Reflections on an Accidental Magazine

Galleries West Ceases Publication

by

COLUMNS

Dear Gentle Reader,

I guess it's true that all good things must come to an end. After 15 years as a print magazine and nine years exclusively online, Galleries West is ceasing publication. Age and health issues make it impossible for me to carry on. And the magazine's precarious financial status makes it less interesting for someone else to take over.

The site will remain active for the next few months, but there will be no new content added after Aug. 19, 2025. While searching for a more permanent long-term archive, I discovered that Wayback Machine has been archiving www.gallerieswest.ca for a long time. It's not perfect, but will provide a permanent link with the past. And just today I was advised that Library and Archives Canada is in the process of doing something similar.

That said, this is not a post mortem but a celebration. Let's take a trip down memory lane.

The Galleries West backstory began three years before its launch. From 1981 to 2001, I was the publisher of the WHERE Calgary visitor magazine, and I was frustrated by my inability to persuade art gallery owners to advertise with us. I concluded that, to promote a visual product, the gallery owners were particularly sensitive to ad size and they simply deemed our rates too steep.

My solution was to create a supplement that was preprinted for four months at a time and only distributed in major downtown hotel rooms. We also did an overrun of 10,000 copies which were folded like brochures and then distributed at galleries. That explains the odd positioning of the logo and cover lines on the right side of the cover!

It began in Autumn 1999 as eight pages with WHERE editor Jill Sawyer at the helm.

By fall 2001, it was 32 pages. It seemed like the long-term investment was beginning to pay off.

However, that's when I sold WHERE. After 20 years as founding publisher, I thought I was off to a new career in tourism. I had incorporated Top Down Tours, a company modelled on European bicycle tours but scaled up for Alberta and B.C. distances by using convertible automobiles.

Then fate intervened.

My successor as publisher at WHERE magazine determined that the Calgary Gallery Guide supplement was not viable because it couldn't cover the cost of a salesperson. He announced to advertisers in February 2002 that the Spring 2002 issue would be the last.

This news provoked phone calls to me from two major Calgary gallery owners who urged me to take it over or do something similar. They felt it was just what was needed by the local art community.

I knew little about the visual arts but I recognized gratitude and flattery when I heard it. The spirit was willing. Yes, I can do that.

However:

  • The cost of shipping film for images, proofing and printing would be prohibitive.

Coincidentally the technology of telecommunications and particularly printing changed completely at this time with the introduction of the now-ubiquitous PDF. Suddenly distance was not an impediment and working remotely became a practical reality. Our editors have lived in Kimberley, Banff, Vancouver, Kelowna and Victoria, as well as Calgary.

  • The potential advertising revenue in the local Calgary market was insufficient to support a stand-alone art magazine.

True. But what if we defined our market as all of Western Canada? What was the competition?

I was aware of an Alberta art publication that was in the process of going out of business, because the owners were moving back to Ontario. That was the extent of my research.

  • There was an urgency to build on the existing momentum.

The final Calgary Gallery Guide, published in spring 2002, covered the January through April period. It was desirable keep to the same seasonal schedule and to publish a new magazine in May for the summer.

Opting to stick with something I knew, namely magazine publishing, despite my ignorance of the art world, I called on my old publishing gang of the previous 20 years, many of whom had been mentors to me. That included print salesman Glen Harvie; film house owner Bob Downey and son Shawn; art director Richart Bocxe and former WHERE Calgary editor Jennifer MacLeod.

I don't recall much discussion over the name but I did have specific instructions for Richart on the logo. I gave him a scan of an art book cover with Gauguin's signature and asked him to replicate the style. He did. And for the next six years, it set us apart.

However, by 2005, I felt we needed a fresh look, so I persuaded another former WHERE colleague, Wendy Pease, to do a redesign from her home in Ontario. She continued to art direct until we discontinued the print version in 2016.

Jennifer MacLeod, Editor

Summer 2002 - Summer 2006

My run as founding editor stretched from April 2002 to April 2006. Hearkening back to 2002, I remember being swept from shore by the undertow that is Thomas Tait with a good idea. Enthusiasm, determination and vision is a compelling combination, especially when embodied in a really good talker!

I was proud and excited to be invited by Tom to take on the editorial helm of his new magazine project. It would be a freelance complement to my full-time career, which by then had taken a right-angle turn from magazine editing and writing (my first love) to corporate communications (my thereafter bread and butter).

What fun, to be part of a virtual team, managing the editorial elements of a fresh new publication which — bonus — would immerse me in a world of exciting artistic ideas, creativity, expression and innovation. I was self-aware — I did not have credentials to be an art critic, and would not pretend to be one.

But neither did Galleries West strive to be something it wasn't. Together, Tom and I plunged into building a sort of trade magazine for art galleries across the west. Our role was to celebrate the vibrant visual artists who were either established or emerging across the western provinces, and to recognize the many fine art galleries that represented them. As editor, I had the pleasure of building and coordinating a team of freelance photographers and writers (including the knowledgeable Portia Priegert, who later took on the editorship).

As writer — ahhh — that is where the real joy lay for me! I had the privilege of meeting and talking with the artists themselves! Of investigating their creative intentions, exploring their ideas, and examining their techniques—then, inspired, invoking my own creative talents to translate into words that which these artistic souls so devotedly expressed visually. 

It was a solid start, apparently, to a dynamic magazine that went on to evolve and grow and shine for another 20 years! Well done, Tom. Bravo! And, thank you with all my heart for the opportunity to be part of Galleries West. 

By the way, when I was cycling near my home in Nova Scotia a few weeks ago, a cavalcade of some 15 convertibles whooshed by. I thought, there goes Tom's Top Down Tours!

Paula Gustafson, Editor

Fall/Winter 2006

Jennifer's time was one of discovery as we started by covering only Alberta. Then we added Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and finally, by Spring 2003, we took on British Columbia. Those were heady days when I would drive all over Western Canada, connecting personally with the arts community. 

Coincidentally, as Jennifer became completely committed to her day job and announced her intention to leave the editorship, Paula Gustafson, owner and publisher of Artichoke magazine got in touch. She was offering to sell her mailing list because she was shutting down the magazine. It seemed like a good fit for her to take over as editor. She was based in Vancouver and we were struggling to establish Galleries West against formidable competition there. What I didn't know, and I don't think Paula knew either, was that she had advanced cancer. She died before her first issue was published.

Fortunately I was able to call on another former WHERE colleague, Jill Sawyer, who not only came on as freelance editor but completed Paula Gustafson's only issue. Jill's tenure coincided with Galleries West's largest and most successful revenue issues before the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis took hold and we lost 40 per cent of our advertising revenue in the space of two years, never to return. Of course the revenue challenge was reinforced by the arrival of the iPhone and iPad and the concurrent explosion of 'free' advertising on social media.

The magazine became increasingly dependent on the financial support of government grants, particularly from the Alberta Media Fund. Somewhat ironically in my mind, Canada Council was dismissive. Where I thought we were providing an important public service by increasing the appreciation of visual art, the Canada Council view was that we were merely publishing a promotional pamphlet for commercial galleries, not edgy enough to earn their support.  

Jill Sawyer, Editor

Spring 2007 - Fall/Winter 2012

I had forgotten about the sheer volume of work that we covered. In looking through the archives of the issues of Galleries West that I edited – from 2007 through 2012 – it looks like we didn’t miss much.

I recall making a great effort to be as geographically inclusive as possible, covering galleries large and small from Kamloops to Lethbridge to Yorkton, seeking out the unusual, the envelope-pushers, the unexpected. I was always delighted to find a work of bold installation in a previously unknown pocket of the prairie — the most memorable to me being Heather Benning’s larger-than-life Dollhouse (2006 to 2007) in southeastern Saskatchewan.

In the midst of all the new, our back page feature gave me the chance to dig into work by an artist, often of some stature, who fell under the category of historical art. It was a good challenge to find new words to describe the work of Jean-Paul Riopelle, William Kurelek, Lucian Freud, and my personal favourite, Alberta painter and printmaker Margaret Shelton.

I came to Galleries West as a magazine writer and editor, not as someone with a background in fine art, so I was discovering artists in a way I always thought our readers weren’t. I imagined they already knew about Stan Douglas and David Burdeny and Jane Ash Poitras and Katie Ohe. Whether that was true or not, I knew I was getting the joy of encountering something new to me, while putting new work into context for all our readers.

And by casting such a wide net, both into the past and fully in the present, we did bring something new. Recognizing young artists, and those just beginning, even if in just a brief show listing, was always exciting.

But I reserve my fondest memories for the opportunities I had with Galleries West to work with really good writers. The success of the magazine during those years allowed me to reach out to writers across western Canada, to hear their ideas and put their words into print. Providing space for writers I admired, and seeing the world of western Canadian art and artists through their eyes and their expression, was part of the great value to me of editing this magazine. I won’t forget it.

When Jill left her day job to travel, her availability for Galleries West was uncertain and it seemed timely to make a change. I cast about for a suitable candidate without success until Jill said, “You should hire our best contributor, Portia Priegert.”

I took her advice and it was one of the best decisions I made. Originally from Alberta, Portia had strong journalism credentials from Canadian Press time in Ottawa. She had returned west, to Kelowna, to care for her aging parents. They had recently passed. She was executive director of the Alternator Gallery in Kelowna and had just completed a bachelor of fine arts at UBC Okanagan. In spite of her misgivings about her inexperience as an editor, the timing was perfect and she signed on.

Little did either of us know about the tumultuous times to come.

By 2016 it was clear that the ad revenues were not coming back to pre-2008 levels and, inspired by an weekly newsletter from a major U.S. publisher, I decided to discontinue the print version and publish exclusively online. The cost savings were substantial but I didn't foresee that the forgone ad revenue would be even greater. Furthermore, the technology of our GalleriesWestDigital.ca experiment was suspect and, after a year we went back to the drawing board with a major overhaul of our original website, gallerieswest.ca. I think it has weathered well and it has even earned a couple of awards along the way.

Our plan was to produce the same volume of content online as we had done with the print magazine, but package it in bi-weekly segments which would be circulated in the form of a regular newsletter. It was a good plan, but without the constraints of print, it quickly morphed into significantly more than we had done previously.

For example, Doug Maclean's popular auction reports were introduced in 2011 as a two-page spread with six images in the print edition. Online, they became a commentary on 69 images in 2025!

In collaboration with Mark Mushet in Vancouver we introduced high-quality videos, but we never found a formula that clicked.

In August 2021, we published our one and only experience in long-form journalism, an award-winning piece on the auction business in Canada and Heffel Fine Art in particular, by Curtis Gillespie.

And we began to publish news items which were impossible with the less-frequent print magazine. In fact, breaking news, notably by Paul Gessell in Ottawa, represented some of our highest-traffic articles. And wrangling the opinions of the late Jeffrey Spalding into the confines of a single page was an ongoing challenge.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a paradox in the art world as most galleries closed their doors to in-person visits but invested in more robust websites where they often had more business than in pre-Covid times.

However the general dearth of exhibitions forced Portia to look further afield for editorial subjects and we began to cover exhibitions in Eastern Canada and even outside Canada. This whetted my appetite for expansion and we quietly added galleries in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes to our searchable database. My reach, however, was exceeding my grasp and I ran out of time.

The part-time gig that Portia had signed up for became full-time as the workload increased and she still made time to share her natural coaching abilities with our roster of writers. Sarah Swan, in particular, stood out with her two golds and a silver award for her essays. Her stories have often had a thousand-plus shares and recently, when picked up in the U.S., her stories have lead to traffic spikes where U.S. traffic to our site occasionally exceeded Canadian traffic!

And notably, our interns (Megan Klak, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Joe Paris and Janille Delos Reyes) have all won Emerging Writer awards.

Portia Priegert, Editor

Spring 2013 - September 2023

I was saddened when Tom Tait called me recently from Calgary to tell me he would be closing Galleries West. It was a great privilege to spend a decade as editor of the magazine, and to rub shoulders with some of the country’s most interesting artists and arts writers. 

From the start, I tried to deepen coverage of experimental and issue-driven work and, after Tom moved to a uniquely digital format, to boost news coverage. Tom gave my curiosity free rein, a tremendous gift, and I tried to fulfill my duties with balance and good will. 

Unfortunately, today’s daunting economic, cultural and technological challenges made it difficult to find a new publisher willing to give the magazine a second act. The reality is that Canada is experiencing a diminution of serious arts journalism, and, the unfortunate result can only be a populace that is less engaged with important creative developments. This has implications in terms of viewership, the market, and indeed, the viability of artistic careers. 

As a small regional publication, Galleries West was never a major player in the Canadian art world, but I like to think it punched well above its weight. Its archives, which are being preserved, will stand in good stead as a comprehensive record of the visual culture of this time and place.

When Portia's health issues prompted her retirement, I was fortunate to be able to call on long-time contributor Paul Gessell to take over as editor while I searched for a permanent replacement.

Paul Gessell, Interim Editor

October 2023

So here I was again looking for an editor. Paul was not pressuring me but neither was he interested in a long-term arrangement. Fortune smiled on me once more. Magazine journalism experience? Check. Knowledge of the visual arts? Check. I had lost track of Shelley Boettcher and had no idea of her situation. In fact, she was living in Italy at this time and a mutual friend put us in touch. We connected on her return to Calgary and she came aboard in October with transitional support from Paul Gessell. It has been a most rewarding collaboration as she expanded our coverage eastward and reinforced our stable of writers in this short time.

During Shelley's tenure we launched artschoolsincanada.ca with a database of more than 60 art schools across Canada and a series of complementary articles about art education. I think it was useful but it has never captured the enthusiasm of the art schools as a recruitment tool. 

Shelley Boettcher, Editor

November 2023 - August 2025

When I started working with the magazine in October 2023, I knew the time would be limited. The magazine industry is struggling everywhere, especially in Canada.

But I like magazines and I like art, and I had known publisher Tom Tait a little, mostly through the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. I figured he'd be fun to work with and learn from, and I wasn't wrong. His stories could fill a book and maybe now that he's retiring, he will have some time to write it. (Tom, I will be one of the first in line at your book signing!)

The past couple of years have been filled with wonderful opportunities to meet artists, visit galleries and work with some of Canada's finest visual arts writers. To name just one: Nancy Tousley was one of my editors at the Calgary Herald many years ago. To work with her again — as her editor — has been an honour and I am grateful for the opportunity.

Thanks also to writer and editor Paul Gessell, who helped me settle in to the new role. And, of course, a shout-out to our intern Janille Delos Reyes and our lovely crew of freelancers — Lissa, Agnieszka, Yani, Shazia, Becky, Katherine, Kegan, Sarah, Lindsay, Amy, Lin, Megan, Douglas, Janet, Alison, Mark, Iris, Nicole, Barbara, Christopher, Steven, John, Richard and Caroline, to name just a few — I will miss you and I hope you stay in touch. I'm pretty sure I owe you all a coffee (or a glass of wine) when we meet in real life.  

And, of course, thanks to all of you fine readers. I have appreciated your feedback, story suggestions, book suggestions and notes about favourite artists and galleries around the world.

Twenty-four years; 44 print issues; 226 bi-weekly online newsletter issues; more than 100 writers; over 5,000 stories and news items; some 34,000 images on file. In all, it's been a satisfying run. I learned something about art in the process of meeting and working with many fine people. Thank you to our readers and the art community for your inspiration and support and a special shout-out to my wife, Sandra, who graciously lived with my 24/7 commitment to the magazine.

Cheers,