"Weird yet exquisite."
That was my first reaction to Bonnie Campbell’s art.
It was the night Barack Obama was first elected president and Campbell and her husband Fitch Cady had asked expat Yankees to their Bowen Island home to experience the moment. It was really late and I was a last straggler when Fitch asked "Would you like to see one of Bonnie's fibre sculptures?"
I nodded, expecting a soft toy, an Ookpik, maybe some macrame.
What Campbell gingerly carried in was a magnificent apparition. A giant white felt egg, but more — cracked open, tiny felt newborns, perhaps fetuses, emerging in a twisted cascade of felt umbilical cord, everything soft and white and painstakingly sculpted with a zillion needle stabs. So beautiful. Who knew?
"Omigod!"
It is seven years later and that is what I heard as visitors first glimpsed the richness awaiting them inside Bowen Island's little community art gallery. Campbell's breathtaking Umbilicus show was that rare tour de force that periodically comes our way. At once both a wonder and a riddle. How could this have materialized? What did it mean? Why would anyone have done this?
That may not be easy to answer. Campbell likes to create but doesn't much care to talk about it. And that seems wise. Too much analysis might somehow diminish the mystery of this enigma. The fetal angels, the little skulls, the spillage of floating drifting tumbling little bodies and eggs, wombs and pelvises and placenta. The simple answer is that they are sculptures and that is the subject and maybe they just mean what they mean.
Campbell has worked with fibre for more than half her life. The felt rocks, the felt eggs, the big ceramic bowls of eggs, began to appear years ago. Eventually, there came the prospect of this artist becoming a grandmother and that is when the eggs acquired new significance as the protective caches of new life.
It is refreshing that Campbell doesn't get all profound about her work. When she does say something, she keeps it simple. Loves doing her art, plans to keep doing it, tries to keep getting better, and has no fear of failing. She keeps it slow. No deadlines, no pressure. Like breathing, possibly. It is all low key. In the present moment. It helps her to come to terms with aging and dimming memories. Babies, she says, continually kindle new love into her life. Could it be that basic? What more do we need to know? If there is a message to this work, the artist does not seem inclined to make much of it. It is a self-evident aesthetic. We should be okay with that.
After leaving the gallery, not quite sure what I had experienced, I tried to list why it felt so comfortably brilliant.
• It was a one of a kind. We rarely see this level of originality.
• It had a clear intrinsic concept that does not need endless analysis.
• It was not just sculptures of babies. It was an abstraction of human genesis.
• If there was a message, it may have been that the making of felt sculptures of the birth process can be very fulfilling.
• The aesthetics brought to what could have been an indelicate, and for some, distasteful subject matter, were remarkable.
• Craftsmanship prevailed. Whatever else this show is, it is about years and years of long-honed and unique skill.
• This was no facile art trick. It was the culmination of over seven years of quiet patience and perseverance.
• The space was small. The works were many. The curating was brilliant. Full, energetic, yet intimate.
• There was a kind of purity in that the collection was not for sale. Pricing, dealers,and collectors are not an influence.
• The show will stay intact and could tour complete.
• Bowen's community art gallery shows a range of local talent. Rarely, there is a transcendent show. This was one.
• The artist was gracious,
• The after-party was just right.
• Some felt came from Bowen Island sheep.
This collection of work, so beautifully executed, so unusual a subject, so surprising a reveal, is truly a phenomenon, particularly in its unveiling to a small island community. It cries to be shared with some bigger audience.
Ron Woodall was the creative director of Expo ’86 in Vancouver. He’s an artist and cartoonist who lives on Bowen Island. Bonnie Campbell’s exhibit, Umbilicus, runs at The Gallery @ Artisan Square on Bowen Island until August 13. The gallery is open Wednesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can see more images from the exhibit at BonnieCampbell.net. You can read the Bowen Island Undercurrent's profile of Bonnie Campbell here.
