Branch Magazine, Home, Part 2 - Collaboration
August 03, 2010 Filed in: Books and Journals
Branch Magazine is a national quarterly online magazine devoted to exploring the rifts and overlaps of visual and literary arts while showcasing emerging and professional Canadian artists and creators. Branch features contemporary literature, art and design and aims to produce a compelling panoply of art in different media. Kudos to founders Gillian Sze and Rob Huynh (Roberutsu). Shane's work 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' is featured in the Collaboration section.
HOME - Part 2
by Rob Huynh (Roberutsu), Arts Editor and Gillian Sze, Literary Editor
We don't usually have multiple parts to an issue but because this one was whoppin' huge, we figure it's either "go big or go home." (Oh wait, we did both, didn't we?)
As you probably already noticed, our cover for 2.2 is a tad different. We got our feature artist, cartoonist and Doug Wright Award winner Joe Ollmann, to illustrate something special for us...
You'll also notice a new section in this issue: Collaboration, which should be fairly self-explanatory. This section features sculptors Shane Wilson and Dwayne Cull whose art piece is inspired by a poem by Canadian poet, Robert Service.
COLLABORATION: Robert Service, Shane Wilson, Dwayne Cull
Robert William Service (January 16, 1874 - September 11, 1958) was a poet and writer, sometimes referred to as "the Bard of the Yukon".
He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North, including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Law of the Yukon, and The Cremation of Sam McGee.
Inspired by the North—the beauty and severity of its extremes—Canadian sculptor Shane Wilson breathes life into the discarded outer garments of arctic impermanence: antler, horn, ivory, tusk, bone; and fixes time in the most ancient of enduring alloys—bronze.
Wilson has taught the art of antler carving at Red Deer College, in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, and continues to share his craft with artists and collectors around the World. Wilson lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his wife Miranda Atwood.
Dwayne Cull is primarily a graphite artist, creating drawings to die for. He is also practiced in the art of stained glass and is currently at work on a large, stained glass globe. After serving an apprenticeship with Shane Wilson during high school, during which he worked on 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew", Dwayne later attended northern Alberta's Keyano College, taking the Visual Art Program. He currently divides his residence between the Yukon and Bali.
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
Now on permanent loan to the McBride Museum in Whitehorse, Yukon, this commissioned sculpture from mammoth ivory and mahogany represents the last scene from the poem by Robert Service entitled, The Shooting of Dan McGrew.
This sculpture was a collaboration between Shane Wilson, who carved the mammoth ivory and mahogany figures, and Dwayne Cull, who made the mahogany furniture, including the brilliant piano with individual ivory keys, ivory sheet music and cards and the mahogany saloon floor base.
Excerpt from The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service:
Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two —
The woman that kissed him and — pinched his poke — was the lady that's known as Lou.
