Repurposed Animal Farm

If you find yourself at the Western Fairgrounds, Queens Park, you can’t miss one of the most whimsical and inventive public artworks in the Old East Village. Grazing stoically in the tall grass planter just off Dundas Street you will see a pig, sheep, and bull, assembled out of old rusted farm equipment from days of yore. This dusty brown ensemble, an artful reminder of the Western Fair’s agricultural roots, were created by the iconic Canadian sculptor Bill Lishman.

As a child, Lishman grew up on a dairy farm in Pickering Ontario. His father was incredibly adept at using tools and machinery– a jack of all trades, so to speak, while his mother earned a Masters degree in biology from the University of Toronto and instilled in him a passionate interest in animals.

To label Lishman as iconic may actually be a bit of an understatement. After all, he is well known by many for his autobiography Father Goose, which recounted his experience in constructing an ultralight aircraft to assist geese in their migration, which ultimately inspired the 1996 Disney film Fly Away Home.

Lishman began his career as a sculptor in 1962 when he began to repurpose metal, particularly old, rusted objects, into intricate works of art. Over a highly prolific career he transformed scavenged metallic refuse into a diverse array of eye catching and thought-provoking art. From towering sculptures made from old, crushed cars, to humanoid figures and stylized animals collaged from bits and pieces of engines and an odd assortment of machines, Lishman’s work elicits its own original kind of beauty.

His farm animals in Queens Park are at once ramshackle and exquisite; heavy and rusted, yet light and new. Indeed, these sculptures are both fun to look at and delightful to figure out just quite how they were put together. At times it feels like one is looking at either an animal or an old contraption made in the shack of an inspired and intrepid bricoleur. Such an amorphously playful formal dichotomy directly illustrates Lishman’s genius and is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.