Turning litter into art

OLGA LIVSHIN

The name of Joel Libin’s solo show at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery echoes the writing on the lids of the city’s garbage bins: Vancouver Keep it Spectacular! It is not a coincidence; the young artist incorporates litter from the city’s streets into many of his paintings.

“Art makes me feel better. If I don’t do art, I feel like I’m wasting time,” Libin said in an interview with the Jewish Independent.

Following his dream to become a professional artist, Libin is presently enrolled in the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, but his free spirit doesn’t submit easily to formal education. “I learn better by volunteering,” he admitted with a grin.

The list of his volunteer positions in the arts community is impressive. Since 2007, he has volunteered as a host for several Vancouver galleries. “When I work at a gallery, I meet wonderful artists. I learn what is important and why it’s important. I analyze why I love this painting and hate another one,” he explained.

Libin’s first solo show arose out of his volunteer work, while he served as a studio coordinator at Basic Inquiry Gallery on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. During his years with the gallery, he had participated in several group shows, but, this once, he was late to submit his paintings. Surprisingly, the gallery offered him a solo show instead. It opened in July 2009 and was a resounding success. Of the more than 30 paintings and drawings on display, about two-thirds were sold.

Even when he doesn’t paint, ideas bloom in his head, and he always has a notebook with him to jot them down. His poem-notes have no rhymes but many lyrical connotations. It is no surprise, then, that Libin fits well within the Vancouver poet community. He volunteered for a poetry program on Coop Radio and wrote a blog for a while. To continue his collaboration with other Vancouver poets, Libin invited them to participate in an open mic event held at the Zack Gallery on Thursday, June 23.

His inspiration often sprouts from words, he said, and many of Libin’s paintings are tied to his poetry. Some even have verses written on the back of the canvases, and most of their titles come from his poems. “I create stories in my head when I paint,” he said, although he pointed out that there is no overt correlation between his visual art and his poetic annotations. It seems that one stream of expression is simply not enough to contain the artist’s creative output.

“I always work on several paintings at once,” he explained of his routine. “I dab some color on one painting and then walk to another one. I like painting in layers. It’s not a cognitive process, it’s intuitive.”

When he starts a painting, he never knows how it will look when finished. “It would be boring,” he explained. “I know the painting is finished when I like it. There is nothing more to add. I think, ‘Man, you’re good!’ But, if I don’t like it, I destroy it and start a new one. Even if it’s on the same subject, new ideas often come.”

Some time ago, Libin even kept an unfinished painting on the floor beside his bed. He could add a color or a line whenever his fancy demanded, but such an intense creative process interfered with his sleep. “I don’t do it anymore,” he confessed. “The paints made a mess in my bedroom.”

Like visual thoughts on canvas, many of his painting contain faces, but none of them is photographic. “I don’t enjoy representing real people. It’s more fun to convey my own impressions: how the light hits, how the form changes from this angle. I like to challenge rules, to rearrange colors like a puzzle. I like that my paintings are often confusing. Everyone sees something different.”

His faces are abstract, fractured, lost in the city, like the garbage pieces embedded in the images. Libin’s fascination with city litter started around 2009. “I saw so much garbage on the streets,” he said. “I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if garbage was perceived as public art? What if things were buried in paint? I wanted to create tactile, three-dimensional paintings.”

He started collecting his finds and experimenting. The results of his two years of experimentations comprise the current exhibition. Libin has already sold several of the paintings from Vancouver Keep it Spectacular! and has been commissioned for two more works.

In some of the paintings, the faces are distinct, baffled by our litter-generating society. Vibrant and humorous, they scowl in disapproval. In other paintings, the faces are hidden. Their vague features emerge from the seemingly random pattern of colorful splotches and glued-on objects only when one steps away from the picture. “It’s like a metaphor for life,” said Reisa Schneider, Zack Gallery director. “Close up, it’s fragmented, but the farther away you step, the clearer the shape.”

The exhibit runs until July 17.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She’s available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected].

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