Ephemeral Rock Art – On Lake St-Louis

My amazing daughter wanted to spend a special day with me for Father’s Day, starting with treating me to lunch for the first time. We went for fish & chips at The Old Orchard pub in Pointe-Claire village. She proposed we walk around the area, as it’s on the waterfront and has some nice places to see. We went down one of the boat landings and walked little along the shore. She was enjoying finding nice shells and fossils. I had been teasing her to join me in a little guerrilla art for some time now, and realized she never told me she didn’t quite know what I meant.

Well, the art teacher came to the surface and demonstrated an example of it with rock sculptures. As we walked and noticed things, I weaved in some vocabulary on this art form: public, ephemeral, temporary, unsigned, random, available, documented, etc…

The rock sculptures by themselves are fun to make. One only needs patience to be able to balance random shapes vertically. The real art is in documenting the structures/sculptures with a perspective that elevates them. I’ve been following some advertisers who make outstanding commercials using an iPhone and playing with perspectives, so I decided to use what I’ve been learning.

Getting close to the ground distances the horizon line and makes the sculptures look much larger than they are. It was a cloudy day with a sprinkling of rain. This grey atmosphere helped heighten details and colours in the rocks. The wetness on their surfaces also brought our deeper tones that would have been muted by dusty dryness.

Here are a few we enjoyed making together.

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I’m sure there will be more of these this summer, so stay tuned…