Gravity and Grace: Selected Writing

Kathy E. Zimon is a fine arts librarian (emerita) at the University of
Calgary. She is the author of Alberta Society of Artists: The First 70
Years and co-editor of Art Documentation Bulletin of the Art Libraries
Society of North America.

Gil McElroy acknowledges that the title, “Gravity and Grace,”
originated with the philosopher Simone Weil, but in the introduction
McElroy elaborates on its meaning and personal associations for him,
more than justifying the appropriation.

Among these essays, only the first and last are new to the collection,
all the others having been previously published in exhibition
catalogues, most from the Confederation Centre Art Gallery & Museum in
Charlottetown, and periodicals like ARTSatlantic, Sculpture, Art Papers,
Espace, Visual Arts News, and Extension. Consequently, few libraries are
likely to have all of them in their collections separately.

McElroy is an artist, poet, independent curator, and critical writer on
contemporary art. The subjects of his 19 essays are diverse: the
citadel, public monuments, and gardens in Halifax; the prints of Dan
Steeves; drawings by Susan Wood; the encaustic paintings of Peter
Dykhuis; the architectural/sculptural installations of Carl Zimmerman;
the paintings and drawings of E. Nancy Stevens; the landworks of Marlene
Creates; the “box works” sculpture of Thierry Delva; the visual
poetry of bpNichol; the absence of the body in postmodernist art; the
ceramics of Alexandra McCurdy; the X-ray collages of Gerald Beaulieu;
the bookworks of Robin Muller and others; the inscribed ceramic bowls of
Janet Doble; the sculptural “ghosts” of Dennis Gill; the serigraphs
of Christopher Pratt; and conceptual art and the NSCAD connection. The
work discussed is as much a source of inspiration for McElroy’s
reflections—on cosmology, history, the military, local lore—as the
object of specific commentary. The black-and-white illustrations are few
and unexceptional, but the writing, personal as well as erudite, is
always lucid and free of art critical jargon.

The book’s spare and elegant design complements the poetic language.
It should be acquired not only for the informed and unique perspective
it brings to contemporary Canadian art, but also for its literary merit.