STONE & WOOD

Two local sculptors find their expression in the raw gifts nature offers up.

KERRY KNUDSEN

Joe Burchell uses a dowsing rod to commune with the energy of the Earth.

rock of ages

Stones are the inspiration for Joe Burchell’s monumental works of art

BY GAIL GRANT

Rock has been the cornerstone of Joe Burchell’s world for most of his life.

“The bulk of my career was spent blasting through rock,” he says, “primarily to get it out of the way. But in my retirement years, my biggest joy has been time spent understanding their form and function, while creating monuments with, and to, them.”

The self-deprecating style of this amazing 90-year-old makes the duality of his relationship with rock seem normal.

In 1954, with a new degree in mining engineering from Queen’s University, Joe began his working life in the sales department of the explosives arm of C-I-L (Canadian Industries Limited), headquartered in Montreal. As his career evolved, he became something of an explosives expert, initially travelling throughout the Americas and eventually around the world as he helped blow up rock in search of ore deposits or to tunnel through mountains to create highways.

Joe’s 24 years with C-I-L included moves to Sudbury, Elliot Lake and back to Montreal, as he continued to make his way up the corporate ladder, eventually into the office of vice-president. During that time, he was offered the position of CEO of the Atlas Powder Company, an American firm, and he and his wife, Trudy, moved to Dallas.

But the Burchells wanted to keep a connection with Canada, so they bought a weekend retreat in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, a haven they would treasure for more than 14 years. When Joe retired in the early 1990s, the couple continued to spend their summers in the Townships while wintering in warmer climes.

With consulting work still available to him, Joe made a pact with himself that any money he earned would go back into the local arts community. Throughout their time in Quebec, he and Trudy managed to put together an impressive collection of local art.

Around that time, he met Eddie Heath, a transplanted American, former football player and sculptor who became Joe’s gateway into his own creative side.

Eddie worked primarily in marble but viewed all stones as things of beauty. With

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

The Winner’s Circle

ONE OF A KIND

HIGHLY FACETED EMERALD CUT DIAMOND EARRINGS

1.40 ctw, VS1, col.E lab created diamonds set in 14k white gold with 14 additional round brilliant lab diamonds – total carat weight 1.55 $5250 pr.

WE CREATE WITH YOUR CHOICE OF NATURAL DIAMONDS, 1402 QUEEN STREET WEST • SUITE 102 • ALTON, CALEDON, ONTARIO INFO@GALLERYGEMMA.COM • 519-938-8386 • GALLERYGEMMA.COM LAB CREATED DIAMONDS OR MOISSANITE www.gallerygemma.com

ALL NATURAL SOAPS AND SKINCARE PRODUCTS MADE RIGHT HERE IN ORANGEVILLE! 450 Richardson Rd, Unit #5, Orangeville | bridlewoodsoaps.com www.bridlewoodsoaps.com aaronharcourt@gmail.com

Aaron ’ s Gardens & Design

Garden Design • Custom Planting • Maintenance Clean Up & Restoration • Tree Pruning & Spring/Fall Clean Up RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL 705-890-7191 | aaronharcourt@gmail.com

ROCK OF AGES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 79

a nod to Joe’s curious side, Eddie suggested that his friend learn the discipline of dowsing, best known to most of us for its association with using a dowsing rod to witch for water.

Courses in dowsing in both Vermont and at York University followed. Using a wood-handled length of spring wire with a knob on the end, Joe asks the apparently inert device an energyrelated question. The device appears to respond with a variety of motions that he then interprets. For Joe, the energy generated is a useful guide to the artistic expression of the stone.

“The essence of dowsing is in the connecting to the stone’s own energy,” says Joe. “Consider that both coal and uranium give off energy. A piece of quartz can power a radio signal that can reach out forever. Our presentday world is powered by silicon chips, so is it such a stretch to think ancient

A stone circle and some of the many other sculptures Joe Burchell carefully erected on his Caledon property. He transported many of the stones when he moved from the Eastern Townships in Quebec.

people hadn’t discovered that energy?” This thinking is why he often calls his creations “Neolithic art,” to honour the Stone Age peoples who used the earth’s energy to guide their activities and travels.

Using a backhoe to dig out a stone, Joe then takes time to consider how it will fit in a stone structure. While serving his artistic apprenticeship in the Eastern Townships, he discovered

PHOTOS KERRY KNUDSEN

that the obvious look of a stone is not always the best. He learned to twirl massive boulders with a tine of his backhoe in order to visualize them from every angle before finally settling them in place.

But it was after his move to Caledon in 1999 that he came into his own, and his creativity was released.

The move itself was memorable. Much to Trudy’s chagrin, when all Joe’s earth-moving equipment and each of the unique boulders he couldn’t bear to leave behind were finally packed up and ready to go, three dual axle gravel trucks, each pulling a flatbed trailer, were full to the brim and ready to make the in-tandem trip to the couple’s new home in Caledon.

“The toughest lessons I had to learn while creating one of my pieces,” Joe says, “is that the location of the structure has equal importance to what it is I do with each stone. If there is sky behind the structure, then the final view will have impact.”

Some of his inspiration comes from stone monuments and structures he has seen in his travels; some comes simply from the shape of the stone itself. Many of his creations are studies in texture and form; others are suggestions of beings. And some are simply landscaping devices.

“It takes time to put a sculpture together, adding one piece at a time over the course of months until the final form reveals itself. These things evolve and can’t be rushed,” he says.

postscript

Tragically, this past February, Covid-19 took the life of Trudy, Joe’s beloved wife of 68 years. Joe also contracted the disease. He is still recovering.

905 624 5377 www.rudyvandenbergclassicrenovations.com www.rudyvandenbergclassicrenovations.com

Your support changes lives right Make a difference, donate today! www.ccs4u.org here in Caledon. www.ccs4u.org

Family Individual Caregiver Youth Senior

PHOTOS PETE PATERSON

tree of life

Artist Jim Menken’s chainsaw allows fallen trees to rise again

BY ANTHONY JENKINS

The 10,000 hours of practice that writer Malcolm Gladwell ruled necessary to become an expert in anything are manifest underfoot outside the studio of Mono sculptor Jim Menken.

A soft beach of sawdust spreads in all directions, its sweet smell on the wind that ruffles the surrounding cedars and poplars. On this prepandemic day in 2019, Jim’s next work, destined to join many of his others in Orangeville’s Art Walk of Tree Sculptures, still slumbers in the horizontal forest of grey logs bordering his beach.

Jim picks a log from among the pack like a sommelier picking a perfect vintage. He hauls it out and stands it upright with the help of a geriatric, once-orange tractor. Then, battered ball cap tilted back on his head, he circles the 10-foot-long trunk. He’s serious, searching the artistic possibility beneath the fluttering strips of bark and fist-like knots, seeking a start.

A week later the log is bereft of bark, mottled caramel in colour and shedding sprays of sawdust which garnish a pipe-and-plank scaffolding and the sculptor who stands atop it. Jim wields a chainsaw surely and swiftly in the late summer sun, coaxing a cat, a larger-than-life-size descending cat, from within a roughly sketched Sharpie outline near the log’s top.

He carves off slab-sized blocks of not-cat, deftly flicking them away with the tip of the chainsaw’s blade. An amber arch emerges. A few minutes later, as he works with a smaller, nimbler saw, it becomes a tail.

“It’s all about confidence,” the carver says. “It’s about matching your cuts, making them meet. You don’t want to overcut and slice into a tail.”

Jim re-sketches the feline and carves further. The blocky form is becoming feline. Jim’s angular chops are becoming strokes, increasingly more fluid and sinuous. Later, after he considers a couple of protruding knots further down the log, a second cat’s outline is shifted slightly to avoid

Jim Menken at work on “The Cats,” a sculpture in tribute to the feline companions of Lynn and Dan Lubitz.

them, and the reclining form of a third cat emerges further below.

As he begins to employ an arsenal of ever-smaller Dremel saws, grinders and wheels, his pace slows. Tools which whine, not roar, now smooth and caress. They comb furrows of fur from the wood. The carver’s head is cocked in thought with each refinement until, finally, it nods in approval. Done. It’s taken about seven working days.

“I hope it turns out,” Jim said earlier, during a blissful, chainsawdown silence. Does he have any doubts about that? “No,” he responds immediately with a laugh, shaking off a layer of sawdust.

If you call Sheila Duncan, communications manager for the town of Orangeville, “Mother of Sculptures,” she’ll laugh, too. But she agrees, “They are my babies. Each one has its story and I’ve been involved with them all.”

Alongside her other duties Sheila manages the town’s tree sculpture program – currently about 50 outdoor carvings gracing Orangeville’s neighourhoods and boulevards. She sees to replacing deteriorating ones (a couple a year, lifespan about 10 to 15 years), monitoring and maintaining existing ones, and commissioning new ones.

Why tree sculptures? Community engagement and a tourist draw,

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

TREE SERVICES Tree Removal & Pruning Lot Clearing Stump Grinding Forestry Bucket Truck Service Utility Line Cleaning

LANDSCAPING Design/Build/Install Interlock & Natural Stone Water Features Grading & Excavations Fiberglass & ICF Concrete Pools

Call Shawn at 905-880-5263 for information

Make the right choice – hire the Specialist

LOCALLY OWNED & OPERATED SINCE 2011 FULLY INSURED WSIB

visit inthehills.ca

SUMMER ONLINE

TAKE A VIRTUAL HOME TOUR

THE STORIES BEHIND LOCAL FOOD

Lusting for rural real estate? Take a tour with In The Hills of some of the top treasures in Headwaters we’ve had the pleasure of visiting — from an artsy heritage home to a modern architectural gem.

SUMMER CRITTERS IN OUR MIDST

Our resident naturalist — and keen eye — Don Scallen shares his notes on how beetles’ shells hint at their toxicity, the myopia of beavers, the meaning of butterfl ies’ odd fl ight patterns, and hungry birds. You won’t look at the great outdoors the same way again.

Headwaters farms, farmers’ markets and shops are bursting with fresh produce, readymade meals and must-try pantry staples. We have the inside scoop on many of the local stars to make space for on your shopping list.

JOEY PANETTA . SHUTTERSTOCK . BEN RAHN / A-FRAME

FOLLOW US

Jim Menken has contributed more than 30 works to Orangeville’s Art Walk of Tree Sculptures, including from left, “The Musicians,” “Physician and Patient,” and “Pelicans.”

TREE OF LIFE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 83

she says. Bus tours do come, and Orangeville’s Visitor Centre will provide people to do commentary, Sheila herself, on occasion.

In 2003, then-mayor Drew Brown saw historic tree sculptures in Truro, Nova Scotia and thought, “Why can’t Orangeville do that?” So they did. Beginning in 2004, Jim Menken, an artist but a novice with a chainsaw – a fact he didn’t hide – was commissioned to carve the farmer that still stands outside McDonald’s on lower Broadway.

The town annually budgets $5,000 to ensure at least one new sculpture each year. Businesses or citizens can also sponsor a work. In fact, more than half the sculptures been privately sponsored. The town provides the concrete pedestal (which greatly increases longevity), the labour to erect and maintain each sculpture, and also promotes them with a digital tour on its website and social media.

Sheila vets a concept (historical figures, animals and birds are favoured), assesses the site for practicalities (will the carving impede snow clearance or disturb buried infrastructure?), and checks with neighbours (“We want it to be a positive experience. You’re going to be looking at this thing for a long time.”)

A concept is agreed upon and a budget confirmed ($2,000 to $4,000 per commission, depending on complexity, with a tax receipt for the donor). An artist is contacted, a sketch delivered, and delicious anticipations unleashed before any chainsaw is put to work in a sawdust-strewn studio such as Jim’s.

Lynn and Dan Lubitz have made their home on Zina Street in Orangeville for the past eight years. Across the street on a neighbour’s lawn stands a tree sculpture featuring two dogs, pets of the Staley family. The Lubitzes admired it, and regularly noticed

PHOTOS COURTESY TOWN OF ORANGEVILLE

Thinking of buying or selling?

I am a local realtor who knows this area intimately. I work diligently on your behalf to help you attain your real estate goals. Call me today to help get you started.

Photo by Mary Armstrong

SARAH ASTON Sales Representative SUTTON HEADWATERS REALTY INC sarahaston.ca 519.217.4884 Town and Country Properties www.sarahaston.ca

passersby doing the same. “This was the kind of neighbourhood we wanted to move into,” Lynn says. “The sculpture contributed to that.”

A couple of years ago, a big maple on their lawn decided to grow sickly, town arbourists decided it should be felled, and the squat stump left helped the Lubitzes decide to replace it with a tree sculpture. Of playful cats. Their cats, Oliver and Sydney. When they learned the sculptor would be Jim Menken, the same carver who’d done the dogs, they were thrilled. “We’d heard about him from so many people. He’s so well respected in town,” says Lynn.

They sent Jim colour photos of their cats. (The carving would be stained rather than painted, because staining lasts longer.) Jim produced a sketch, and the Lubitzes “suggested, not insisted on” adding a third cat, their departed pet, Curtis.

On a chilly, wet day a few weeks later, the finished work arrived unceremoniously at the Lubitzes’ home on the back of a municipal works truck. Jim and two town workers with a backhoe wrestled the sculpture onto its concrete pedestal.

Never mind the weather, though. Seeing the finished carving in place was a sunny moment for the Lubitzes. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!” Dan says. Lynn, who has now viewed the sculpture from her office window for two years, says, “It brings a smile to my face at least twice a day.” She equally enjoys seeing so many others stop and admire it. “Unlike just enjoying it yourself,” she says, “it’s for everybody to enjoy. It’s a community experience.”

You can find a map and digital tour of Orangeville’s Art Walk of Tree Sculptures under Walking Tours at www.orangeville.ca