Off The Wall

A series of 113 drawings which served as studies for artist Tony Urquhart's ubiquitous box sculptures -- strange, surreal, almost absurd objects. These preliminary sketches provide a unique window into the mind and process of the artist. Captions for the drawings are provided by Michael Phillips who has approached them as if coming on a batch of drawings without prior knowledge of their intent. He has tried to divine something of the artist's purpose in designing these objects, and to speculate on the end of various projects. "Off the Wall" -- amusing, irreverent, nonsensical -- is exactly that!

In order to facilitate the construction of his box sculptures Urquhart required working drawings, idea drawings and even drawings of the stands upon which the sculptures would sit. These works were not intended as ends in themselves, but nonetheless they are as complete, interesting and exciting as the artist could render. Urquhart explains that one of his artistic heroes' is Leonardo da Vinci -- whose idea drawings for flying machines, military catapults and siege cannons have never been surpassed.

223 Pages
8.75" x 5.5"
2008

The Porcupine’s Quill is an artisanal book publisher that values the art and craft of the book in form and content. They specialize in acquiring work by Canadian authors whose voices are new, underrepresented or verging on oblivion, with a particular focus on books that represent the intersection between literature and other creative disciplines: between text and image, memoir and music, letterpress and offset.