IN QUADRATUM The square is familiar and identifiable to us all. It is one of the first shapes we learn to recognize. Children use it as a main focus in their drawings. They might depict the square to suggest the basic structure of a house, to represent a box or sometimes a book. These animations of the square are not unique to children but are echoed in symbols found throughout cultures and societies. The four artists who make up In Quadratum also thought of these objects when considering the square and these ideas and others are reflected in their new work. After playing with different possible ideas for a collaborative project, this group of artists found that the natural theme should be the square to reflect the four equal but separate members. Whether in clay, paper, painting or printmaking, their art is a result of their individual explorations of the theme. When brought together, their art gives balanced but layered answers to the question: what is the square? Their responses are ones that address the stability and uniformity of the square but also disturb it and open it up. When I asked a random group of people how they would describe the square or what qualities they felt a square had, I received a list of positive adjectives like strong, equal, solid and safe but also a list that suggested its limitations like confining, inflexible, cold and safe. This dichotomy seems to be one of the complexities of the square. Its safety, for instance, can be at once attractive and uninviting. Its walls can be there to protect us or to contain us against our will. One of the artists in this exhibition, Derek Chung, looks at the square as an object that can control chaos within its borders or keep it safely outside. Either way, the fear, or perhaps the excitement, created by the unknown and the disorderly are robbed, or maybe saved by this rigid structure. Chung's clay tiles are beautifully manipulated in a methodical process of working the clay and then using a glaze and wax resist to create the pattern. It is a regimented process that results in balanced and rhythmic patterning. But Chung disturbs this regularity by including one set of white tiles. The cleanliness and beauty of these white tiles parallel these same qualities of the square but within a series of red clay tiles they surprise us and force us to reconsider them. Chung's series of tiles also references early clay tablets. The purpose of these early tablets was to record stories; they are some of the earliest forms of today's books. This connection between the square and the book is common. Ruth Read also thinks about this relationship in her work. Many of her works incorporate the book, the vessel of knowledge and information. Made out of brown paper stained with india ink, these hand-made books (which interestingly contain no written language but still convey an abundance of information through the staining and the making) lie or stand beside other objects upon altar-like slate tiles. Read places the books beside hand-made paper bags and natural materials to conjure up all her reactions to and relationships with the square. In one case a book hides inside a box. These boxes and bags remind us of the square's ability to hide and protect and that what is inside can offer us welcome surprises. For Read the square reminds her of the winter garden, enclosed on four sides and containing natural materials. Her work also includes elements from nature like a dried pear, sand collected from Newfoundland and dried leaves. The garden for Read is a place of peaceful intimacy separated from the rest of the world, a sacred place of solace and a quiet space to think. Similarly, these offerings of objects gathered together and organized personally by Read, give viewers an intimate encounter with the artist and her thoughts and provide safe escapes of beauty. We use the word square to define a meeting place in the central part of a city or town, one often bordered either literally by walls or by walls of buildings. Carol Kapuscinsky's paintings take us far beyond the city square and out into the fields of Ontario. Her four-foot squared canvases depict fields, in each of the four seasons. Despite the fact that she has chosen to use a square canvas, clearly defined within specific borders, Kapuscinsky manages to take the viewer far beyond these limits. Within this structured form, she offers us peaceful views of the seasons, each one with familiar attributes and personalities. By continually layering thin glazes of colour onto the canvas, Kapuscinsky creates a rich and deep experience of the land. Further, she manages, by her choice of subject matter and her treatment of the paint, to draw us into the scene and in so doing the sides of the square fade and are replaced instead with a sense of endless life. The square can also have much more symbolic if not ritualistic roles. For Judith Welbourn there is a clear connection between shapes and colours. Through studying the characteristics, meanings and symbolism of colour, Welbourn discovered the relationship between the strong shape of the square with the strength of the colour red. Both for her represent universal symbols that are deeply connected with the earth. In Red Monopoly she brings those two thoughts together in four lithographic prints that hang as one large square. Here again, the artist has chosen to use the structure of the shape but by adding one corner that is similar to others but distinctly different, she questions its uniformity and adds her fingerprint. In this exhibition the square is undoubtedly an icon, but quite different from being sterile and cold, the squares of In Quadratum are nothing if not personal. The artists in this exhibition, although celebrating the formal qualities of the square, add evidences of their personal lives, softening the rigidity and inviting their viewers to experience their creations in a safe but exciting way. By pushing the strong boundaries naturally imposed by this shape, they open it up and let people in. Exhibition Catalogue Maura Broadhurst, Curator The Latcham Gallery In Quadratum October, 2003