Isla Burns: Tempered Steel

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Isla Burns, Studio view

Join us Thursday, April 6 th from 7 - 9 pm  for the Opening Reception for Isla Burns and Frances Thomas Artists in attendance 

“Tempered Steel” uses fire and heat to produce organic sculpture (Edmonton, AB) The inspiration for “Tempered Steel” stems from a trip Isla Burns made to Australia almost immediately after “Samskara”, her previous exhibition at the Peter Robertson Gallery, almost five years ago. She journeyed to coastal Australia near Brisbane for a two-week visit with a friend who introduced her to their lush, exotic vegetation. “It was sheer visual pleasure,” she says, adding that she took some 1000 photos.

That visual experience formed the genesis for the dozen sculptures that comprise “Tempered Steel”, which depict organic elements – primarily stylized flowers and vegetation – rendered in steel, and assembled with scrap metal. 

The works are carefully crafted assemblages that not only suggest exotic bird of paradise flowers, but also the peonies that she sees around Alberta. She mounts some on tables she builds to ensure that the pieces are viewed from a proper height before staining the surfaces with gun bluing that generates gray tones ranging almost to black, and which contributes to the ‘organic feel’ that she works to achieve. “I have always been about organic,” she says. “I began my career as a figurative sculptor.”

Portrait sculpture was an important part of her initial work as an artist, and she has maintained and developed that original approach. “Every time I do a portrait, I come away with a better sense of seeing. The intensity allows me over a long period of time to – when I see things – I see more detail,” she says, and her current subjects are to her, portraits of her surroundings, and especially vegetation.

 “I like organic forms because there’s always this invitation to look closer.” 

Creating an organic harmony between vegetative elements and abstracted steel is a mighty challenge, but Burns manipulates the metal at high temperatures and uses her meticulous welding skills to find and deliver what she sees. In fact, her metalworking abilities were initially developed doing industrial work. 

She came to steel during her last year of sculpture at the then-Alberta College of Art (ACA). The art school required a welding course at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and the experience opened new artistic opportunities for her. “I’d worked through ceramics and plaster and plastic and other media,” she says, “but steel – I just loved it – it did what I wanted it to do.” 

That was in the ‘mid-70s, and the welding course not only enabled a new direction for her art, but would ultimately provide a means to support herself and improve her skills working the medium. So, upon graduating from the ACA, she took her Masters of Visual Arts (MVA) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton where she focussed on welded steel sculpture. 

Her next step after obtaining her MVA was to pursue welding and save towards setting up her own studio. Burns was unable to find work in Alberta, but having completed SAIT’s initial apprentice welding courses with the highest marks, she was accepted as an apprentice in one of the largest welding shops in B.C.. “All they had to do was teach me how to do the then-new metal inert gas (MIG) welding – I already had the background in the other types of welding,” she says. 

She worked in the shop on some of their most demanding projects for the next 18 months and obtained an aluminum welding ticket sponsored by Boeing before leaving to set up a studio and return to her art – working in steel. 

Ironically, she says that her predilection for ‘seeing’, which has been a longstanding aspect of her work, manifested itself following the industrial stint. “It took me two or three years to get over the shop work and stop making machine-like sculptures,” she says. “Since that time I’ve been very careful about what I’ve been looking at, because if you have that sense of observation and memory – visual things stick.” 

With that in mind, she points to her rural residence of 20 years as another significant contributor. “My eye is adjusted to staring and looking at, and to analysing spaces and negative spaces through the surrounding landscape,” she say, pointing out the visual influence of “fields, trees and animals”. 

As such, she delivers what she sees around her in a ‘what she sees, is what you get’ approach that led to a couple of experimental departures from the main body of sculptures. One began with an intriguing growth of a tree trunk and branches to which she has subtly added elements that turned it into a female figure. The other is what she describes as a “chromed ‘cross-section’ of an antique girdle” which harkens to her abstract sensibilities as its fold wrap in a pleasing composition that shines and reflects its environment. 

The challenge continues for Isla Burns with her dozen sculptures as she shares what she sees with the viewer – challenging both herself and the viewer in the process.-by Stuart Adams