At the top edge of downtown (between a Pentecostal church shaped like a Pharaoh’s tomb, and an alley shared by gunsmiths, prostitutes and car thieves) lies the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop. “It’s not exactly an ideal locations. Personally, I’d prefer not finding used condoms on my sculpture, or needing the police to tell me where they’ve found the studio truck. But, it’s affordable enough and it allows us to make sculpture full-time.”

The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop is a studio shared by Mark Bellows, Andrew French and Ryan McCourt: 3 artists who each make sculpture using industrial processes and materials. “It’s hard to afford the facilities and supplies of an industrial shop on the income of an artist.” This cooperative project allows the sculptors to pool not only their financial resources, but their physical, intellectual, and critical resources as well. “There are always times in the studio when you can use another set of hands or eyes.”

The collaborations of these artists are not confined within the walls of the studio. The NESW’s most recent public cooperative effort is the exhibition Front Room Sculpture. “Allen Ball suggested we do a show of sculptures that could go on the walls of the front room of Harcourt House: ‘three sculptors, three walls’. We thought that it’d be good for a laugh, and eighty-three dollars and thirty-three cents is better than nothing. It’ll at least pay for a night out.”

They accepted this common challenge of creating site-specific work, each artist using his own very distinct sculptural approach.

Wall sculpture has long formed a part of Mark Bellows’ artistic output. “In school, I had such a confined space, I became comfortable working on the wall, and working small.” Returning to the U of A as a technician, Bellows was able to use the studio facilities there to create a number of intimately scaled wooden sculptures. Since making sculpture at the NESW, Bellows has returned to using steel. “It’s a lot easier to work with than wood, but there’s definitely something in the small moves and the surfaces of what I’m doing now that comes from the wood sculptures.”

For Andrew French, the small brass works he created for the exhibition had much to do with the restrictions inherent to making sculpture for the walls of the tiny, third-floor gallery space. Thee pieces also served as a break from his usually much larger-scaled work. “I decided to use brass to stretch my legs a bit.” French is a physical sculptor, and if he had the resources, he’d concentrate his efforts on working large. “Making small sculpture just doesn’t satisfy me in the same way. These brass ones make me feel lazy: there’s no bashing or lifting or crashing around the studio. If it weren’t for the show, I probably wouldn’t finish them.”

Ryan McCourt’s sculpture for the Front Room relies on the wall, not as a physical support so much as a visual one. “I wanted to make a life-sized piece, but I didn’t want to have to worry about it being too heavy and falling off the wall.” His solution is an altarpiece-like sculpture that reads off of the wall, but is in fact freestanding. Making clear references to architecture and domestic objects, McCourt’s work is perhaps the most representational of the show. “My work always seems to be about manipulating the viewer into an interactive experience, whether it’s by using human scale or literal references to actual things.”

In addition to exhibiting Front Room Sculpture, the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop is currently organizing an invitational exhibition of large-scaled work this summer at the Provincial Museum. “Most galleries in town just can’t accommodate some of the larger work hat artists are making, so if you work big, you often have to create your own opportunities.”

The artists hope the show may inspire interested viewers to consider purchasing sculpture for placement at their homes or businesses. “Edmonton’s a tough town to see much art that’s actually worth looking at, which is a shame, because there are plenty of talented sculptors here. The price of even a large sculpture is small change in the business world, but to an artist that money can mean a world of creative freedom.”

-Marc Country