Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
18 June 2019 Vol 4 No 13 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2019
From the Editor
Portia Priegert
I took four days off last week for an adventure – a tour of Vancouver Island's ancient forests.
These amazing old-growth stands, with their lush moss, copious ferns and gigantic trees, are varied and complex ecosystems that have never been logged.
One stop was in Avatar Grove, near Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where it took 12 people with outstretched arms to ring a single cedar.
Further up the logging road, you’ll find Big Lonely Doug, a Douglas-fir tree as tall as a 20-storey building. You may have seen a photograph of it in Toronto artist Edward Burtynsky's Anthropocene project.
Our bus also stopped in Clayoquot Sound, the area around Tofino, where we saw trees that have been around far longer than European settlers. You'll remember Clayoquot as the site of a major protest against clear-cut logging back in the 1990s, an event that became the focus of a body of work by Vancouver artist Ian Wallace.
Artists continue to make work about the endangered old-growth forests. Kelly Richardson, a visual arts professor at the University of Victoria, was part of Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest, a group show last year at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She has just completed an IMAX film, Embers and the Giants. Featured at the Images Festival in Toronto in April, it shows an old-growth forest as night falls. She augments the scene with floating embers of light that dance like fireflies. You can see more on her website.
Most of Vancouver Island's old-growth forest has been lost, with only about five per cent remaining in ecologically rich valley bottoms. These forests are vital to mitigate the current climate crisis, yet logging continues.
The tour, organized by a grass-roots group in Victoria, the Rolling Justice Bus, sounded a hopeful note with visits to the Alberni Valley Community Forest and the Wildwood Ecoforest, near Nanaimo, which are exploring alternative models of forestry management.
All in all, the tour was a wonderful example of how to create a more knowledgeable and engaged citizenry. I left vowing to be more active on forest protection issues and to renew my efforts to tread more lightly on the planet.
Galleries West often features stories about art that responds to environmental issues, a major concern for Western Canadians. This issue of the magazine is no exception: Dick Averns reviews Among All These Tundras, a show about circumpolar Indigenous art at the Esker Foundation in Calgary, and Beverly Cramp reports on Closer, a two-person exhibition focused on plants, at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver.
Of course, we also write about other art. In Winnipeg, Stacey Abramson visits Tracing Paths at the new C2 Centre for Craft. I tell the story of theatre designer Susan Benson, who is now turning her attention to the landscapes of Salt Spring Island. I also review Ho Tam’s survey show, Cover to Cover, at the Victoria Arts Council's new gallery.
The final item in this issue is Douglas Maclean's report on the spring auctions in Toronto and Montreal, where Inuit art set new sales records.
Looking ahead, we'll feature articles about American artist William Kentridge at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton; Rochelle Goldberg at Catriona Jeffries in Vancouver; and a promising emerging artist, Philip Kanwischer, at the Edge Gallery in Canmore, Alta.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Stacey Abramson, Dick Averns, Beverly Cramp, Douglas Maclean