Joe Renaud
I came to Edmonton in the late ninties and started to produce art in several different mediums, metals was one of them. I worked as an artist at my home in the medium of using various metals both found and repurposed to create a variety of images that spread from the comical to the serious to the political. Sometimes a single object would give me an idea right away and others came later as I accumulated various metals from the scrap yards and eventually found a repurpose for them. I suppose my mood was also a factor in what I would create at the time of inspiration but, to be honest, ideas were so common I couldn’t possibly do them all so priority would take place with the available time between work and art.
Some of the metal objects are recognizable to some but not always because many of these objects are either so old many people today wouldn’t recognize them and others were so unknown I had to figure out what they were for myself. I decided to mesh together metals that normally an artist would never put together due to the level of difficulty that would be imposed with each other. Such as cast irons with copper, or brass with steel. Or all of them together in one piece. Also, some carving was involved with coppers or steels depending on my desired effect. Surrealism is what most people would categorize my art in but it’s a hybrid really of the surreal and the abstract to a degree. You may also notice I can use paint on some of my sculptures which enhanced them for the desired overall appeal. I like colors and so colors I got in spades. It would be fair to say I produced 90% of all the metals sculptures for myself knowing they may not appeal to others. In total, I produced about 160 metals sculptures over a 10 year period and I vowed to myself I’d either get to 500 sculpture or ten years, whichever came first. 2010 was the last year I produced a metal sculpture. What you see now is the remainder of what is left.
Artisan Gallery
Knight of Armour
Neo Gothic Torso
Penal Parachute
