Vollick touches the cosmos with project at St. Catharines performing arts centre
Queenston artist’s celestial time-lapse work on display
For Adam CK Vollick, nothing is permanent, nothing is ever done, and the same piece can circle back into light like the rotation of the sun and stars.
Thus, it may be fitting that his recent work in collaboration with FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre features the machinations of the heavens, churning in a loop on display across 15 video panels shining out onto St. Paul Street from above the centre’s bar.
“For me nothing is ever done. Deadlines and business make you say things are done, but nothing is ever really done,” said the artist and filmmaker, who has been working on a celestial timelapse project for the performing arts centre’s digital display since March 2017, with the display going live late last month after some technical issues.
The project draws from footage shot from the deck of his Queenston home: stills, time lapses and video, primarily from the 2015 lunar eclipse and the 2017 solar eclipse. The seven-hour loop is a rework of those photographs already in his archive — combined, stretched, digitally torn, reassembled and condensed — to create an ethereal cycle of day and night.
Vollick is always amassing material, never knowing when he might use it or transform it into another piece.
“You can drive yourself nuts thinking everything has to be permanent,” said Vollick, who works with inspiration when it strikes. When that moment appears, he does something about it.
The 40-year-old Dunnville native recalled one night during a movie shoot in Colorado. He should have been sleeping between the days of work but instead found himself under the stars with his camera in hand.
“The Milky Way was just so amazing, I just had to shoot,” said Vollick, attempting to suss out the impulse that drives his creative efforts.
“I try and let it be an instinctual thing … it’s that crazy dedication and self-sabotage that leads to life,” he said, noting those images included in the celestial time-lapse display have found their way into other projects, including collaborative stage work with music producer Daniel Lanois.
Beyond the two eclipses, found YouTube dashcam footage of meteor impacts and his own time-lapse depictions of flowing water work themselves into the loop, which Vollick has timed to mirror a full lunar cycle for those who pass by, in a way. The loop is timed across the day so if an individual walking by on the street were to pass at the same point every day they would see a different part of the loop for 28 days, the length of a full lunar cycle.
Even now, with the loop on display, and over four years of footage and photos rolled in, Vollick doubts the time lapse display is truly done.
“This is probably going to be a lifelong piece,” said Vollick, who has worked alongside the likes of Neil Young and Justin Timberlake.
With that said, he admitted he is happy with the piece as it stands, a sentiment that PAC executive director Steve Solski was quick to echo.
“The work is amazing, there is no doubt,” said Solski, noting Vollick is just one of the first in a line of artists whose work will grace the performing arts centre’s digital display, aimed at pushing its celebration of creativity through the windows and out onto the street.
For more on Vollick, and his body of “Space Time Paintings,” of which the loop is an extension, visit www.adamckvollick.com.