New York
Brenda Garand’s sculpture series “Northern Passage” reflects on the devastation caused by Tropical Storm Irene (2011), including the destruction of her Vermont studio on the White River. Garand’s notions of nature and culture evoke her French Canadian, Abenaki, and British heritages. She employs materials associated with construction, hunting, and fishing—including roofing paper, wire, and steel, fish hooks and lures, and porcupine quills—and reinforces those allusions through her titles: for example, Lac-Mégantic (lac meaning “lake” and mégantic meaning “many fish” in Abenaki). Kamouraska, an Algonquin word for “where the bulrushes grow,” refers to a town on the St. Lawrence River in Gaspé, Québec, known for its windy, turbulent weather. Kamouraska Wind (2014), an airborne work made of steel, roofing paper, wool, and silk, appears fragile…see the entire review in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
