A few thoughts.
Why a "Smaller World"? There are several answers: what you see before you are small contact-size photomaquettes which in their final form become enlarged wall-size mosaic spreads. The photo murals are intended to match the sweeping sense of three dimensional space of the all-enveloping natural sites and my land pieces, whose documentation led to these photoworks as works in themselves.

Secondly, we have so shrunken our planet through instant communication, rapid transport and population explosion that it seems we can encompass and know all of its facets immediately. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, we have succeeded only in trivializing experience, history and culture. And indebtedness.

Furthermore, it seems we have through the twin engines of globalization - financial and political interests - thought to rationalize away into parenthetical asides the emotions and mysteries of the human condition.

Dust to dust. In the sphere of bigger things, our globe, our solar system, our corner of this galaxy are but small dustballs. This thought is not to be taken negatively. All consciousness is anthro-oriented and it is in this spirit that we can see the large in the small.

( A good part of the photoworks reveal a combination of "globe" and "grid" techniques. Half of the centralized imagery is upside-down or rotated a quarter-turn for the conceptual "parentheses" works. What is right side up? We determine that even right side down is OK. Anthro-determination again.

What are we to make of rotation, reversal, transparence, interlacing, shadow and inframince? Allusions to the hidden, the unknown, are made and updated through the borrowings from Duchamp and Da Vinci. )

—Bill Vazan

William (Bill) Vazan was born in Toronto on November 18, 1933. After attending Danforth Technical School and the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, he went to study at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. Then, in 1957 he moved to Montreal where he studied at Sir George Williams University.

That was when Vazan started to produce works of Land Art, with an initial creation entitled "Montreal Island Raft Project". Then came a project called "Rock Conglomerates and Displacements" (1963) in the town of St-Jean-de Matha, followed by "Low Tide Traces" (1968-1969) in Prince Edward Island and "Canada Between Parentheses" (1969).

Vazan did not limit himself to this type of artistic production. Soon he began producing drawings, stonecuts, and photography. Although these media complemented the Land Art, they also proved to have a life of their own.

A prolific artist who is still active, Bill Vazan's artistic activity has spanned four decades. During that period he has created over 100 works of Land Art, and for him, this art form is still just as relevant. In fact, in 1998, he created "Pictouglyph" in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and now in 1999 he is preparing another work in Israel. A solo exhibit of his photomaquettes will be presented in October 1999 at the Peterborough Art Gallery.

Vazan has also been involved in organizing two artists' centres. He co-founded the Centre d'artistes Véhicule Art in 1971, and was co-director of the Centre d'art contemporain Optica from 1980 to 1985. He is currently a member of the Centre d'exposition CIRCA. Since 1982, he has been teaching visual arts at Université du Québec à Montréal.