MARK PRIER
Pulp
Pulp
September 4 - 28, 2024
Opening:
September 14, 2024, 1 - 4 pm
Pulp developed from a conversation I had twenty years ago in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. I was at the lookout on Crow Hill, staring at the town’s pulp mill with my sister, Victoria. She mentioned artificial vanilla could be made from lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. This offhand fact created a tenuous connection for me. You never forget the smell of vanilla, just like you never forget the smell of a pulp mill.
This year I started painting people from my time in Newfoundland. Artificial vanilla on watercolour paper. The caramel in the vanilla stains the paper, re-creating memories (fictions?) anew.
Recently I told my sister about her asteroid namesake, 12 Victoria. She likes to pretend the asteroid was named for her, though it most certainly wasn’t. John Russell Hind, who named it, died in 1895, long before either of us took our first breaths. Still, my sister and that asteroid share a tenuous connection. Like pulp mills and artificial vanilla. Enough to build a story upon. Something from a pulp novel.
I have no asteroid namesake, but I, too, can pretend. Just like my sister.
- Mark Prier
Opening:
September 14, 2024, 1 - 4 pm
Pulp developed from a conversation I had twenty years ago in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. I was at the lookout on Crow Hill, staring at the town’s pulp mill with my sister, Victoria. She mentioned artificial vanilla could be made from lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. This offhand fact created a tenuous connection for me. You never forget the smell of vanilla, just like you never forget the smell of a pulp mill.
This year I started painting people from my time in Newfoundland. Artificial vanilla on watercolour paper. The caramel in the vanilla stains the paper, re-creating memories (fictions?) anew.
Recently I told my sister about her asteroid namesake, 12 Victoria. She likes to pretend the asteroid was named for her, though it most certainly wasn’t. John Russell Hind, who named it, died in 1895, long before either of us took our first breaths. Still, my sister and that asteroid share a tenuous connection. Like pulp mills and artificial vanilla. Enough to build a story upon. Something from a pulp novel.
I have no asteroid namesake, but I, too, can pretend. Just like my sister.
- Mark Prier