Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
12 July 2022 Vol 7 No 14 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2022
Portia Priegert
From the Editor
On the heels of the pandemic, emergency room closures, supply chain gaps, rising prices and social discord came the recent 36-hour blackout by Rogers, one of the country’s major communications networks. Fortunately, the debacle didn’t have a major impact on Galleries West.
But another less publicized communications outage posed an extra last-minute challenge in already tight deadlines last week as we worked on an interesting story about the Arctic Arts Summit, a circumpolar celebration that brought a heady mix of northern culture and politics to Whitehorse.
Unusually, a day after editing the story and sending it back to Genesee Keevil, a wonderful writer who has freelanced widely to southern publications, I had not heard back on her revisions. I also had heard nothing about photos from Mike Thomas, who works at the Yukon Arts Centre. I tried calling the arts centre, but kept getting a busy signal.
Eventually, Genesee alerted me that Internet service was down across the Yukon. “We only have one fibre optic cable running north,” she said. Local media were reporting the crisis was due to “significant land erosion.” That evening, service was finally restored, and in came the final draft of Genesee’s story.
The next morning, Mike emailed to say he had been off sick for a few days and had just seen my note. He had to leave on a staff field trip in half an hour, but pulled together some great images, complete with letter-perfect captions. Galleries West owes a debt of gratitude to these plucky northerners and their can-do attitude.
As a sidenote, when I was looking on the art centre’s staff list for Mike’s phone number, I discovered the chief morale officer, Marty, a charming cross-breed with a feathered coat that made me think of the hood of a fur-trimmed parka. I like that hiring decision. Memo to publisher Tom Tait: How about our own morale officer here at Galleries West?
The rest of this issue involved less adventure but is interesting all the same. From Vancouver, Meredyth Cole takes in the futuristic Ghosts of the Machine at the Polygon Gallery and Bettina Matzkuhn writes on an exhibition at the Craft Council of B.C. by Amy Gogarty, who occasionally writes for Galleries West.
In Calgary, Lissa Robinson explores a drawing show by Adrian Norvid at VivianeArt and, in Edmonton, Agnieszka Matejko writes on an Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition about bees by Alana Bartol and Bryce Krynski. Finally, Steven Ross Smith reviews Knowledge Within, a new book about 17 institutions that house significant collections of Northwest Coast art.
Looking ahead, watch for stories about Esmaa Mohamoud at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Ed Pien’s project with Cuban elders at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Genesee Keevil, Lissa Robinson, Bettina Matzkuhn, Meredyth Cole, Agnieszka Matejko, Steven Ross Smith
We acknowledge the support of the Government of Alberta Media Fund, the Government of Canada Special Measures for Journalism Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts.
