9 Mar 2017 The Prince George Citizen Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Fly fishing art show is off the hook
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
On Tuesday Erich Franz holds one of his paintings that will be installed in the galleria in Two Rivers Gallery. There will be a free public reception at the gallery tonight.
The cast has been made and the fly dangles over Prince George tonight, waiting for a hungry strike.
Local fly fishing enthusiast Erich Franz can explain better than most the reverberating details of the zen-sport to which he pays so much attention. There is an art to the arching to and fro of the fishing line, with just the right bait for just the right pool of water.
He is a retired school teacher, so he is particularly tooled for explaining the subtleties and complexities. He conducts flytying workshops, in fact, and has done so at the Two Rivers Gallery, where the curatorial staff eventually discovered another of Franz’s communication gifts.
They are on display starting tonight with a personal talk by Franz in the Rustad Galleria where a collection of his drawings now hang upon the walls.
“It was something that was dormant for a long time,” said Franz. I have a fine arts degree. But when you’re working and raising a family, it was fly-tying that I turned to instead of big projects. I tend to be quite meticulous. Each piece is a 40- or 50-hour investment of time. It’s either whole hog in, or not at all, for me.”
Since his retirement, and the growth of his children, the pencil has successfully called him away from the other slender wooden stick of exactitude, the fishing rod. He created so many of these excruciatingly detailed sketches that the Two Rivers Gallery offered him an exhibition of his own.
“It’s not just a testament to one man’s hobby; it is such a great window into the natural world,” said Meghan Hunter-Gauthier from the gallery’s curatorial team.
Some of the images are of fish, but just as many are of the insects that live in the same watery habitat. These insects are the models from which bait flies are tied together. These flies mimic the insect food that fish like to pounce on in the wild, and if you know how to handle a rod and a reel, those flies can be the tiny doorway to dinner and to a fulfilling mindset.
This zen-like quality inspired Franz to pattern all his drawings in this collection on the artistic concept of mandalas, the circular patterns of ancient eastern culture.
“This process is quite astonishing,” said Franz. “It is very labour intensive and the work, and the patterns, create a calm for the artist and I hope for the viewer, too.”
It might be lost on some viewers just how detailed these drawings are. His depiction of chironomids - aquatic flying insects - are so tiny that Franz’s sketches may be the most exacting artist’s renderings ever done of these water bugs.
His momentum back into the fine arts had something to do with fishing and the lack of fishing. Two of his sons are avid fishers too, and Franz could show his fatherly love to them by making high-quality custom rods and reels by hand.
“I asked my other son what I could make for him, since he wasn’t interested in fishing, but I wanted to do just as much for him. He told me the greatest gift...” and gestured around at all the frames displayed on the 2RG wall, one in particular with that son’s name on it.
The title for this exhibition is Life Aquatic. It is, said Hunter-Gauthier, “an exhibition that embodies this passion, and speaks to the importance of taking time for one’s self.”
She added that this show was sure to draw people to the gallery who were not regular visitors, and the staff was excited to meet these new viewers.
This catch gets its release tonight at 7:30 p.m. with a free public reception including refreshments and artist talk by Franz.
He will also hold a fly-tying workshop on March 19 at the gallery. Details will be available on the Two Rivers website.
The drawings will then hang in the Rustad Galleria for the next six weeks.