Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Michael Kinghorn
Article 32 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the March 21, 2007 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Where Invention Becomes Art
When Wakefield's Michael Kinghorn was a small boy he looked forward to Christmas as a chance to take apart his presents. Literally. Toys, clocks, radios, machines of all kinds, he started young as the 'destructo kid'. With the curiosity of a scientist and the imagination of an artist, he could see the potential. He just had to figure out the know-how.
"I liked seeing how things work. Even today I can't walk by a machine without stopping and wondering - what makes that thing tick. I knew when I was five that one day I would be an artist."
That combination of fanciful artistry and practical invention has become his hallmark, whether it be in his found-object sculptures or commissioned blacksmithing. Everything he envisions leads him on to discover new ways to execute his projects.
Born in Montreal in 1967, Michael left for Toronto in his late teens. A whole new world opened up for him as he rode his bike around Queen and Bathurst. Artist studios flourished everywhere. By chance Michael came upon his own personal mecca on a long trek home along the beach one day from further west - the Lesley Spit, the 7 km peninsula where the city incinerated its garbage.
"Lake Ontario scrapes away the land mass there, tumbling all these little objects into polished jewels. I found shapes that look like human faces, eyes, hands and legs - from beach glass, kitchen utensils, copper wire and weird, battered bits of plastic and steel.
"That moment brought me back to being a kid again, fascinated with the guts of a clock radio. Here I was on the beach seeing the guts of things we use every day. I came home and recycled this 'garbage' into found object sculptures - people and animals - held together with epoxy, wire, rivets and bolts. I was living hand to mouth when I had my first show, "Project 6705" in a one-room gallery on Queen Street, July 1988. But I'd found my calling. I've been haunting that beach ever since."
From these early whimsical sculptures Michael went on to teach himself metalwork and blacksmithing while working at any job he could find. A year in Lithuania apprenticing at a coal forge inspired him to move to Wakefield in 1995 to open his own blacksmith shop. Over the last 12 years he has earned his living, creating custom-designed sculptural and functional pieces in wrought iron, forged steel and cast copper.
A former member of the Studio Tour, Michael has exhibited his work in many group and solo shows, locally and in Toronto, New York and Eastern Europe. In a world that is overbuilt and filled with 'stuff', where technology makes every aspect of our lives interconnected, his sculptures increasingly speak to the difficulty of finding space, solace, renewal, privacy. They comment on the social decay of our cities as we discard things at will, and at our peril, in our lust for cheaper and cheaper con+sumer goods.
"All art is about the artist. How he sees the world, where meaning takes hold of him. What you offer is part of your Self. It is that search for beauty - no matter how rigorous the statement. I always strive to make my work clean and fresh with strong, fluid lines and details. I have a visual image in my mind. I keep rotating it 360 degrees. I am constantly looking at it until I am ready to build it. And then, in the building, it becomes sanctuary.
"All that preparation, all that struggle to survive, and then you relax. You let it go. Art becomes the place where you open up."