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Local artists feature contrasting work with ‘Choice and Chance’ show at Headwaters Arts

April 25, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Talking to Nancy MacNabb is a lot of fun. Right away, she was telling the Citizen all about her friend and collaborator, Patrice Baker for their upcoming art show, “Choice and Chance.” 

The show opens April 24 and runs until May 26 at Headwaters Arts in the Alton Mill Arts Centre.

“This is a collaboration between myself and Patrice,” she said. “Each of us recognizes each other’s methods.

“This is the continuum between plan and luck,” she added.

While Ms. Baker was not able to join the conversation, Nancy MacNabb took up her story by saying Patrice Baker is a retired biology teacher and jeweller. She also does jewellery-making classes out of her studio in Fergus.

Most of her artwork, besides the jewellery, is made of found items and generally set in small frames “that she covers in mica,” explaining further that “mica can be rendered to a very thin sheet to cover some of the pieces.”

Speaking of herself, Ms. MacNabb related, “I’m a retired family doctor and I am in medicine, so I think a lot and I also have this emotional side. I like creating large pieces in contrast to Patrice. My paintings come from what sends me in an emotional reaction. Each is abstract but also tells a small story.”

She sees real dynamism in her own work, through her use of vivid colour, as such an interesting contrast to the beautiful and small art that “engages head space” of Ms. Baker’s work.

“Then the large gut level pieces that are mine,” she quipped. “People move in to examine Pat’s work and then step back to look at mine.”

Patrice Baker’s art largely centres on the small and found items; her work often combines oddities. She finds beauty in integrating odd things into her pieces, going out and exploring to find interesting fossils, test tubes and a very wide range of items. Using a fossil by making a mould of it and melting copper to see the relief of the fossil in the metal.

Ms. Baker also creates jewellery using PMC3 precious metal clay. She assembles her pieces and puts them into a kiln to shrink and dry. The silver clay dries and becomes sterling silver.

“They have this clay with bronze and even gold,” Nancy MacNabb informed us. 

Ms. MacNabb’s retirement and consequent foray into art came from a life-changing health problem as her thyroids stopped functioning. A doctor herself, she quickly became disabled from the ailment, so much so that she wasn’t able to communicate with the doctors. During that time, with no art background, she started painting as a response to losing her ability to practice medicine and a decline in her physical health. 

It took three years to figure it out, she told us. She found an arthouse studio, where they wanted adults to play with art.

“I really ate that up,” she declared. “I just wanted to splash paint on canvas. Learned by experience by just painting and painting. I looked at some YouTube videos. It was quite different from medicine where you sit in classes for ages but this was freedom.”

Easy: you make a spontaneous brush mark and then you make something of it. The magic is serendipitous. She has no plan necessarily at the outset and something comes that makes sense in a way.

“Painting like this changed my philosophy too – there is an uncontrolled element in each of us and you need to ride with it.”

The two ladies have had long discussions about how sometimes there is a continuum between planning and luck and then you roll with it. That is how this Choice and Chance show has come about.

In reaction to the eco-anxiety from which we are generally suffering is her River Runs Through – primarily a dark piece but a slight wave of brass and gold portrays the slim river of hope that we’ll come through this troubled time.

On the walls – Nancy McNabb’s are pretty dark and then she offers “can do happy.”

Summing up, she commented, “Patrice has multi skills and interests – in curiosity. She is totally intrigued by all sorts of things.

“She works so small and detailed and I’m kind of in-your-face and big.

“That’s why we work together.”

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