drinking guys turn up in a canoe. They get out and John gets in. Five of us grunt the heavy bear back and forth on the rock while McEwen directs its placement from out on the water. Finally, we secure Ragged Ass Bear to the rock via four holes drilled deep into the Canadian Shield, and John drinks a toast with Ziggy, my cat.
From an artist’s perspective, this was a dream installation. Makers of public sculpture spend much of their time negotiating with developers, architects, planners, unions and tradesmen. They have many masters to please and many compromises to endure. The works have to be bulletproof, safe and able to compete with power poles, traffic signs and the rest of the cacophony of modern life. This installation was almost perfect for McEwen—only money was missing.
Watching McEwen’s bear guard my rock took me back some half-dozen years to a visit I made to the Midi-Pyrénées in France. On a grey winter day I crossed the Dordogne and drove north along a steep valley. While most establishments were shuttered for the season, I spied a sign for a painted cave and went in. We’ve all seen photos and film of drawings in paleolithic caves. What they don’t tell you is that the animals in those paintings are not flat. The hunters of 12,000 years ago sought out bulges in the rocks that could become bodies, cracks that could be limbs and tails and holes that would become eyes. The animal images they created are staged along the contours of the caves so as to become encounters. Exploring the surviving paintings today, one is acutely conscious of keen intelligences speaking across the millennia.
McEwen is an admirer of the late ecologist Paul Shepard. It was Shepard’s contention that the painted cave is an externalization of the human mind. The images within the caves may be of animals, but are not about them. Rather they are fossil thoughts— the animal images represent human fears and triumphs, life and death—encounters with great mysteries. These fundamentals are still part of our collective psyche. It is this dark, non-verbal part of our consciousness that McEwen is trying to understand when he makes sculpture. He has produced numerous life-sized silhouettes of animals such as wolves and dangerous dogs. When these are encountered head-on, all one sees is a two-and-a-half-inch-thick slab of steel. As one moves, the profile of a predator appears. This can stir the hairs on the back of the neck, like rounding a path in a forest and suddenly coming face to face with a big wild cat or a bear. Over the millennia such experiences have profoundly shaped human intelligence.
We have always modelled the world in order to comprehend and control it. A doll initiates the experience of motherhood; toy soldiers emulate warriors. And teddy bears? We all know that the bear is a shamanic animal. While much art is beautiful or exciting, art that addresses the ancient and archetypal dance of predator and prey is rare. It seems to me, however, that when sited well, McEwen’s works are up to that challenge. He has captured a corner of human experience that is deep and essential.
As I write, it’s mid-winter in Toronto. Up north, the cabin shutters are up, the boats are pulled in and an unsafe rim of ice grows out from the riverbanks, so I can’t now visit Ragged Ass Bear. But I know that he’s guarding my little harbour and cabin as the winter sun goes down. At night he’s at his post, but not alone. Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and its minor companion wheel through the dark sky, keeping him company until I can return and see the stars of his coat flash brightly in the sun of a new spring.
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