By Scott Beaty
The last time I made a diorama, it was a scene from Death of a Salesman for a Grade 12 English class.
I used a G.I. Joe action figure I had dug out of the back of my closet to depict the intangibly tragic nature of Willy Lowman.
I put him in an old shoebox and almost failed.
I vowed I would never enjoy the whimsical medium of the diorama again.
It took several years of soul searching to reconcile myself to the fact that I would never, ever, excel at depicting small scale scenes in three dimensions.
But last Christmas I received Douglas Coupland’s Souvenir of Canada from my parents, who were determined to re-establish my fleeting romance with the medium.
It worked.
Coupland’s brilliant use of the still life to depict uniquely kitschy Canadian scenes — a slot hockey game with Bee Hive corn syrup spilling onto it, for example — seemed to reinvigorate the art form.
In the preface to the book, Coupland writes that “Americans should look at these photos and think, ‘Huh? Everything looks familiar, and yet nothing is familiar.”
With the abundance of Canadiana found in his works — stuffed Canada geese and empty President’s Choice coke cans, among endless other, more abstract artifacts — he largely succeeded.
In Eye Candy 3, a new exhibition at the Carleton University Art Gallery, Gatineau artist Colwyn Griffith has taken a similar approach, but to a distinctly different topic.
Griffith has recreated landmark Canadian tourist attractions using only processed food products, photographed them, and then enlarged the scenes to surreal proportions.
Walking into the gallery, the viewer is immediately struck with the iconic image of Niagara Falls — from the Canadian side, of course. But instead of water rushing over the escarpment — which is chocolate — it’s a seemingly gargantuan amount of Cheez Whiz. The sky is made of Fruit Rollups and standing in for the mist are wisps of cotton candy.
“It’s a bit cheesy, the town,” Griffith laughs while describing the city that inspired the piece. “The falls are great, but it’s a little cheesy.”
This isn’t Griffiths first exploration of food in art.
While teaching in Japan in 1998, he had an exhibition featuring “sweating cheese sculptures” called Invisible Exhibition. Gallery goers were led into the exhibition blindfolded and encouraged to touch and smell the works — large squares of melted Velveeta which began to crumble after a few days — before looking at them.
As for Eye Candy 3, the 13 works often look strikingly similar to the scenes they are drawn from — be it Peggy’s Cove or the grain elevators of Inglis, Manitoba — but can seem very unfamiliar at the same time.
This may be attributed to the fact Griffith didn’t visit any of the sites he recreated, choosing instead to work from promotional photographs and material received from tourism bureaus.
“I want a simulated experience, like the foods,” Griffith says. “I’m interested in how we as tourists all take the same photos.”
But the stunningly bright colours and blowtorched bologna — used for the Hopewell Rocks — are able to transcend the artificiality of the medium, and in doing so, have drawn warm responses from visitors.
“There’s been quite a good response. People who don’t always go to galleries are coming in to see the work, and I find that very exciting,” Griffith says.
Whether or not you’re a dedicated diorama fan, and even if you’d rather not ponder the arbitrary and artificial nature of many of our most iconic tourist attractions, its fun just to try and guess what the hell they’re made of.
For those who enjoy this show, Griffith says he’ll continue to work with food for his next exhibition, which he’s calling, uh, Eye Candy 2.
That’s right, a prequel has finally arrived on the Canadian art scene, and I can guarantee it’ll be better than the last two films George Lucas tried to pass off as Star Wars.