Deborah Margo: From Okeydokes to Salt Licks

Deborah Margo is about to have a prizewinning neighborhood project unveiled in Ottawa, a good time to revisit her fascinating previous installation art.  Twice, she’s worked with these sugar-based jawbreaker style balls in exhibits with names as fascinating as her work.  The first,  Giant Okeydokes 20085 consisted of 100 two-inch balls.

A subsequent exhibit at Ottawa’s Patrick Mikhail Gallery involved the partially dissolved, stressed, cut and deformed balls – this time four inches in diameter, called 40019’s Ceaseless Transformation. 

Now, Margo is exploring large salt licks from her local feed store.

“They are dense, heavy blocks in uniform units of luminous yellow, white, blue and shades of brown, each 10.5” x 10.5” x 10.5”. To date, I have been immersing them in water as well as pouring solutions into their cavities, allowing for transformations either from the outside in or the inside out. This new body of work is connected to my sugar installations, yet the history of salt, the scale of each element, its plasticity and rich colour allow for further explorations and discoveries.” Deborah Margo (website)