Milkweed was an ongoing topic of conversation in our household this spring. In addition to learning about its importance for the declining Monarch butterfly population and that it is still considered a noxious weed in some provinces, I realized that plant life, like human life, is judged and divided along cultural as well as biological lines. My childhood memory of sending milkweed seeds flying with a puff of breath came up hard against the pesticides and agribusiness that found nothing poetic in this wild and unproductive species. It’s no wonder then that artists, those proponents of diversity and untamed behavior, might gravitate to these denizens of the plant kingdom that are too often pushed to the side. 
Zachari Logan, Ditch 3, 2015, blue pencil on Mylar
The reigning motif in Prairie artist Zachari Logan’s solo exhibition at Paul Petro is the ditch. This is the place where hardscrabble species survive through sheer effort and inventiveness. It’s neither the road nor the field – both zones controlled by human animals and bound to their demands. The ditch is not so glamorous, but it’s a place of freedom and, if you’re willing to throw around such words, nature (though, as the artist points out, dandelions are an invasive species brought to North America from the UK, so who’s to say what’s natural?). Logan’s clinically precise blue pencil drawings of short, to-scale sections of this landscape are reminiscent of scientific drawings from an earlier age. It’s easy to see them at first as indiscriminant selections of greenery until the variety of life is revealed. And if you’re lucky enough to know their names (or have someone handy who can distinguish between Queen Anne’s lace and common mugwort), then their individual character soon unravels in actual histories and potential narratives. 
Zachari Logan, Ditch 5, 2015, blue pencil on Mylar
Logan is interested in evoking those stories within a discourse on masculinity, sexuality, and the body. His portraits of human figures enveloped by animal and plant life – or literally made of it – make that explicit, but his drawings and ceramic sculptures of vegetation on its own sneak up on you. It’s easy to overlook them, just as you would miss a ditch; however, both are worth a second glance.
Paul Petro: http://www.paulpetro.com/ppca/current
Zachari Logan: Ditches, Dandies and Lions continues until July 11.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Zachari Logan at Paul Petro, Toronto
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