By Gilbert Bouchard

Dollars to doughnuts, the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop’s going to be happy to see the end of this most recent heat wave.

While the rest of us are trying to avoid getting any hotter than we have to, this three-artist-strong studio cum collective is welding and grinding away in their Oliver-area workshop space despite the sweltering temperatures.

Not only has the workshop recently organized “Big Things,” a breezy sculpture-garden exhibit of large-scale sculpture on the Provincial Museum’s generous front patio, but former University of Alberta sculpture students Ryan McCourt, Andrew French and Mark Bellows are also working on pieces for an upcoming sculptural show at Harcourt House Gallery.

“Big Things” features five pieces of steel sculpture from the trio as well as one work apiece from the likes of local heavy metal workers including Ken Macklin, Peter Hide, Royden Mills and Susan Owen.

The forthcoming Harcourt House Gallery show is being curated by Terry Fenton, a well respected artist, art historian, energetic proponent of abstract art/steel sculpture and the former director of the EAG. The show, a companion exhibit to a recent Harcourt showing of Peter Hide’s smaller work, will focus on Edmonton sculptors who are under 35 years of age.

As for “Big Things,” McCourt says the workshop wanted to do a big outdoor show of sculpture and jumped at the opportunity to use the large hard-surfaced museum patio area.

“You can’t ask for better. It’s right there by the river valley and the museum grounds are so beautiful.”

McCourt also praises the context of the area, noting that the large stone front wall of the building and the open nature of the patio area allows for an excellent viewing experience.

All the better to expose local audiences to the great sculpture community working right here in Edmonton.

“We’re working with the material of this place,” says the sculptor, who–like French, Bellows, and other artists in the field–is working with scrap steel remnants right off of the oilpatch.

“This has always been a great sculptural town.”

In the end, McCourt would like those who attend “Big Things” to walk away with a broad an emotional and intellectual connection with the work as the inspiration that went in the creation of the various pieces.

“It’s a living art form and I’m pulling inspiration from all kinds of work done in the past from the great masters to work done in prehistory.”