Terry Rooney sculpts Marcel Foucault. In his studio, located in the basement of the Church of All Saints on Blackburn Street, Foucault is the first subject in a series of 12 portraits of homeless men that Rooney is hoping to complete this year.
Terry Rooney doesn’t have a free hand to shake; both of his are covered in red clay.
The soft-spoken, slightly owlish artist is sizing up an older man with a hooked nose, lined face and slicked back thinning hair. They’re sitting in Rooney’s one-room studio, tucked away inside an Anglican church in downtown Ottawa.
Next to the subject is a sculpture in its early stages, a clay bust of Marcel Foucault, Rooney’s latest project.
Foucault is the first homeless subject in what Rooney hopes will be a series of 12 portraits to be completed this year. He first got the idea for the project while he was working in a soup kitchen at the First Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York, he said, and couldn’t stop noticing the faces passing by.
“I think the big thing is that most people don’t notice the homeless, they are so marginalized. I think this project validates their existence and gives their lives some sort of permanence. They become immortalized in art,” said Rooney.
He said he isn’t sure what he will do with the finished statues, and mentioned selling them, donating them to the city, displaying them in a gallery or keeping them in his studio.
“It’s far too early to be thinking that far ahead,” he said.
Rooney’s own story has been sculpted by a unique life. Born in New York, he decided at a young age to become an artist, and after graduating from art college in the 1970s he headed to France to study puppetry.
“I’ve always had a fascination with faces, the movements and exaggerations and stories they tell. I guess I also have a fascination with dying arts,” he chuckled.
Rooney went on to operate a professional puppet company in France and New York, Back Alley Puppets, for nearly two decades. Before that, he studied mask carving and theatre in Sri Lanka and Japan, and it was during these travels that he said his interest in sculpting was piqued.
“I started to see the transition, I guess you could call it, between controlling the movements and expressions of a puppet, and creating the face I was controlling. I thought ‘Well what kind of an extension would this be if I sculpted these faces?’ ” he said.
Around 1998 he finally got fed up with the puppet business and shifted his efforts to sculpting. Nine years later, Rooney and his family packed their bags and headed north to Ottawa, seeking a safer political climate, he said.
Since then he has operated his own studio at several locations across the city.
“The difference between puppetry and sculpting? Well ironically you make a better living with puppetry. Sculpting is a really tough game,” he said.
Commissions range anywhere from $800 to $4,000 for a sculpture, but Rooney said interest in 3-D portraiture is on the decline. And his homeless portrait project won’t pay anything, at least not for a while.
“It’s very marginal, sculpting is probably the most difficult visual art to make a living at. Then again, all artists are starving,” said Rooney, adding that if he sees six customers in twelve months, he’s having a good year.
Still, he said his latest project is worth the costs.
“I like doing people who are weathered and beaten. It’s easier and they tend to be very interesting, their stories are fascinating,” he said
Foucault’s face certainly has a story to tell. The 62-year-old Ottawa native has been homeless for 15 years now, preferring to sleep on the streets rather than spend his time in the city's shelters.
Foucault struggles with his words sometimes, rambling about different addresses he has known, drug problems in Ottawa and his hopes for landing an apartment in the future.
It doesn’t bother Rooney; in this case, faces speak louder than words.
“Marcel will tell you the most horrifying stories about living on the street, but he’s so upbeat at the same time … I think sometimes he’s too nice to make it in this world,” said Rooney.
The challenges of surviving as an artist in an uncommon medium sometimes wear on Rooney, he said.
But at the end of the day it’s the job he wants to be doing.
“Once a month I have a crisis and feel like chucking it in, but the work keeps me going. It’s the most fascinating thing, learning the stories, and humans are the most interesting beings on the planet,” he said.