Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
31 July 2018 Vol 3 No 16 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2018
From the Editor
Portia Priegert
I took a busman's holiday, as it used to be called, heading over to Vancouver last week on the ferry from Victoria to visit friends and check out some galleries. I'm pleased to say it's a trip that can be made entirely on public transit, which is great if, like me, you are trying to cut your carbon footprint.
My first stop was the Vancouver Art Gallery. The David Milne show was spectacular, even better, if memory serves, than the last major survey. Has it really been 30 years?
Cabin Fever, a comprehensive look at our love affair with the cabin, was also interesting. But I agree with Meredyth Cole's assessment in Canadian Art that the show tries too hard to cater to every taste. My favourite moment? When a guy with a straggly grey beard, baggy jeans and a plaid shirt rounded a corner, looking as if he had just surfaced from one of the cabins. Note to curator: Hire him! After watching a montage of creepy horror films set in cabins, it was one of those priceless double-take moments.
It was also fun to play with Kevin Schmidt's DIY sound-and-light show – four keyboards that light up different parts of a model that bears a certain resemblance to the Vancouver Art Gallery if, say, it had been teleported to Las Vegas.
Then I bumped into Peter Morin, who was preparing for a performance the following day with collaborator Ayumi Goto. We both went to grad school at UBC Okanagan, and our paths keep crossing, totally by serendipity. His career has taken off over the last five years. A show at the VAG couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I want to write about his work, but his Tahltan world view bends my mind so much I can't figure out how to do it justice in a magazine article.
I'm typing this editor's note on my phone in a friend's garden and the battery is about to die, so I'll wrap up quickly. I encourage you to check out the great stories we have in this issue. Ottawa-based arts journalist Paul Gessell writes about a new biography of Saskatchewan-born Agnes Martin, an internationally acclaimed artist who struggled with mental illness as she painted her astonishing grids. In Vancouver, John Thomson checks out a show about art and resistance in Latin America.
In Alberta, Steven Ross Smith, now the poet laureate of Banff, writes about the founders of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. And, in Edmonton, artist Agnieszka Matejko reflects on paintings of vintage homes by Gillian Willans, who recently won the Eldon and Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize. (Full disclosure: I was on the three-member jury that chose Willans, a fascinating process superbly facilitated by Chris Carson, the head of Visual Arts Alberta – CARFAC, which administers the prize.)
This issue's final story is about Calgary art buddies Mark Holliday and Aaron Sidorenko, who collaborate on large encaustic landscapes. I'll conclude by thanking Paul Gessell for his editing help this month, which allowed me to take this break on the other side of the Salish Sea.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Paul Gessell, Agnieszka Matejko, Steven Ross Smith, John Thomson