Lane Shordee creates functioning art out of scraps
Lane Shordee is on the shortlist for handy people to join my post-apocalyptic survival colony. Not only can the guy build a functioning wagon from scraps he collected in alleys and dumpsters he also figured out how to cobble together a working shotgun comprised of a thick wooden private property sign and pipes. Did I mention he’s also a landscaper?
Shordee looks the part of a scavenger — at least on this day — sitting on a bench inside his handcrafted carriage in the tight confines of Pith Gallery. His clothes are dirty. His hands match. He hasn’t slept for quite some time in an effort to complete his installation. It’s appropriate given the prairie pioneer theme of his exhibition: Hello Neighbour .
His central creation the aforementioned wagon takes up most of the room in Pith’s downstairs space. Bits of multicoloured wood fragments of former doors walls floors and even realty signs are the parts that make up the whole. It looks more like the byproduct of a Great Depression travelling circus than what any self-respecting pioneer would drive.
Shordee constructed the wagon in his workshop — a century old garage/carriage house — before dismantling the entire thing and reassembling it in the gallery. He purposefully didn’t keep track of what went where forcing him to figure it out all over again once he biked the material to Pith. “I wanted to leave that as a challenge ’cause things will change and shift” he says. “That’s what I like. I like that a lot.”
You can never precisely re-create something he says even if you try.
He did however document the process. He photographed each part as he built it up took it apart and built it again in Pith. The result is a documentation video that shows the wagon forming coming apart and then reassembling. Shordee who admits to a fascination with science compares it to what would happen if you passed through a wormhole. “You wouldn’t be the same thing on the way out” he says.
While the wagon dominates the lower gallery upstairs will feature the aforementioned video along with his homemade shotgun and the video proof that the thing actually works.
Made of a simple wooden stock with pipes on top which slide on springs to form the barrel and firing mechanism the shotgun is another eclectic and colourful post-apocalyptic pioneer artifact.
After combining all the gun scraps Shordee drove out to the woods with two collaborators set the gun on a stand facing a target hid behind a metal door and activated the trigger with a string. The gun worked perfectly creating a starburst pattern on the target. The only glitch was the back of the pipe/barrel/firing mechanism also shot off. Good thing for the remote trigger.
Once the smoke settles on the Pith exhibition Shordee wants to get the wagon out of the gallery and onto the roads with real horses pulling people on rides. It would be right in time for the Stampede but that’s just serendipitous according to Shordee.
It’s a word he likes to use. It fits nicely into his scrap and hope aesthetic where he waits months before stumbling across the perfect piece of scrap — a wagon wheel a shotgun barrel a door. He says it’s taught him even more patience but it’s hard to imagine him as anything but calm.
When asked what he wants to do with all of this when the exhibition is over he says he hopes someone likes it and wants to take it with them. And if it breaks or someone doesn’t want it? “It was all scrap material so it’s no skin off my back” he says.
