Edith VanderKloot works with slate and she is quite particular about the rock she selects for her work. However, she is not a contractor, but a foothills artist who draws and paints on slate to tell the story she saw in the stone.
“I search for a tile that has a lot of colour and texture,” she said. “Sometimes it will have cracks and indents which make it all the more interesting. Then I apply mixed media to it in the form of acrylic, pastels and inks.”
VanderKloot’s constant search for intriguing bits of slate can make her an interesting dinner guest.
“Sometimes I can walk into someone’s house, see a floor tile and say something like, ‘gosh I’d sure like to have that one,’ she explained.
Luckily for the people who invite her over she is able to control the desire to get down on the floor and chisel it out.
Many of the artist’s slate pieces, as well as samples of her photography, can be viewed at the Leighton Art Centre through March 5 in an exhibition called Transcendent Passage.
Megan Kerluke, the centre’s program director, said she is pleased to have the exhibit at the arts facility. She said the photos on display show VanderKloot’s love of layers as readily as her tile work does.
“It’s photographic art,” Kerluke said. “She takes a photograph that is a close up shot of something unusual then she uses mixed media tools to work on that photograph to bring out different images from the original image.”
The director said Transcendental Passage is both a balanced and engrossing exhibit of mixed media.
“We thought it was a really interesting combination,” Kerluke explained. “It’s classic and modern at the same time. You’re drawing on stone at one end and on the other side of things you are using modern technology to make art.”
Having taken photos professionally for more than two decades, VanderKloot has modified the way she’s enhanced her photos as new tools have become available.
“In the days of traditional photography we could bring parts of different images together,” she said. “Now with digital photos there are more possibilities in what you can do than there was before.”
But for VanderKloot, it’s not the technology that can make a photograph truly special, it’s the inspiration. She relies on her own imagination and storehouse of experiences to dream up the layers of imagery brought to life in an image. It’s much the same way with her stone tile art.
She gathers the material necessary for her work but waits for an idea to grasp her before putting paint to stone.
“I have collected many slate tiles now,” VanderKloot revealed. “I can look at them some days and see nothing and I’ll just leave them. But I can come back to them and, depending on what’s stored in my memory or my interests that day, the subject will be brought out to me.”
Wanting to open other’s eyes, especially those of young people, to the sorts of possibilities she sees in stone, VanderKloot has a special added aspect to the Transcendent Passage exhibition.
“I have a little rock collection in this gallery show,” she said. “It’s in there to bring out the fact the beauty is often in the raw material itself. Stones can be quite varied and coloured interestingly. They are often an art object unto themselves.”
Many examples of VanderKloot’s work can be found at her web site www.spiritedtransformations.com
For more on the Leighton Art Centre, Gallery and Museum, including driving directions to its location, go to www.leightoncentre.org