The work pictured on the cover of Patricia Bovey’s book about Manitoba artist Don Proch – “a visionary and conscience for the prairies” as she calls him – confounds.
An odd blend of backwoods iconography and sophisticated draftsmanship, it's a wearable mask with an ambiguous egg-shaped head topped by a hat that might have come from a small-town clothing emporium.
A drawing of a wooded shoreline circles the hat’s crown. Hanging from its brim is a frizz of golden grass that frames a mouthless face with an unlikely lump of a nose and the merest hint of eyes. Small rippled marks that suggest both water and the flight of birds populate the jawline like a five o’clock shadow.
You have to dig well into the book – Don Proch: Masking and Mapping – to find out more about this 1976 fibreglass creation, Wild Bill Lobchuk Back Forties Mask.
Don Proch, about 1980 (photo by Ernest Mayer)
Lobchuk is a Winnipeg artist and one of Proch's friends. Hoping to make original art more affordable and generate revenue for artists, Lobchuk started the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop in 1968, a vibrant social and cultural hub for two decades. The mask is one of several Proch made as a tribute to artists he respected, including Jackson Beardy, Vic Cicansky and Joe Fafard.
Bovey, a former director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and now a senator in Ottawa, writes about a flock of airborne geese on the mask, saying it points to Lobchuk’s advocacy for “new futures and directions” in the Winnipeg arts scene and beyond.
“Just as the geese fly in numbers, so did Lobchuk and his colleague young artists band together collectively in protest in the late 1960s and early 1970s to garner fairer remuneration and credit for their art,” she says.
Don Proch, “Night Landing Mask,” 1982
silverpoint, graphite, fibreglass, leather, steel, polyester resin, fibre optics, bone and electrical components, 26” x 25” x 17” (collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, photo by Ernest Mayer)
Today, of course, that generation of artists is no longer young and some, including Fafard and Beardy, are gone.
The fragility of Proch’s work, which is scattered through various public and private collections, makes a major retrospective exhibition unlikely, says Bovey. But her book, which has more than 100 illustrations, helps spread awareness of his oeuvre.
The range of his idiosyncratic masks is broad. One incorporates a three-foot-long upside-down canoe. Another, Night Landing Mask, 1982, incorporates wings and other elements from the world of aviation.
But there's much more, including the eye-catching Elevator Chair, 1990, made with willow branches and a seat that resembles a furrowed field. The backrest is a red grain elevator. Prairie Monolith, 1996, meanwhile, is more like a footstool. Here, a grain elevator is conjoined with a towering sky and poised atop a rounded base.
Don Proch, “Prairie Monolith,” 1996
silverpoint, pencil and coloured pencil on a fibreglass, chromed copper and sisal construction, 36” in height (collection of Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre, Winnipeg; photo by Ernest Mayer)
It’s not surprising to learn that Proch worked at a grain elevator as a youth. Born in Hamilton, Ont., he grew up in rural Manitoba, where his family moved to farm when he was three. They eventually settled in Inglis, a small community in the Asessippi region of Manitoba near the border with Saskatchewan.
Proch studied at the University of Manitoba, earning a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1964 and then a Bachelor’s in education. He went on to teach high-school art.
His work was included in numerous shows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery from the early 1970s onward, and he has exhibited elsewhere in Canada and internationally.
Proch considers nature and the built environment, often with humour, while also tackling serious issues like environmental degradation and climate change, Bovey notes. Along with the masks, he’s known for installations and silkscreen prints.
1 of 2
Don Proch, “Asessippi Tread,” 1970
silverpoint, graphite, fibreglass, wood and steel, 72” x 36” x 17” (collection of Winnipeg Art Gallery; photo by Ernest Mayer)
2 of 2
Don Proch, “Asessippi Tread” (detail), 1970
silverpoint, graphite, fibreglass, wood and steel, 72” x 36” x 17” (collection of Winnipeg Art Gallery, photo by Ernest Mayer)
One popular body of work features bicycles. You might think of Greg Curnoe, a regional artist of the same era from London, Ont., and his love of biking. But Proch’s works capture more of the experiential feeling, particularly the sense of speed.
For instance, Asessippi Tread, 1970, shows a bicycle with half wheels and a crouched rider’s flattened torso. It was a breakthrough work, Bovey notes, and was bought by the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
The 1970s were a heady time for artists working in regional contexts.
“Proch gave a strong voice to the prairies and was at the centre of this new Canadian regionalism,” Bovey writes. “He recognized first hand the impacts of the increasing numbers of deserted rural towns and he viscerally expressed the dichotomies of nostalgia the consequential harsh realities of change.” ■
Don Proch: Masking and Mapping by Patricia Bovey was published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2019.