Jeff de Boer Art

Today Linda and I visited the opening of Jeff de Boer's art show at the Wallace Galleries. There is a variety of his work on display, showing a number of the themes he has developed. He started with armour for cats and mice, extrapolated from various eras in history. There are a number of mice, and three cats, Viking, Tudor, and Chinese. These have all become more elaborate over the years.

He moved on by adapting knighthood themes to the modern business world, such as ties made from chainmail, embossed leather, or scaled metal pieces. I remember a stunning leather briefcase worked with Viking motifs, but that wasn't on display today. There are several ties, though. One of his projects during this phase was to build a catapult and fling a fax machine to destruction.

Jeff's exoforms either charm or puzzle people. The shapes and textures are interesting, even if many of them aren't to my personal taste. There's this massive articulated fish, though, that had me gazing thoughtfully. And two highly polished elongated shapes that remind one of fossils, somehow. There are a number of exoforms on display, and you'll have to find out for yourself what you think of them. The idea of fossils show up in another two panels as well, where small metal creations emerge from the rock.

There's a whole story that goes with it, but one of Jeff's recent themes is a high tech war between cats and mice. There are spaceships that are an outgrowth of the cat armour. The rats have three new aircraft, each with a ducted fan on the top leading to exhaust ports on the side. It looks like it ought to work. None of the cat spaceships are on display, though there is a poster showing one of the battles.

I think my favourite piece is the lamp. Imagine a spaceship from a universe that has both Buck Rogers and Doc Smith's Lensman. It's mounted on a coil of steel tubing, and has fins, lenses for death rays, and the cutest rocket exhaust ports. I think they were scavenged from welding torch fittings. I can just see it sitting behind my chair, though I suspect it wouldn't go that well with the rest of the room.

I already have one of Jeff's pieces, which was a gift from Linda. There are other works of his that I'd like to own, like the Samauri Rat, the Spaceship Lamp, or one of the new Rat Aircraft. However, I'm not at the stage of life where one can buy artwork simply because I like it. In any case, he does beautiful, original, and imaginative work. Jeff's show runs only until December 13. One of his pieces might be just the thing for that hard to buy for person on your list.