Page 53 - Studio International - April 1970

N. E. THING CO.

AND LES LEVINE

Charlotte Townsend

lain Baxter and Les Levine are Canadian North Ameri-
cans who live and work on opposite sides of the continent.
Baxter is President of the N.E. Thing Company in Van-
couver and Levine is a communal group of poets, artists,
engineers, film-makers, etc., in New York City.

The McLuhanite son of the Group of Seven, Baxter lain Baxter 'Still life—bag of potatoes' 1965, vacuum-formed
uses new media to catalogue 'visual sensitivity informa- clear uvex plastic
tion'. Main sources of information are nature, 'a natural corresponded to the Morandi-like still lifes he had been
to work with', and the forms, domestic and public, of a doing before. Since then this department has been
man-made environment. To get rid of the artist-art- responsible for treating the landscape in a number of
art gallery syndrome Baxter formed a Company, the ways. It has bagged it (putting the green, rocky,
objects for which it was set up being : Pacific coast, blue water and toy boats into bags of
(1) To produce sensitivity information. clear vinyl), taped it (running the outline of mountain,
(2) To provide consultation and evaluation service with cloud and lake in plastic tape over wall and floor), and
respect to things. inflated it (blowing up sensuous, vinyl pillows of hill and
(3) To produce, manufacture, import, export, buy, sell, sky). And now the Company has moved into the land-
and otherwise deal in things of all kinds. scape, defining the space between two trees with a
The N.E.Thing Co. is divided into departments length of yellow rope, trailing chains over bushes and
which cover anything and everything the President may rubber over rocks to upset expectations. Inflated vinyl
want to do. Each is equipped with a rubber stamp to was also used for formal pieces. Wearables were deve-
mark its products. loped in 1968 as extensions of the body. (In one example
Visual sensitivity information received by the Com- a giant inflated doughnut, 12 ft. in diameter, sits on the
pany is processed by the Research Department before shoulders, satin-like folds of green vinyl fall from it to
being passed on to one of the others for the sort of the floor.)
literal cataloguing which is the Company's trade mark.
Project Department
Thing Department
`There is a plastic coating around the electronic
The Company claims the largest collection of plastic
antiques in North America. In 1965 the President began lain Baxter 'Bagged place' installed in the University of
British Columbia during February 1966
to vacuum-form plastic bottles, the common pottery of
today, some of them crushed. Their simple shapes

lain Baxter 'Bagged landscape with 4 boats' 1966, vinyl, water,
toy plastic boats