The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2004, Side 9

Vol. 59 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
51
‘A Silva Rerum’ (A Forest of Things):
The Art of Cliff Eyiand
by Kristine Perlmutter
As young boys growing up in
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Cliff Eyiand and
his brother “dreamed of Vikings and float-
ed a raft of railway ties in the harbour.”
(Self Portrait) In later years, he was indeed
to go ‘a-viking’ (exploring), taking his insa-
tiable intellectual curiosity, his writing and,
most importantly, his art, out into the
world. From childhood on, he has always
made art and been obsessed with drawing.
He studied art and philosophy at Holland
College of the Visual Arts in
Charlottetown, PEI and at Mount Allison
University in Sackville, NB, and received
his BFA from the forward-thinking Nova
Scotia College of Art and Design. His
work has been published and exhibited
across Canada, in the United States and in
Europe. Sites for his solo exhibitions have
included the Eye Level Gallery (Halifax),
Struts Gallery (Sackville, NB), Gallery
Sansair (Vancouver), Confederation Centre
Art Gallery (Charlottetown), Art Gallery
of Ontario (Toronto), Art Gallery of Nova
Scotia (Halifax) and the Winnipeg Art
Gallery. He has been featured in group
exhibitions in Italy, England, Poland and at
the National Gallery of Canada. He is rep-
resented by the Leo Kamen Gallery in
Toronto.
In earlier times, writers and artists who
wanted to hang on to elusive ideas, verbal
and visual, captured them in ‘commonplace
books’ for later reference. Earle Havens,
curator of the exhibit “Commonplace
Books” at the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library at Yale University,
indicates that, “these books show us how
people experienced knowledge and how
they organized knowledge.” (Havens 2001)
A glimpse into someone’s commonplace
book would uncover bits of this and that
that had been deemed worth keeping, that
spoke to them, were evocative, struck a
chord, captured their fancy. It gives you
some insight into a person’s mind, an
opportunity to explore. My conversation
with Cliff Eyiand at his studio in
Winnipeg’s Exchange District had the
effect of such a glimpse, revealing Eyland’s
wide ranging interests and his unique ‘take’
on a myriad of topics including quantum
physics, innumeracy, cosmology, music,
digital photography, libraries, books, the
content of art, the value of art, the defini-
tion of art, the accessibility of art and other
art-related topics. All this, of course, was
punctuated at intervals by the quirky
Eyland’s infectious laugh.
We talked of the Library of Babel envi-
sioned by Jorge Luis Borges, containing
every possible version of every book ever
written. Eyiand, who loves libraries and is
fascinated with books and book culture,
would undoubtedly agree with the famous
quotation attributed to Borges: “I have
always imagined Paradise will be a kind of
library.” He has spent a lot of time in
libraries and they have meant a lot to him.
If not for them, he suggests that he would-
n’t be doing what he is today. Part of the
experience, of course, involves hanging
around with librarians, whom Eyiand con-
siders “cool”. He has found a lot of
mementos, such as old letters, in library
books and decided to hide his art in books
and card catalogues as a way of giving back
to the library, illustrating the library and, at
the same time, using the library as a muse-
um in which to preserve his work.
Cliff was surprised to learn that his
name, Eyiand, indicates an island in
Icelandic. In the art world, he is a kind of
island, working with others but always in
his own way, and sometimes secretly
installing his work in galleries and libraries.
Commenting on his artistic vision, Robert
Enright has suggested that Eyiand must