Bob Haverluck

River Music Wreck near Keeyask Hydro Dam

White Oak, copper wire with verdigris, ebony, acrylic, mounted on shield granite; 60”x20”. Available for purchase from artist ($2,400 CAD + S&H) - contact us for more information.

Read the accompanying poem written by artist Bob Haverluck in the pdf below.

Bob Haverluck

Grieving Forest near Missi Falls Dam

White Oak, iron nails, acrylic, mounted on shield granite; 32”x34”. Available for purchase from artist ($1,900 CAD + S&H) - contact us for more information.

Read the accompanying poem written by artist Bob Haverluck in the pdf below.

Bob Haverluck

Water Keeper Awash in Heron Rain

Granite, copper wire with verdigris, poplar, acrylic, ink; 18”x11”. Sold.

Read the accompanying poem written by artist Bob Haverluck in the pdf below.

Bob Haverluck

Salmon Catching Bear

Poplar, water colour, walnut oil, hammered copper, copper wire; 30”x16”.

The wood made me do it. It had a Bear in it. It had Salmon in there and a distant shore line. And verde gris conjured onto the hammered copper wire of  the distant trees then played off the hammered copper sheeting, that helps say — water.

On seeing this work, a friend said out loud: “That sculpture needs a trickster story.” About that time I was re-reading David Suzuki’s telling of the green fuse of the great trees of BC’s forests curiously being N15 nitrogen. N15 comes from the ocean, which is nowhere near the great trees of the interior. That led back to Salmon and Bear and the business of the trickster story.

Because…because, Salmon it turns out incarnates the nitrogen. By river and creek, Salmon journey up into the interior. Bear eats Salmon. Bear fertilizes the shoreline and its trees. Bear along with feathered and furry kin who eat the largely uneaten carcasses that Bear leaves, also fertilize the shoreline and far beyond. But, why did Bear decide to eat Salmon? And why did Salmon catch Bear? And where would the forests, river and stream waters be without these community representatives of land and waters?

The story is written, but only one of the drawings to go with it is done. In time it may help to say again in a different way that —Trees need Rivers and Rivers need Trees. And then there is Ocean.

Bob Haverluck

Calls to Prayer in a Time of Wildfires

Oak with bark and lichen, fire, copper, bronze , steel wire; 32”x 16”.

Alarm-bell-prayers of WOE are called forth for some by forests and grasslands aflame in every hemisphere. As well, arising are prayers of WOW speaking and giving feet to some hearts gobsmacked by the resilience and passion for life amidst much death. Maybe this sculpture can sound both.  Notice the enduring ambiguous bell, framed by scorched bark and the two hammered steel wire rabbits, escapees from the flames on their way to make a menagerie starting with two.

For some a sculpture may be a kind of prayer and may help the heart speak along with the head as may  dance, song, photograph, painting, etc... The truths of our ecological crises and responses need to be articulated, feelingly shaped on way to being addressable characters. For this smoky business of disasters is in us, outside us and between us and needs to be feelingly voiced, bodied forth.

Nevertheless, an artwork may ring no bells for those to whom it is offered. Or it may enthral for amoment and then go the way of a good glass of wine. Rather than being the stuff of a radical aesthetic, it may become, and usually does become a kind of anaesthetic. Not unlike much field research done and delivered to government agencies. Yet art like science, perhaps this sculpture, may offer a kind of catharsis that helps put the arse back on the road that otherwise is just stuck in its chair. It may be a kind of starting bell.

Bob Haverluck

Tree is a Promise of Rivers

Oak; 40”x10”.

I wanted to let the wood be, be beautiful. And not just because Dostoyevsky said: “Beauty will save the world.” Although I do believe passion for beauty will help.

I mean Beauty not as sweets to distract from our three alarm situation. I mean Beauty, the “fearful symmetry” of Wm Blake’s “Tyger, tyger, burning bright”. I mean the beauty that is not simply attraction but, in truth, is also frightening, and speaks of a kind of power and threat that makes it a “terrible beauty” (Yeats).

Like the Good that is much about, Beauty’s presence may subvert our capitulation to cynicism.

More exactly, our collusion with cynicism, with collusions’ little payoffs, ‘kickbacks’ leaving us with the comfortable illusion of just being left alone.

Like the Good, Beauty begins as a gift before calling us to task and tasks to respond in kind and kindnesses to the world. This makes it a pain in the ass of those like me who would remain sitting, entertained and distracted. For the existence of the Good and Beautiful speaks loudly of the good possibilities that can and need to be multiplied.

Can you see them in this sculpture? There in the heartwood see a host of tiny rivers where water flows with a green gravity skywards. There a tumult of juicy leafs make a  waterfall falling upwards. Or is it a fountain?

Each tree is a fountain conspiring with other trees to make Rivers. Rivers who in turn will nurture the awful wonder which is every forest with rabbits and all. Ain’t that beautiful and good?

Bob Haverluck

Fleeing the Wildfire

Oak, hammered patinated copper wire, fire, walnut oil; 30”x18”.

The wildfires scattered throughout British Columbia, summer of 2021 sparked this brooding. Maybe this piece of oak slab signed by fire can say  ‘ragged mountainside’. And maybe, with hammered wire we can feelingly see a particular creature, an ‘individual’ Rabbit. This before Rabbit becomes a representative of every terrified creature running from the fire. And before my anthropocentric imagination begin seeing myself, ourselves, in Rabbit. In this case that may be a good thing if it helps us take seriously the news bulletins from sister Mother Nature.

Maybe this serious play can help give some “sens” , meaning and direction to the shapeless anxiety, a rising bile in our heart’s gut. Such is a central purpose of the artist and their art, as philosopher R.G. Collingwood argued on the eve of the Second World War, 1938:

            … what he has to utter is not, as the

            individualistic theory of art would have us

            think, his own secrets. As a spokesman of his

            Community, the secrets he must utter are

            their’s. The reason why they need the artist

            is that no community altogether knows it’s

            own heart; and by failing in this knowledge

            a community deceives itself on the one

            subject concerning which ignorance means

            death. For the evils which come from that

            ignorance, the poet … suggests no remedy,

            because the poet has already given one. The

            remedy is the poem itself. Art is the

            community’s medicine for the worst disease

            of mind, the corruption  of consciousness.          

Perhaps, we who host our society’s “consciousness” … and unconscious may hear something in this shout of wood and wire.

The imagined ideal collaboration would have allowed for us to have spend time together on a site or two along one of the northern rivers. There I might have been alongside as you and  your team made observations. And there we might have been in conversation about the pushes and pulls at play in a particular setting , or two or three. Between the time line that we were given and the Covid constrictions, restrictions such ideal interplay was not possible. 

“However, given my years of working with communities affected by hydro development along the Churchill and Nelson Rivers , with time spent there and elsewhere in the shield with similar geography and resource development  dynamics did allow us to join thru our backgrounds. As well, your photo documentation offered vivid images of some of your terrain / work areas led me to shared kinds of places enough to help nurture the artistic imagination. Besides this our conversations about our shared sense of these places and forces at play was integral to helping launch and inform the artworks that have emerged.” - Bob Haverluck

“Intimidating is how I would describe my initial thoughts coming into this collaboration. What do I know about art? How can I contribute to this project? These fears were quickly put to rest after chatting with Bob in our initial project meeting. Bob is a kind and generous listener who is genuinely curious about the natural environment, waters, and people around him. He is a keen observer of all things, and this is reflected in the intricacy and subtleties of his art and descriptive story telling. Nearing the end of our collaboration I still have no idea what to expect for our final piece and I am more than OK with that - I love the intrigue this fosters. I am confident our interactions will be reflected in this piece, and that I will love its message and medium. Bob is careful and thoughtful about his choices of materials - everything tells a story in this piece. I am grateful to have been a part of the process, and to have observed (from the inside) the process of Bob’s creation, with some input based from science, but also informed by the piece’s natural materials and way of being. One of my favourite quotes from Bob is ‘Art’s task, in part, is to engage the tragic and comic boundaries of human existence; to help negotiate the boundary waters and all the flow between them.’ There is so much power in using Art as an expression of this science.” - Trish Stadnyk