Time flies when you are juggling a number of projects. Here it is one week into November and I am scrambling to post October’s update. Thanks to Jack’s brother Joe and his wife Lisa, the remaining slides are being scanned. Those slides continue to be a treasure trove of early drawings, including three exquisite grease pencil renderings of factories. These pieces are clearly reminiscences of the smelters that dominate the landscape of the mining towns that surround Sudbury. Sadly, these drawing no longer exist. I am glad that the slides exist so that their history can be documented, but disappointed that the originals have been lost to time.
My most recent trip to 401 Richmond to continue the process of sending the paintings that remain in storage to Jack’s gallery has turned up two paintings the existence of which I had not previously been aware. I missed the existence of the first (it was stacked behind others and I did not notice it on my previous excavations) and I did not think that the second was Jack’s. His former assistant and studio mate Matt Janisse helped identify it as one of Jack’s. I will be documenting both this month. I also hope to complete the documentation of the early works on the remaining slides. By November the cataloguing should be largely complete.
I have been unable to find time to further develop the second of the five planned essays on the historical development of Jack’s work. I hope to re-engage with that project towards the end of this month.