Dawn MacNutt: Timeless Forms

By Gil McElroy June 23, 2003

} Dawn MacNutt: Timeless Forms review by Gil McElroy John B. Aird GalleryToronto, Ontario July 2 - 28, 2001 The work of Nova Scotia sculptor Dawn MacNutt's has, for the most part, focused on the human body. A textile artist by training and background, MacNutt long ago began working sculpturally, transferring to the medium many of the techniques and approaches of basketry weaving. Working with materials ranging from willow branches and paper, to copper wire and mesh, MacNutt has woven loosely figurative sculptures (sometimes then cast in bronze) that span the magnitudes of miniature to life-size. For this exhibition, MacNutt reached back as far as 1992 for a small bronze casting of a woven seagrass original, though the bulk of the work shown was completed in the last four years, when, Dawn MacNutt 'Timeless Form II' 1996, twined willow, 150 x 59 cm. following a trip to Greece, her artistic attention shifted from the figurative to the architectural. The woven willow shapes of her 'Timeless Figures' series of the mid-1990s, tall, thin basketry figures with slumped heads or torqued bodies, evolved into architectural columns, culminating in the pieces that comprise her 'Column Series' begun in 1997, twined willow works of a lightness, transparency, and deceptive fragility antithetical to the mass, weight, and brute strength of actual load-bearing stone or wood columns. MacNutt's columns, of course, support nothing (indeed, barely manage to stand of their own volition), but urged upon us an experiential reengagement with the container and volume that is a gallery space. In her most recent work, MacNutt has experimented further with the column shape. In Column Series #1, the columnar form narrows slightly as it rises from the base and ends in incompleteness, the willow forming the vertical elements of the piece allowed to remain ungathered and of ragged, irregular lengths at the very top. In the 'Spirit Within Series,' by contrast, the narrowing of the columns as they rise perserveres until a common terminus is reached, the willow stalks gathered together and tied off. The column becomes a cone. This evolution of forms visible in MacNutt's most recent work culminates in new work of near abstraction. With Whysteria #2, MacNutt for the first time risks the non-representational. A small bronze casting of a twined wisteria original, the piece only just barely reiterates a conical form. It teeters at the brink of non-recognition, slumping over and apparently close to total collapse. The ragged basket weave that holds the form together seems to barely suffice, a messy topknot of tangled wisteria stalks threatens to spring apart entirely. The work wobbles unsteadily at the brink of chaos. Entropy, it appears, is having its way. But Whysteria #2 is a bronze casting, the disheveled weave of the original destroyed in the process of its making. So what seems unstable, volatile, and anarchic in the work is really only the memory of the form before molten metal made things fixed and immutable. In her newest work, Dawn MacNutt considers the consequences of havoc deferred. The results are impressive. View more of Dawn's artwork here. This review originally appeared in Sculpture, January/February 2002. _________________________________________________ Gil McElroy is a critic, independent curator, artist, and poet currently living in Colborne, Ontario. His latest books are Gravity & Grace: Selected Writing on Contemporary Canadian Art (Gaspereau Press), and a book of poetry, Dream Pool Essays (Talonbooks). View Gil's curriculum vitae.

• Posted: 2003-06-23