Don Maynard & Colm MacCool – States of Migration

States of Migration

It is winter again in Pouch Cove. It is snowing and there are icebergs. Your house has detached itself from its foundation and is leaving town.
These are elements in the exhibition, States of Migration, currently on view at James Baird>Pouch Cove. Artists Don Maynard and Colm MacCool, both from Ontario— Maynard from Kingston, MacCool from Prince Edward County — are showing work in the main gallery space. These works were created during the artists’ month-long residency at the Pouch Cove Foundation.
In the Stage Gallery Maynard has created a snowstorm by using masking tape, wind and about 2,000 watts of light. Maynard says, “the work references the experience of driving through a heavy snowstorm at night, entering into a vortex of light with snowflakes zooming at you in these impossible curves.” Snowstorm is a meditative piece, its light draws us like moths to the flame.
MacCool’s piece, Cold Comfort, is three icebergs carved out of framing lumber and supported by furniture legs. MacCool’s work explores the uneasy relationship between commodification and environment. Taking one of the archetypal  images of both wildness and environmental changes and referencing furniture is a darkly humorous examination of  our consumer ways.
The selection of icebergs also relates to the transient nature of artist residency’s. Exploring ideas and experiences as an outsider. Taking influence from but not being part of.Icebergs are the ultimate migrants. Images of simultaneous power and fragility.

Maynard’s piece, Absence of Gravity, is a house made from lace, and illuminated from within. The house floats aloft, thirteen feet above the gallery floor, and appears to be struggling to escape gravity. It is connected to the earth by mooring lines. Maintaining Gravity explores the idea of home as a sense of place anchored to a specific physical location. This idea of home is central to many people’s sense of self, it is how they define themselves; it persists even when people are removed from, or leave, that specific location; it travels with them wherever they go.
Don Maynard works in encaustic and multi-media installations he has exhibited internationally at galleries in Boston and New York. He has upcoming solo shows
at the MacLaren in Barrie, the McIntosh in London and a touring exhibition curated by Jan Allen  and Linda Jasmine organized by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and Agnes Etherington in Kingston.  This is Maynard’s third residency at the Pouch Cove Foundation.
Colm MacCool is a sculptor who works primarily in wood and found materials.
After lost years in the film industry he evolved into cabinetry, antique restoration and architectural salvage in eastern Ontario. MacCool revels in the futility of carving in a modern world, exhibiting his work thoroughout Ontario and at the Viridian Gallery in New York City.