RIP, Roger Wood, genius assemblage sculptor

Sorely missed already.

Last week, my dear old friend Roger Wood died, very suddenly, of cancer. He was 80. Roger was a brilliant sculptor, a Canadian veteran navy gunner, and gay. He was my neighbour for a decade. I miss him already.

Roger and I both lived in an old WWI munitions factory in Toronto, which had been turned into 15 illegal live-work studios with 20-foot ceilings which leaked, massive south-facing windows (which leaked), and a warm and collegial vibe of weirdos and artists.

Roger was a self-taught sculptor, a mad collector of all sorts of junk: scrap metal, old toys, discarded electronics, decorative items. He tore these apart, painted and mutated them, and turned them into whimsical assemblages.

Many of these were built around clocks; often with a small feather attached to the second-hand that quivered as it revolved around and around the clockface. Roger was making things that could be called “steampunk” before the term existed — and once he learned it, he embraced it.

In those years, I was working very long hours on the early web, but I was often and easily sidetracked at Roger’s studio, where I’d sit and smoke cigarettes with him and hear navy stories (his time with the big guns had left him somewhat deaf) or just tour his beautiful new…