Geordie Lishman: the only constant is variety

(My May 2010 column in the Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser)

Although he was born into an iconic family of Canadian artists -- his father is renowned sculptor/filmmaker, Bill Lishman and his mother Paula is an acclaimed fashion designer -- Ajax sculptor, Geordie Lishman literally began his artistic journey travelling across North America as a teenage spray paint artist in the musical/cultural phenomenon known as the Grateful Dead tours. And followed that up with stays in Mexico and, later, Japan, eking out an existence by selling the fantasy scenes he would knock off in 10 minute bursts of spray paint magic. All that exposure to world culture and the natural world conditioned him to return home to Durham Region primed to aid his father in the role of geese wrangler in the documentary in which Bill (nicknamed “Father Goose”) trained a gaggle of Canada Geese to follow him in an ultralight aircraft in a breakthrough flight to wintering grounds in Virginia (a story that was later made into a Hollywood movie called Fly Away Home).

With that behind him, Geordie apprenticed with his father and from him and co-apprentice, Richard Vanheuvelen, learned the craft of metal sculpture, helping produce numerous commissions including a large grouping of human figures for the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. His dad, for reasons of his own, pushed Geordie to experiment in other areas of expression and funded Geordie’s training in 3-D animation at the Vancouver Film School. Returning to this area in the early 2000s, Lishman launched his own career as a sculptor and teacher (of sculpture and 3-D animation) at Durham College in Oshawa. And moved into the stone house in north Ajax that has been in the possession of his family since it was built by a great-great-great-grandfather in 1845.

In an ancient workshop on his ancestral grounds, Lishman produces human figures, giant insects, masks, birds and commissioned wall hangings and tables (like you’ve never seen!) in metal. He is booked to put together a major show of future “science-y” and “stuff-inside-stuff-inside-stuff” works at the prestigious McGlaughlin Gallery in Oshawa in 2011 and is organizing an arts festival on his property on the weekend of July 10, 11, featuring his own puppet shows, musical performances and craft and fine art displays. See Geordie Lishman works at www.geordielishman.com