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The images were downright jaw-dropping. Giant prints—some wider than many living room walls—featured sculpted, polished and glimmering blue glacier ice, some resembling splendid precious gems. Others showed no ice at all. Dry rock, bare, sharp ridgelines, rubbly moraine slopes, naked cliff bands. Dark, dirty, dry and withered ice. Dying ice. On one hand, the ultimate eye candy for a glacier lover; on the other, a bitter aftertaste of reality.

MELTDOWN was conceived by Jim Elzinga. A groundbreaking Rockies-based alpinist since the 1970s, Elzinga led the 1986 team that supported Canmore’s Sharon Wood to become the first North American woman to summit Mount Everest, climbing a never-repeated route. Elzinga followed up with a 25-year international career as an organizational development consultant.

Now, with his hardest climbs behind him, the glacier-draped peaks and ice cliffs he ascended are diminishing too.

The loss of these inspired him to found Guardians of the Ice, a non-profit focused on the steadily shrinking Columbia Icefield as indicator of the worldwide climate crisis. Spanning approximately 200 km² atop the Continental Divide where Jasper and Banff parks meet, that icefield is a significant bellwether of Earth’s warming climate.

“One of the many reasons I want still photography to be part of the Guardians project is the ability to make large high-quality prints that immerse the viewer, like an IMAX film,” Elzinga said. “I feel this is the best way to create an emotional connection with the viewer and provide an experience as if they’re actually in the mountains. Our purpose is to effectively engage the public to build support for a low-carbon future.”

Using a high-resolution Phase One medium format camera, Elzinga partnered with friend and cinematographer Roger Vernon. To create each image required three people—one to hold the camera, another to recalibrate the settings on a laptop, and a third to pilot the helicopter.

Leanne Allison, Jim Elzinga, Roger Vernon and Tiffany Shaw. Whyte Museum

That January 2025 night at the Whyte, however, was more than a photo exhibit. It was also the official launch for the Canadian branch of the 2025 United Nations International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. The IYGP was proposed in 2022 by Tajikistan, whose 13,000 glaciers supply the mountain headwaters for Central Asia and some two billion people downstream.

The IYGP Canada co-chair is long-time Canmore resident Bob Sandford, senior government relations liaison on Global Climate Emergency Response at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Most of the world’s glaciated countries are participating, and with Switzerland’s glaciers having lost 10 per cent of their volume in two years alone—2022 and 2023—that country and France have announced major commitments. “But even countries without glaciers, like Holland, are participating in the full realization of how much glacial ice contributes to the thermoregulation of the entire global climate system,” Sandford said.

The purpose is to raise awareness of the vital role glaciers, snow and ice play in the climate system.

Western Canada’s mountains (combined with the US northwest) comprise one of 19 regions around the world represented in the IYGP, alongside New Zealand, Greenland, Antarctica and the southern Andes. The Year’s purpose is to raise awareness of the vital role glaciers, snow and ice play in the climate system and water cycle, as well as the far-reaching impacts of rapid glacier melt.

A full quarter of Earth’s remaining ice is found in Canada, with some 18,000 glaciers in the mountain west. Alberta’s Rockies hold more than 1,100, including the best-known and most accessible glaciers in the country. This makes Alberta the natural centre for the Canadian IYGP initiative. “The latest scientific research regarding the state and fate of our glaciers originates here,” Sandford said. “As Parks Canada rolls out its 2025 UN Glacier Year program, Canadians all across the country will learn what the Dutch already know: that even if there isn’t one nearby, glaciers contribute enormously to the stability of the global climate.”

Canada’s IYGP objectives include promoting Canadian snow and ice research to improve scientific understanding of climate change impacts and recognizing snow and glacier ice as more than just water resources, with an emphasis on artistic and Indigenous perspectives.

“Terminus.” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

MELTDOWN’s image titles speak volumes: “Terminus,” “The Black Hole,” “Battered Hero.” The latter depicts Mount Athabasca, a peak that’s been trod by countless crampons since J. Norman Collie and Herman Woolley were most likely the first to stand on its summit in 1898. Reaching the mountain back then took 19 arduous days on horseback from Lake Louise; nowadays it’s a two-hour drive. From that summit, they viewed the massive Columbia Icefield, noting that its meltwater flows to three oceans—the Arctic via the Sunwapta, Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers; the Atlantic via the North Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan and Nelson rivers; and the Pacific via the Columbia River.

More ice melted from the glacier in 2023 than in any of the 10 previous years.

Compared to historical photos in the Whyte’s bookshop showing Athabasca’s slopes blanketed in plush white snow and ice during Collie’s time, the MELTDOWN image shows dingy ice clinging to rocky slopes like a threadbare sheet.

Climbers and tourists remain drawn to these peaks. The Columbia Icefield Centre (CIC), located where the Athabasca Glacier terminated a century ago, now hosts nearly a million visitors annually, with more than 400,000 riding specialized snowcoaches onto the glacier. Hundreds more join walking tours, whose guides safely lead them to peer into crevasses and experience coursing meltwater streams close enough to get splashed. MELTDOWN images are now on display at the CIC’s Glacier Gallery having left the Whyte.

Jasper is one of seven national parks—along with BC’s Glacier National Park—where hundreds of glaciers are carefully monitored by Parks Canada. Geological Survey of Canada and Parks Canada researchers recorded more ice melt from the Athabasca Glacier in 2023 than in any of the 10 previous years. In Glacier, as of 2018, 129 glaciers remained, down from 337 in 1978. The next survey is planned for 2026. Scientists estimate that if all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melt, the area’s creeks and streams would carry one-third less water. Many could disappear completely.

“By partnering in the IYGP, Parks Canada can encourage hundreds of thousands of Canadians to reflect on the importance of glaciers and the role of protected areas,” said Louis-René Sénéchal, a Parks Canada manager. “We want to inspire them to do something about climate change and share with them the knowledge to make a difference.”

If all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melt, local creeks and streams could carry one-third less water.

The 2023 NFB film Losing Blue was playing continuously behind a privacy screen at the Whyte. Visually exquisite, poetic and soul-stirring, the 16-minute film by Canmore’s Leanne Allison (whose previous award-winning films include Being Caribou and Finding Farley) posed the question “What does it mean to lose a colour?” The narrator references how the world’s glacier-fed lakes are losing their beguiling turquoise hues as glacial content declines. Drone imagery brings viewers seemingly close enough to touch the glaciers, soaring mere centimetres above an ice cave—which I recognized as Peyto Glacier’s toe, which has since melted and flowed onward to Hudson Bay.

“The ancient bond between glaciers and lakes is ending—the bond that gives the lakes their otherworldly blue,” states the narrator.

A smaller gallery presented an exhibition of images by Canmore’s Glen Crawford titled Etched in Ice. The photos shared perspectives captured by drone at his backcountry lodge in the Rockies north of Golden, BC. Intimate and abstract, their subtlety balanced the raw power of the MELTDOWN images. Dull-grey ice, bisected by a long, skinny strand of whitish snow dribbling into a dingy-green meltwater pool. Pebbles and dirt filling the creases of dark, scrawny ice. Ice resembling hammered metal, scratched and beaten.

“I’ve been very fortunate to live in the Bow Valley and explore the nearby mountain wilderness for 50 years. Glaciers are an integral part of this landscape,” Crawford told me. “They’re also key in helping understand how climate change has an effect worldwide. With potentially 15,000 years of climate record stored in glaciers, they’re a natural archive that is now endangered. I hope the UN IYGP promotes awareness, discussion and motivation that help enact change.”

That hope is shared by other IYGP partners, including Tim Patterson, an IYGP Canada ambassador. A member of the Lower Nicola Indian Band of the Interior Salish-speaking peoples of BC, Patterson is a hiking guide who owns and operates Zuc’min Guiding—the name means “red ochre,” with which Indigenous people painted their faces before entering the mountains.

By sharing Indigenous perspectives with his clients—including during walks on the Athabasca Glacier—Patterson aims to foster Indigenous perspectives and knowledge of Canada’s glaciers, water, ice and snow among international travellers and Canadians alike.

While many of the IYGP Canada team members are Albertans, Québécoise ambassador Caroline Côté shares perspectives as a polar expedition guide. Long before her first Arctic expedition, she was awed by remnants of an ancient glacier, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered much of Canada 20,000 years ago.

“Glaciers are at the centre of my life,” she said. “But I also believe that they are, and must be recognized as, the centre of every Canadian’s life. If you head east of Baie-Comeau, you can still see traces of the last glaciation. What struck me the most was the sheer power of ice, its ability to move mountains and carve valleys, leaving its mark on the rock. Our world, as we know it, was shaped by glaciers thousands of years ago.”

“Battered Hero” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

Early in her career, Côté dreamed of exploring Antarctica, a dream she felt fortunate to fulfill. But she later realized Canada was home to more than 20,000 glaciers, and she needn’t travel so far. “To protect glaciers, my goal in the coming years is to reduce my travel and make more conscious choices.”

During the formal launch of the main UN IYGP in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 21, Canmore resident John Pomeroy, director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology and its Canmore-based Coldwater Laboratory, spoke in his role as IYGP advisory board co-chair. He laid it bare. “Global concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from 315 to 425 parts per million, and as a result winter temperatures in northern Canada have risen over 6ºC during my lifetime. Counterfactual industries and regimes around the world would deny these measurements, but they can’t deny their culpability in the destruction of glaciers that’s occurring before our eyes. Glaciers don’t care if we believe in science; they just melt in the heat for all to see. The International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation provides a mechanism to kick-start renewed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the science and adaptation necessary to prepare for a warmer, less icy world. There is still time to turn this around.”

This statement brought me to a MELTDOWN image titled “After the Heat Dome.” Dark, severe, rough broken rock dominate the frame, with a thin layer of glacier ice resting on the highest ridgetop, its days obviously numbered.

A 2015 study established that western Canada could lose 60 to 80 per cent of its glacier ice by 2100, and the bulk of the melting would happen between 2020 and 2040. Since then I’ve had one question. What would the melting look like?

For decades, I’ve skied across glaciers and icefields in winter and hiked among them with my camera in summer. The 2021 heat dome that engulfed Alberta and BC was a regional gamechanger, breaking temperature records and being cited as a leading cause of some 600 deaths. It accelerated the deaths of our glaciers too.

On June 30, 2021, Jasper reached 40.8ºC, its hottest temperature ever recorded. The resulting flooding caused by rapidly melting snow and ice resulted in catastrophic damage to trails and bridges in the area; the Berg Lake trail in Mount Robson Provincial Park is still under repair. Heat-absorbing soot from wildfires—including the 2024 Jasper fire—coats glacier surfaces and accelerates melting. Globally, 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded—after 2023, which had set the previous record—all directly caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

In a handful of years, glacier loss has become visible to the naked eye.

Western Canada’s glaciers had been gracing paintings since before the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885. In decades since, photographers, filmmakers and writers have shown us this icy landscape. Adventurers have skied across glaciers for days, weeks, sleeping in tents or snow caves. Guides earn their living on glaciers. We create memories on them.

As they melt, we can honour glaciers by sharing these stories and artworks.

“In this coming year, we will celebrate Canadian researchers and institutions studying snow and ice, and honour writers, poets, artists and photographers working to help us understand what the loss of glacier ice means,” Sandford said. “The UN Glacier Year allows us to halt backsliding in terms of climate action by learning more about what we face, and provides an opportunity to shine on the world stage as an example of everything we stand for.

“After the Heat Dome” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

“We want to be able to tell the world that we as Canadians listened for an entire year to what the disappearing ice was trying to tell us.”

At the Whyte Museum that night, I listened as Alberta-based Métis artist Tiffany Shaw explained how she created her glass sculptures from casts taken from the Athabasca Glacier. “I think these will last longer than the glacier,” she said, “which is really sad.”

Lynn Martel is writer in residence for IYGP Canada, an accredited hiking guide, and the author of three books about local mountain culture, including Stories of Ice (RMB, 2020).

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Read more from the archive “Goodbye to Peyto Glacier” September 2022.

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The word “bloom” usually refers to a large swarm of jellyfish or an excessive growth of algae. Here Hajnoczky is referring to the explosion of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Her cyanotypes are inspired by renowned photographer-botanist Anna Atkins’s work with seaweed.

Julya Hajnoczky was born in Calgary and is a graduate of AUArts. She uses digital and analog photography to explore the complex relationships between humans and the natural world.

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Nickle Galleries

“Solitude”

“Resilience”

Teresa Posyniak is a Calgary-based artist and activist who has been creating art for over 40 years, yet the full extent of her extraordinary practice was not understood until recently. It seems as if this 73-year-old artist was “discovered” in 2024. That June, her monumental painting “Grasslands Tapestry” was the showstopper among the hundreds of commissioned works in the new BMO Centre. A few months later the Nickle Galleries in Calgary presented Teresa Posyniak: Resilience, the most important exhibition of her long career. While not a retrospective, this exhibition was a curated selection of works demonstrating the major themes that have driven the artist’s work over four decades, primarily women’s issues and the environment.

What was striking to gallery visitors was the variety of styles, subjects and formats, ranging from a massive installation to paintings of great delicacy and intensity of feeling. Of note too was the number of media employed by the artist: steel, wood, concrete, handmade paper, felt and silk, as well as oil, acrylic, encaustic (hot wax) and cold wax. All of Posyniak’s works, in whatever material or format she uses, explore themes of vulnerability and resilience in her unique voice.

The exhibition was grounded by a dramatically lit installation entitled “Resilience,” set in a darkened gallery space evocative of ceremony and ritual. Its genesis can be traced to 1983, when Posyniak reacted viscerally to the sexual harassment she faced as a graduate student at the University of Calgary. Her response was to create a huge installation, effectively a metaphorical refuge she called “Sanctuary.” Over the years, elements harvested from “Sanctuary” were reused, remade and readapted in other works. One work of art begat another.

“Resilience” was the most recent iteration, comprised of fluted columns and strangely anthropomorphic vertical sculptures, like sentinels. In the gallery an altar-like frieze of splayed uprights silently beckoned. Although its parts are recycled from earlier works, every unique vertical bundle was a new entity. Several of the sculptures resonated with echoes of the artist’s heritage and childhood. Collaged doilies, crocheted fabrics and lace were sealed into their skins by coats of hot wax and painted with oil and cold wax. Layers of overlapping bindings both concealed and revealed, as apertures exposed open wounds while tightly bound surfaces restrained tension.

The artist’s focus on women and increasingly on motherhood continued as she transitioned to painting through the 1980s. Posyniak created haunting figurative works in which female nudes occupy indeterminate, unsettling spaces. In many works, an isolated woman reveals her pain and desperation through the bundle she clutches. When Posyniak became pregnant in 1986, she was overjoyed but also afraid. She expressed her feelings in powerful abstract paintings, such as the monumental triptych “Annunciation,” in which a sense of vitality and growth is conveyed through movement in sweeping lines, flowing shapes and high contrast. Here, the beginnings of life are intuited, expressed in fluid visual metaphors drawn in sinuous, overlapping and intertwined shapes.

In her art Posyniak strives to portray an interconnectedness between all life forms. Through a series undertaken over the past 15 years, represented in this exhibition by two stylistically different paintings, she explores the structure, shape and significance of microscopic plankton, which supply half of the world’s oxygen through photosynthesis and are under threat from climate change. In Posyniak’s hands, scientific fact is transmuted into a world of mystery and wonder. The exhibition included paintings that reflect not just the beauty of the patterns in nature but also its vulnerability. A case in point are her textured and coloured paintings that deal with the violence wrought by the mountain pine beetle on the ponderosa pine, an ecological disaster exacerbated by a warming planet.

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For almost 60 years Glenbow has been one of Canada’s most important museums. But the building’s systems and concrete exterior envelope were beginning to fail. In 2021 renovations began to transform the museum, replacing those failing aspects and creating new spaces—including high-density collections storage systems. Throughout this process the collection was carefully managed and protected as it was moved within the museum. These photographs provide a peek at this complex game—packing objects, moving them, renovating spaces and carefully migrating precious items into their new homes. Glenbow is expected to reopen in late 2026.

Text and photos by George Webber
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Catharine Robb grew up on an estate in a wealthy family in Concord, Massachusetts, daughter of Edith Morse and Russell Robb, a successful engineer and businessman. Arts, culture, community and philanthropy were a significant part of her education and upbringing.

Despite disparate lineages and locales, their interests in making art led Catharine and Peter to meet as fellow students at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Perhaps their differences—Peter, the outdoorsy, rural man, and Catharine, refined, cosmopolitan and stylish—were the attraction. In a journal entry from that time, cited in Chic Scott’s book Mountain Romantics: The Whytes of Banff, Catharine writes, “Pete is… a perfect, blue-eyed, innocent boy, kind and good, and ought to paint well some day. He has improved more than anyone else in the class.” They courted in the late 1920s, then married in Concord in 1930 and settled in Banff. By the time of their marriage they were using the “Whyte” spelling of Peter’s family name.

In 1931 Catharine and Peter built a home on a large family property between Banff’s main street—a wide dirt trail—and the Bow River. It was a log house with studios, constructed of pine and spruce cut in the Morley foothills east of town. From their house they looked across the glacier-fed Bow and through the trees to the mountains.

It wasn’t in their minds then, but by 1968 Catharine and Peter would endow an institution dedicated to art and community that would be built right next door to their rustic home. It would become known as The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, and in 2018 it celebrated its 50th anniversary.

Wa-Che-Yo-Cha-Pa—“Where the good, the wise and the beautiful come together in harmony.”

“Can you just imagine Peter and Catharine sitting in their log house thinking about what this would look like,” says Anne Ewen, current Museum Curator of Art and Heritage, “and then actually following through with the idea, creating this amazing museum for the people of Banff and for the world?”

That vision took hold in 1958 when Catharine and Peter created a foundation to gather resources to create an arts and culture centre. The foundation was named “Wa-Che-Yo-Cha-Pa” by their friend, Stoney band chief Walking Buffalo (George McLean). Catharine interpreted the name as “Where the good, the wise and the beautiful come together in harmony.” The foundation would be endowed through Catharine and Peter’s substantial financial assets and with their considerable collection of art and artifacts.

The Whytes’ early Banff days took them into the rugged mountain landscape with pencils, brushes, paints and easels to capture the magnificent terrain in all seasons. They were sometimes accompanied by other artists, including Belmore Browne, Nicholas de Grandmaison, Carl Rungius and Walter Phillips, who became resident artist at the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1940. Other visitors included Group of Seven members J.E.H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer and A.Y. Jackson. A viewer can see, in some of the Whytes’ own paintings and drawings, the relationship of their work to the past and to the emerging style of the times. Their outdoor painting locations included their neighbouring landscapes such as at Lake O’Hara, Bow Lake and near Jasper. And they produced elegant portraits of Stoney Nakoda friends.

“Peter and Catharine were excellent painters,” says Anne Ewen. “We have [in the Museum collection] over 1,000 of their drawings and paintings. Their artwork was as good as the Group of Seven in some instances. The work they did when they were at the Boston Museum School was brilliant. Their drawings were phenomenal. Their portraiture is exquisite. They had training that prepared them for the challenges they would meet, whether painting in the mountains or working in the studio.”

Some 140 of the Whyte’s works have been on display at the Whyte Museum this summer and early fall in the exhibition “Artistry Revealed: Peter Whyte, Catharine Robb Whyte and Their Contemporaries.” The show is entirely drawn from the Whyte’s collection and also includes 29 images by their contemporaries—painters Rungius, MacDonald and A.C. Leighton among them.

Complementing the exhibition is a book with over 100 images—paintings and sketches by Peter and Catharine and others. A smattering of photographs capture the couple in their beloved mountain terrain. The text includes an introduction by Anne Ewen, close “readings” of many paintings by art historian Monique Westra and an essay on the legacy of Peter and Catharine by writer Lisa Christensen.

The Whytes produced work of extraordinary quality and volume. But artists aren’t always the best promoters.

The works in the exhibition are distinctive. Peter’s Athabasca Glacier, chosen for the show’s title wall and also for the book cover, is a gorgeous image. A gnarly, witchy, ancient tree in blacks and browns dominates the foreground to the left of the frame, and the centred glacier—a river of ice, white and blue—seems to flow toward the viewer. Catharine’s larches, as in Mount Temple and Larches, glow a golden yellow and dance against a radiant blue sky. And her portraits capture character and depth from her subjects, whether Peter’s uncle John Donaldson Curren or Dan Wildman, a Stoney friend resplendent in headdress and bear teeth necklace.

Peter’s large painting (74 cm × 165 cm) Untitled (Stoney Encampment) stands out, with its high plains panoramic width, the 20 tipis circling into the distance and back, its colours ranging from reds to greys through a many-hued palette. It offers a glimpse into what appears to be a tranquil social gathering of resident Indigenous people in a flat green field with mountains jagging the distant horizon, an image from another time.

In her essay Christensen asks, “So why, today, is their work largely unknown outside of Banff and generally unrecognized within the art world?” The Whytes produced an extraordinary volume and quality of work and were well connected—but artists are not always the best promoters of their own work. Perhaps, because of Catharine’s wealth, there was no pressing need to pursue sales. Maybe modesty was a factor.

As well, Peter and Catharine had interests outside their art making: Peter loved to ski and photograph; Catharine was a gracious host and community builder. People would often drop by their home and she would interrupt her painting to make tea and be hospitable. They welcomed friends, family, fellow artists, skiers, guides and Stoney Nakoda citizens. Their log house can still be visited and toured on the Whyte Museum property. For whatever reason, the most focused appreciation of their work remains predominantly in Banff.

The celebratory exhibition received a National Museum Assistance Program grant that enabled restoration of some paintings, new frames for others, digital interpretation included in the exhibition, and the book. “[The grant was] a way of validating that this is a really important project,” says museum director Vincent Varga, “and it is a game changer for this institution to get this kind of funding. Peter and Catharine deserve that kind of recognition.”

Sadly Peter passed away in 1966 before seeing the construction of the Whyte Museum. Catharine, going on alone, rolled up her sleeves and pushed the foundation’s plan forward. In a 1967 ceremony she wielded the shovel that broke the soil, and in 1968 the Whyte building opened, containing a gallery, a library and an historical archive.

Catharine’s close friend and ski coach in the years after Peter’s passing, photographer Roy Andersen, attended the opening. He remembers Catharine well.

“She loved her home, her cabin, she loved the mountains. She supported Peter and his painting and she sacrificed her own time. She was always a lady, and never lost her Boston, New England accent. She was humble and appreciative and so polite.” These qualities attracted people to her—local citizens and individuals in high places.

“We knew that Catharine had a good relationship with Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” says Anne Ewen, who, during her first stint working at the Whyte in the late 1970s had come to know Catharine. “I was her guest when she received the Order of Canada, and we were standing in the middle of the room at the reception and he came running over and said to her ‘I’m not here all evening, but I knew you were in town so I just thought I’d come over and say hello.’”

The Trudeau story does not end there, as Ewen recounts: “We were working in the archive one weekend. We found three boxes, labelled the ‘fugitive boxes,’ and in them we found a lovely letter from Margaret Trudeau thanking Catharine for the tour, for showing her their garden, that it was a lovely house and that she’d love to have a log house sometime in her life.”

They found another note, a formal invitation for July 5, 1973, inviting Catharine to have lunch with Pierre and Margaret along with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the Palliser. “Yet Catharine never fawned over important people,” says Ewen. “She always looked for good qualities in people. She treated everyone the same.”

Today at the entrance to the “Artistry Revealed” exhibition there hangs a framed letter from Justin Trudeau congratulating the Whyte—an institution founded before he was born—on its anniversary.

The existing collection holds more than 6,000 paintings, drawings and historical items concisely listed in Chic Scott’s book: “In the archives can be found 1,300 motion pictures, 1,100 sound recordings, 225 linear metres of textual records, 5,500 books and about half a million photographs.” And the heritage collection contains objects as diverse as packer boxes and a saddle from the days when horses were used to explore the backcountry; a guide’s 1896 Enfield rifle; First Nations buckskin jackets and beaded moccasins; CPR silverware; an 18th century Japanese ceremonial sword; even a helicopter.

Such a rich cultural repository has many functions in a place like Banff, a town in a national park, population close to 9,000, which draws four million tourists annually. As Varga says, “Contemporary museums are a destination, they’re a cultural hub, they serve the community and a tourist population. A huge percentage of visitors come here to see the mountains. How can we more effectively reach out to those people so that when they get here they want to come to the museum We’re very fortunate that we have the Peter and Catharine Whyte Foundation, and Banff being the kind of economy that it is. If it were a community of 9,000 anywhere other than in a place like this, it would be darn tough.”

Peter and Catharine Whyte could not have envisioned the Banff of today—the myriad hotels, the pricey local and chain restaurants, the ubiquitous souvenir shops, the summer traffic jams of cars, buses and motorhomes. Nor could they have foreseen the expanded building and complex program of exhibitions, talks, tours and other activities that occur at the Whyte Museum year round. Amid such growth, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and those connected with it strive to fulfill and further the vision of Catharine and Peter—that of “Wa-Che-Yo-Cha-Pa—where the good, the wise and the beautiful come together in harmony.”

Steven Ross Smith is the 2018–2019 Banff Poet Laureate and is known for his fluttertongue poems.

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The room looks more like an unpretentious accountant’s office than a medical facility. The blinds are closed on the big windows to filter the daylight, and mom has just enough room to navigate her red walker to a comfortable chair. Framed professional certificates adorn the wall.

Sitting across from us is Shirley Weyland, one of only two ocularists in Alberta and just 36 in Canada. She gazes at us through brown eyes framed by brown bangs. She is personable and considerate, and displays a gentle demeanour. Recognizing my mother’s sense of vulnerability, Weyland explains each step she takes.

She begins by making a wax mould, shaping it like a miniature curved saucer. There’s an iris button, a circular dot at the centre of the arc. Weyland shapes the mould with a small blade and spatula that she heats over a flame. She glances back and forth from my mother’s eye socket to the wax material, shaping it with her hands and tools. Most of the morning has passed by the time the mould is trial-fitted and finished, and Shirley sends us away while she casts what will be my mother’s new eye.

Part technician, part artist, Weyland tailor-makes eyes to fit her clients’ physiognomies and to match their remaining eye in colour and shape.

Weeks before our appointment with the ocularist, mom had to undergo an evisceration—removal of the sight tissue and white sclera, which leaves in place two-thirds of the eye volume—at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital. This was the outcome of what we’d thought would be a routine checkup with mom’s ophthalmologist, Dr. John McWhae, who runs a clinic in Canmore General Hospital.

I had noticed—but dismissed—a clouding in mom’s eye, knowing she had glaucoma and macular degeneration. It was possible to downplay these symptoms because she hadn’t complained of discomfort. “Ruth,” say her friends, “is a trooper.” It turns out she’d developed a severe infection that was destroying her cornea, the clear front window of the eye that transmits and focuses light into the deeper eye’s lenses, sensors and nerves.

Dr. McWhae ruled out a corneal transplant because my mother had already lost most of the vision in the eye, and a transplant would be a trying surgery at her age and would not improve her vision. My mother seemed calmer than I at the news.

On surgery day, as we drove from mom’s home—an assisted living facility in Banff—to Calgary, both of us were feeling uneasy. In 2017, however, removing an eye is so routine it is done as a day procedure.

The post-op information sheet indicated that a temporary conformer would be placed in the eye socket. I later learned the doctor had also inserted a ball-shaped implant, the proper size to replace the volume of the extracted eye.

When mom’s bandage was removed several days later, it revealed what looked like a pale irritated cranberry where her brown eye used to be. Mom required six weeks of healing before we headed to Weyland’s office. There we discovered a profession I’d never heard of, practised by a woman with specialized skills.

Shirley Weyland has made more than 5,000 prosthetic eyes for people from all over Alberta, from babies to senior citizens. Part technician and part artist, she tailor-makes eyes to fit her clients’ physiognomies and to match their remaining eye in colour and shape.

Weyland has been doing this job for 32 years. She fell into it in her early 20s after she met an ocularist who visited the Saskatoon optician’s office where she worked. She was intrigued by the transformative power of this specialty.

“I liked the fact that it helped people,” she says. “I’m working with just a few patients a day—the most I work with is five. I really get to know the person.”

There were not many ocularists in Canada at the time (“there still aren’t,” says Weyland) so she saw an opportunity. To learn her skill she needed to apprentice with an accredited ocularist. This required five years, 10,000 hours, of training, coursework and passing an examination administered by the National Examining Board of Ocularists (of which the Canadian Society of Ocularists is a member). She continues to hone her skills by attending conferences, courses and workshops, and must pass exams every six years to recertify. She does not, however, have a medical degree.

“Ocularists are technicians; we’re not doctors,” she clarifies. “There’s science, there’s a craft.”

“I improve quality of life, because that’s what an artificial eye does. My clients can go out, can socialize, and people don’t know.” —Shirley Weyland

Children are the most difficult to work with, she says. “For a child of 2 years old to have to sit still in my office for five to fifteen seconds several times can be very long. Usually, children are easier to work with after age 5.” Yet those early visits most often mark the beginning of a long relationship, because Shirley will see young clients again and again as they outgrow their prostheses.

“The children I saw 20 years ago are now adults—working, going to university or having children of their own,” Weyland says. “I feel like I’ve been a part of their life for so long. It’s neat.”

At times Weyland sees a new patient at the hospital with the ophthalmologist. “While the child is under anesthetic the ophthalmologist examines the child’s sighted eye and I take an impression of the eye socket for the artificial eye at the same time. I can also look at their good eye, examine the colour and size of the iris, take measurements, and then come back to my office and begin to make an artificial eye.”

By early afternoon on the day of my mom’s and my visit, Weyland has made a new plastic eye. It is essentially an opaque white cap—imagine a medium-sized marble sliced in half—with a dark iris. Weyland writes the date and mom’s initials at the top of the prosthesis with an indelible marker; digits and letters that will be out of sight when the eye is in place.

Turning back to mom, Shirley sets out a glass mixing plate, small brushes, a tray of creamer-sized paint pots containing a variety of dry pigments and liquids. Using her artist’s eye, she mixes the pigments and begins to paint the iris. Next, with slivers of red thread snipped from a roll, she “veins” the prosthesis—teasing fine strands onto the tip of her brush then onto the sclera, the white outer layer of the eyeball. The effect is realistic.

Weyland and lab assistant Katerina Moldowa then take the prosthesis into the lab for fine-tuning. About the size of a modest bedroom, the lab has grinding and polishing machines and two shiny pressure cookers, like the ones you buy at a department store. The eye is ground and shaped a bit more, polished smooth, and then cured under pressure and hot water in the cooker.

The applied science is what initially attracted Weyland. Now, she realizes, “I improve people’s quality of life by helping them look normal, because that’s what an artificial eye does. My clients can go out, can socialize, and people don’t know they’re wearing an artificial eye. That is very gratifying.”

An hour later, there is the new eye waiting on a piece of white paper towel. Weyland gently pulls back mom’s eyelid and inserts the prosthesis.

I am astonished to see that the eye moves—a function of the remaining muscle and an implanted “bump” that fits the eye.

Weyland is an artist in her spare time and hopes to do a lot more painting on canvas when she retires. “I paint landscapes. I work from photographs I’ve taken. It’s very different from painting eyes.”

The artistry she has done this day, however, has helped my mother’s quality of life. Eyes are the jewels that link us to the world and to each other. Mom’s friends and relatives just see a normal elderly face. Weyland says she loves working with seniors because “they have really good stories. I get to hear some of their life adventures. It’s edifying.”

It’s even more edifying—even miraculous—for my mom, who told me on the way home from Weyland’s office that she thought she could see better than before. Ah, the magic of the human imagination.

Steven Ross Smith is a poet, prose writer and arts journalist, with recent work in GalleriesWest and Poets & Writers.

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The post Optical Illusion appeared first on Alberta Views.

One window has Dumbo, King Kong and Old Yeller showing on vintage TVs. The closer you look, the more layers you find. In an Arctic-themed window, a mannequin wears a parka made from skins of eider ducks, since the region has no caribou to hunt. In a black-and-white themed window, a mannequin in a custom Paul Hardy gown of feathers from six different birds shares a window with Haida totems made of argillite. The ringmaster in a window with vintage circus posters wears a monkey jacket from the early 20th century, when monkey fur was all the rage. There’s even a portrait of Hardy’s own best friend, his loyal dog Fergus, set among the paintings of people and dogs.

The exhibition is visually stunning—not surprising, considering it was created by a designer. Hardy caught the attention of the fashion world with his first show at Toronto Fashion Week in 2002, which earned rave reviews and launched a career that has taken him to New York, Paris, Tokyo and beyond. His celebrity clients include Bette Midler, Carrie Fisher, Alanis Morissette, Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn, Chantal Kreviazuk and Paul Brandt. Locally, Hardy’s work has been seen onstage at Alberta Ballet, where he designed all the costumes for Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, a ballet choreographed to the music of Sarah McLachlan (also a client).

Hardy says he knew in Grade 6 that he wanted to be a designer, despite coming from four generations of bankers and accountants. He worked on department store window displays in high school, earned his design degree from Toronto’s Ryerson University and was recruited by Holt Renfrew to come to Calgary, where he says he fell in love with the people and the lifestyle. He eventually went into business for himself and, when he isn’t travelling, is often found at his studio in Inglewood.

In recent years Hardy has also been doing more interior design work. He was just wrapping up an animal-themed project when Glenbow invited him to participate in its artist-in-residence program. “I was really flattered to be asked, particularly because I think a lot of people don’t view fashion as an art form.”

Melanie Kjorlien, vice-president of access, collections and exhibitions, says the residency program started about five years ago as a way to encourage artists from different disciplines to engage with Glenbow’s extensive collections and produce new work. The artists are given the freedom to come up with a topic for research and study, and in return the Glenbow gains access to new audiences who are interested in those artists. The participants have been varied—poet and musician Kris Demeanor, artist Kent Monkman, poet Shane Koyczan and musician Corb Lund. Kjorlien says Hardy could have followed up his residency with a new line of clothing and that would have been fine, but instead he chose to conclude it by curating an exhibition.

Hardy’s residency began with a preliminary tour of Glenbow’s collections led by five archivists who specialize in different areas. The tour left him impressed by how vast and diverse the museum’s holdings are: “There really is no focus to it. I say this with the utmost respect, but it’s all over the map, really.” That diversity can be traced back to the origins of the collection donated to Albertans by Eric Harvie and his family, who helped launch the museum in 1966. Oil wealth enabled Harvie to pursue his passion for collecting objects important to western Canada’s history, as well as artifacts and art from around the world. Glenbow describes his eclectic vision as “Where the World Meets the West.”

Today, Glenbow’s collections, library and archives fill four floors of storage at the downtown building, not including the permanent and rotating exhibitions on view. Hardy’s tour came on the heels of his animal-themed interior design project, so animals were still top of mind. He says he noticed their influence everywhere he looked—furnishings, art, clothing. “I started to become more sensitive to the fact that we see animals in almost every area of design, our literary world, our pop culture world, our advertising and branding,” he says. “It is the common thread through every culture and it transcends every social hierarchy.” The human/animal relationship became the focus of his research and ultimately the catalyst for “Kaleidoscopic Animalia.”

In this tongue-in-cheek window, a mannequin wears a Royal Canadian Mounted Police bison coat with a silk organza gown designed by Hardy. (Glenbow)

The first window in the exhibition focuses on Canada, the fur trade and the role of the beaver, our national symbol, in the country’s founding and development. The popularity of beaver fur hats in Europe brought English and French fur traders here, leading to the establishment of the first colonies. As Hardy writes in the accompanying text, Canada had an estimated six million beavers before the start of the fur trade, and during its peak 100,000 pelts per year were being shipped to Europe. Another window features the “bounty” of the bison that once roamed the prairies in large herds, providing the First Nations tribes with meat for food, skins for shelter and clothing, and bones for tools. The bison were so abundant that, as Hardy notes, “Province of Buffalo” was initially proposed as the name for what would become Alberta and Saskatchewan. Horses have also played an important role in Canada’s history, for war, transportation, farming, ranching and in recreation and sport. Another window displays rocking horses, carousels and toys arranged in a steeplechase.

The exhibition touches on these topics but doesn’t delve too deep. For example, the text doesn’t include the fact that beavers were almost extinct in Canada by the mid-1800s. Or that not long afterwards, as settlers arrived on the prairies, buffalo were wiped out along with the First Nations’ traditional way of life. While the circus window is a reminder that parading elephants in front of cheering crowds is no longer considered acceptable, the ongoing controversy surrounding the use of horses and cattle in rodeos isn’t mentioned.

Society’s treatment of animals is a touchy topic. Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq’s support for the seal hunt recently caused an uproar. The backlash against cultural appropriation in fashion led to the banning of headdresses as accessories at some music festivals last summer. So it’s surprising that the potentially controversial subject matter in “Kaleidoscopic Animalia” hasn’t generated more reaction.

Hardy has no personal objections to people wearing fur, but he realizes not everyone shares that view. He tries to repurpose vintage pieces or use skins that are a by-product of the food chain. The exhibition raises the issue of animal rights without taking a stand. Hardy says he hopes it will spark discussion. “It’s part of history. You can’t pretend our country wasn’t birthed out of the fur trade, or that people didn’t wear exotic coats back in the ’40s and ’50s, because they weren’t as mindful about our social responsibility to animals as we may be now,” he says.

For historian Susan Nance the exhibition falls into the same trap as most discussions about animals. “The intrinsic value of animals is missing from the conversation,” she says. “People believe they’re talking about animals, writing about animals, thinking about animals, and they’re not. They’re actually talking, writing and thinking about human ideas about and uses of animals.”

An author and associate professor affiliated with the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, Nance is researching the use of animals for entertainment and what that says about our relationships with them today. She viewed the exhibition when she was invited by Glenbow to take part in a panel discussion last December about the powerful connections between humans and animals. Nance does not direct her criticism at Glenbow or Hardy, but at a self-involved society that fails to recognize that animals have value independent of their usefulness to human beings. “The whole exhibition was from a human perspective, really. It was about what we find beautiful, what we find useful, what we find interesting,” she says. “It was all about us and a celebration of us. The other lives I saw represented in all those feathers and fur and skin—those beings just weren’t a factor. I think this is a very common human habit.”

Nance agrees with Hardy that people can decide for themselves about whether the different ways society uses animals are acceptable, but suggests that to really have that conversation, the lives of the animals need to be represented as well. For example, she says the exhibition could have included stories of how famous broncs end up in rodeos and what happens to them afterwards, or displayed photos of the animals whose skins are used in the windows, or included information about how some animals are skinned alive to keep the pelt intact. “All of these skins and pelts are evidence of a horrific moment of human cruelty, and that is as much a part of the story of how animals inspire fashion and other kinds of creative art as the finished project,” she says.

Kjorlien says Glenbow doesn’t take any position on the issue of animal rights, but hopes the exhibition will prompt people to think about how animals have played a role in our lives throughout history. “Kaleidoscopic Animalia” drew animal-related artifacts from every area of the collections—artwork, military history, indigenous studies, world cultures and more—and includes many different cultures and time periods. “All of our collections were somehow touched or relevant to the theme that Paul chose for his exhibition,” says Kjorlien. “There are artifacts in Paul’s exhibition that have never been exhibited before…. It is a good opportunity for people to see some of that material presented in a unique format with an engaging theme.”

The map of Canada backdrop in the introductory window of Glenbow’s “Kaleidoscopic Animalia” exhibition is comprised of food and drink labels featuring animals, with different labels for each province and territory. (Glenbow)

Kaleidoscopic Animalia” veered away from the more usual practice of displaying artifacts according to time period, region, material or culture. Instead, the objects in the windows tell stories—viewers who want details can find them in the exhibition guide available in print and online. This is the largest exhibition to result from the artist-in-residence program so far in terms of the number of artifacts involved. Hardy says he started with 24 window ideas, and it was a challenge to edit it down to 15. For each he developed storyboards with rough illustrations of how he wanted the installation laid out and lists of key artifacts that he wanted included. After that, repeat visits to the collection helped narrow down which hat or shoe to use here, which chair or artwork to use there.

Independent Calgary-based curator Wayne Baerwaldt calls the show an “amazing culling” of all kinds of material from the collections and archives, representing the world of high art, fashion and pop culture as well as different ethnic groups. “I thought it was illustrative of how a democratic curatorial eye can operate in the Glenbow vaults and archives and really mix what we would consider high art objects, such as a painting by a renowned artist, with commonplace things like stuffed animals,” he says.

“Paul has brought them out of their traditional place in the cultural valuation system and made one virtually equal to the other… Fashion is the making of that common space where Andy Warhol’s soup cans are suddenly transformed into a beaded section of a dress, and taken out of their original context and made playful… instead of representing certain ideas in a white cube gallery at a particular time in art history.”

The experience was a learning curve for Hardy, who discovered that every artifact had to be approved by conservation experts prior to its use, and some could not be used without special permission. In one case, he wanted to use a large totem pole, an object traditionally considered sacred, in a tongue-in-cheek display showing two mannequins in tool belts, as if chiselling the pole, with one of them wearing an evening gown embroidered with art inspired by the totem. When the museum checked with the tribe that created the totem pole, they didn’t approve.

Hardy, who keeps track of social media comments about the exhibition, says he wanted the show not only to be a way of learning but also to be relatable and commercially successful. For example, putting Joseph Francis Kernan’s paintings from the ’30s and ’50s in rococo frames in pop art colours helps make them “cool and relevant,” he says, to a younger demographic that normally wouldn’t give them a second look.

When people go through museums they often “just buzz through and don’t really have an appreciation for the craftsmanship or the history of a lot of these things,” Hardy says. “And that was one of the intentions of these windows—to create rich, layered visualizations that got people to pause and actually spend time to look at all the different artifacts and details…. They would probably just pass by them if they were under glass in a traditional exhibition.”

This approach, combined with Hardy’s name recognition, has been good for attendance. More than 1,100 people came out to the public launch of the exhibition in October 2015, which was more than at the opening of the massive “Oh, Canada” exhibition. When Glenbow held its inaugural monthly Free First Thursday Night in January, more than 3,000 people showed up. Later that month Glenbow announced the exhibition had been extended to September 4, more than three months beyond its scheduled run. “We’ve had good feedback from people,” Kjorlien says.

In his introduction to “Kaleidoscopic Animalia,” Hardy says as Glenbow’s artist-in-residence he opted to “gleefully examine the historic influence animals have had on design and culture.” Baerwaldt says “mission accomplished.” He adds that Hardy’s theme of looking at how animals are used and interpreted in toys, paintings, music or fashion makes for a light, carefree and interesting tour through the artifacts—and there’s nothing wrong with that. “It’s a humanizing approach to his playful curatorial process. Maybe we need more of that.”

Maureen McNamee is associate editor at Alberta Views and a long-time journalist with the former FFWD Weekly in Calgary.

The post Creatures Great and Small appeared first on Alberta Views.

They are part of what you might call the “creative class,” though Startup Edmonton co-founder Ken Bautista much prefers “creative entrepreneurs.” And he is counting on them—and himself, as a game designer turned venture capitalist—to help diversify the province’s boom–bust economy.

He’s not alone in this thinking. “These conversations come up every time we have a downturn,” says Todd Hirsch, ATB’s senior economist and author of The Boiling Frog Dilemma: Saving Canada from Economic Decline. “These creative professionals are really important, and Alberta [must] emphasize that right now because we don’t have a very diversified economy.”

Creative professionals. Creative entrepreneurs. Creative class. Whatever you call them, in 2007 they contributed at least $84.6-billion to the Canadian economy, or 7.4 per cent of its gross domestic product, according to the Conference Board of Canada (provincial breakdowns are unavailable). And that’s based on a definition of creative economy that encompasses only goods and services in the arts and culture sectors. In his seminal 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, who coined the term, uses a broader definition: “The core of the creative class [is] people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content.”

This goes beyond intellectual property. Florida sees a wider group of knowledge-based workers, including educators, business consultants and PR professionals, who “draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.” By this definition, the creative class makes up 36 per cent of Calgary’s workforce and 30 per cent of Edmonton’s, according to the Martin Prosperity Institute, a Toronto think tank directed by Florida. What excites proponents of the creative class is that it can grow endlessly. Oil and gas are temporary economies, but ideas turned into goods and services are limitless.

Though Florida’s terminology and many of his theories—namely that creative types will spur economic prosperity wherever they settle—aren’t as widely accepted as they once were, business leaders across Alberta are still trying to attract, foster and retain creative people.

Energy made up 22 per cent of this province’s $306.7-billion GDP in 2012. This is an improvement from three decades ago, when energy made up more than a third of the economy. Still, the industry is very much like the dinosaurs from which we once thought oil originated—king of the economic ecosystem, yet most vulnerable to unpredictable disasters.

Last year Albertans saw yet again what happens to funding for healthcare, infrastructure development and especially advanced education when the Alberta government latches its various budgets to an oil derrick. “Look at what we go through,” says Luke Azevedo of Calgary Economic Development. “It’s an ebb and flow economy—years where everything is on a high, costs and jobs go up, and then there’s a downturn. It’s so cyclical.”

Azevedo, Calgary’s commissioner of film, TV and creative industries (the latter part of his title is a recent amendment), doesn’t think his sector is the key to further diversification, “but it will be one of them.” More importantly a vibrant culture gives residents—especially the new ones who may have come for energy jobs—more reason to stay.

“Creative professionals are really important, and Alberta must emphasize that, because we don’t have a very diversified economy.” —Todd Hirsch, ATB senior economist

Startup Edmonton’s home, the rickety, insufficiently heated Mercer Warehouse, symbolizes the creative economy’s ability to fill economic voids. A century ago, the building was a busy shipping-and-receiving operation for agricultural and manufactured goods, but as those sectors dwindled so too did the warehouse’s usefulness. It sat empty for decades, except maybe when the occasional fashion photographer needed a dingy background. But two years ago the building owner and Startup Edmonton, Guru Digital Arts College and the owners of a bar and a café joined forces to instantly make this one of the most popular street corners in all of Edmonton.

Startup Edmonton is also a regular meeting place for people in theatre, computer programming and film. Membership fees cover a third of the $700,000 operating budget. The rest comes from benefactors and the City of Edmonton.

Bautista and co-founder Cam Linke have become two of the most influential Edmontonians outside of public office. When city council debated how the remainder in the 2014 budget should be used, mayor Don Iveson thrust his support behind Startup Edmonton instead of a community league or tourism initiative. “You need a level of interaction and cross-pollination occurring somewhere in your creative economy, and we need hubs for that,” says Iveson. He’d like to see more places like Startup Edmonton sprout throughout the capital and spread the creative culture. Already, a strong local movement called “Make Something Edmonton” celebrates DIY culture. Former mayor Stephen Mandel’s task force on image and reputation recommended that city employees’ business cards pay homage with the phrase “What are you making How can we help?”

In Calgary, AcceleratorYYC fulfills a similar role as Startup Edmonton (billing itself a “startup community hub and co-work space”) but hasn’t taken off in the same way. However, there’s much excitement around two developments, cSPACE, (the “c” is for creative) in the former King Edward School, and the Alberta Creative Hub, spearheaded by Calgary Economic Development (CED). Azevedo hopes the latter will help bring the city renown for its creative sector. And the need for the $22.8-million film studio, sound stage and hub for digital and media arts, Azevedo says, has never been more urgent. “When we have a [film] sector that functions on Alberta’s vistas and its people, and the vistas are only accessible six months of the year, how do you grow the people of that sector when you have nowhere to put them?”

He was disappointed when Alberta Culture denied the $13-million support he requested to complete the hub, which had been in limbo for eight years. The return on investment for film is $5 for every dollar invested, according to CED, but Minister Heather Klimchuk still won’t offer more than $5-million. “There’s never enough money [for arts infrastructure],” Azevedo says with some frustration. “There’s always somewhere else to put it.”

“If the government goes into a project funding half of it, that’s not healthy,” says Klimchuk. This is a double standard when you consider the billions of dollars that have gone toward stimuli in the energy sector, such as the Alberta Oil Sands Technology & Research Authority, a public–private venture formed by the Lougheed government in 1974 (now called Alberta Innovates—Energy and Environment Solutions). Four private partners will work with CED on developing the film studio. Klimchuk acknowledges the hub’s importance to growing the creative sector. “It’s about economic diversification,” she says.

But is Alberta Culture doing enough to cultivate the creative economy Sean Gouglas, director of the University of Alberta’s office of interdisciplinary studies, thinks the province could do more, for example, by taking the video gaming industry seriously. At $66-billion worldwide market revenue for 2013, video games are neck and neck with the film industry, which in Alberta is eligible for government grants. Gouglas, who co-directs the university’s new video game development program, the second of its kind in Western Canada, says, “Alberta really needs to consider whether it wants to be a significant player in the game industry, especially when you have to compete with provinces giving significant tax incentives, like Quebec and Ontario.” Local video game companies, such as the Edmonton industry giant BioWare, pay a low corporate tax rate, but this is not comparable to the incentives offered by other provinces.

Bautista, however, doesn’t think tax incentives will help the talent pool he’s trying to grow. “Tax credits would be great for a big company like BioWare,” he says. “But for a brand new company, tax credits are not going to help fund them and get them going.” Instead, space and mentorship are most valuable to creatives of all kinds, he says.

Todd Hirsch agrees. In August he was asked by Klimchuk to chair the refreshed Premier’s Council on Culture with 21 others from the province’s arts, education and technology sectors. The fact that one of Alberta’s leading economists is heading such a council shows a changing view on what creativity is and what it’s for. The team includes several committees with various focuses, including one called Creativity and Transforming the Economy. What the agenda won’t include, says Hirsch, is a request for more money.

“Rather than just cutting cheques to arts groups, maybe the province can provide some business and entrepreneurial prowess to these groups,” he says. An accountant-in-residence program, for example, could give them the business savvy they might lack. Another idea is convincing landlords of empty commercial spaces to offer them to creative people as free and temporary studios or jam spaces, something that Edmonton’s mayor is already giving serious consideration. Iveson is also exploring zoning changes that would incentivize builders to create more rental apartments in Edmonton’s homeowner-dominated market in order to bring up the vacancy rate (which is Canada’s second lowest after Calgary) and bring down the costs of rent, which would make the city more affordable for entrepreneurs, artists and other creative types.

Hirsch says, “[Minister Klimchuk] wants some eyebrow-raising recommendations, and if the first recommendation we give her is ‘do not increase direct funding to arts groups,’ that’s going to raise some eyebrows, but then [she’ll] keeping reading.” He laughs. “I might get thrown off the council!”

In the mid-2000s, when Ontario manufacturing plants started closing or laying off workers by the hundreds, the provincial government got to work on a report called Seizing Global Opportunities: Ontario’s Innovation Agenda. This is what’s needed for Alberta, says Dr. Daniel Doz, president of Alberta College of Art + Design. This is what he hopes will come out of the Premier’s Council, of which he too is a member.

Doz knows well how a behemoth sector—manufacturing in Ontario, oil here in Alberta—affects all others. ACAD was promised a 2 per cent increase in the 2013/14 budget but instead saw a 7.3 per cent cut. Meanwhile, he says, the registrar’s office had three-quarters more applicants than the year before. Luckily ACAD didn’t have to admit fewer students, but it did combine some courses and has risked diluting students’ learning. As ACAD is one of four art colleges in Canada, Doz fears continued cuts will send students away from Alberta. “Our students and faculty, as consumers and producers of art, enrich the fabric of the city,” he says. “Their presence really is important.”

Similar funding cuts to Advanced Education & Enterprise led Mount Royal University to suspend its theatre and music diplomas as well as its journalism certificate, and the U of A to put several design, music and theatre programs on the chopping block. Of course, every Alberta post-secondary institution is still reeling from the budget, but the arts were hit hard because they typically have lower enrolments. This, however, is misunderstood as waning interest, says Doz. “The way we teach art and design is often in smaller classes, because that’s the best way to teach them.”

Universities and colleges are important to the creative class not just because of their arts programs or the training they provide, but because they’re often young people’s first encounter with the kind of intellectual friction that feeds creativity. “These are places of collision, where ideas happen,” says Doz. To that end, ACAD is also planning a Creativity and Entrepreneurship Centre of Excellence that would put artists and entrepreneurs in the same venue for speaking series, “hackathons” (marathon events to invent new software in single sittings) and other events, while also helping secure student internships and venture capital for startups.

Michael Macdonald is a music professor at MacEwan University and senior research associate with Creative Alberta, a group encouraging creativity in culture, commerce and especially education. He would also like to see more business overlap within arts education. “We need to train artists also to be entrepreneurs, and until we’re doing that, regardless of what the rhetoric is, we’re not building a cultural sector.”

Haley Simons, CEO of Creative Alberta, goes further, saying that the change needs to begin at the K–12 level. She is an internationally performing pianist who became disheartened by people who view artists as “trained monkeys.” She says current curriculum focuses too much on “known-outcome value systems”—basically, teaching things that have definite answers instead of encouraging discovery and invention. “If we’re only teaching what we know, how do we discover what we don’t know?” she asks. Imaginative learning, she suggests, is the key to building a creative economy that services every industry, not just the inherently artistic ones.

It’s easy to get riled up about creative cities, classes, sectors and what have you. Attach “creative” to anything—an industry, a brand, a half-eaten sandwich—and you make it instantly more appealing. We speak about creativity as if it were a recently discovered natural resource, but really it’s just freedom to indulge one’s imagination. I’m left wondering: Are we just breathing in the fumes of a modern yet temporary social trend?

Last February, Richard Florida surprised all but his critics by admitting that his creative-class theories—which hold that creatives would pull ailing economies from the dust—may have been overly optimistic. This must have come as a shock for bureaucrats in struggling cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, which paid the economist and University of Toronto professor large sums for policy consulting.

Some experts take offence to the term “creative class,” calling it elitist and saying it ghettoizes the working class and other demographics that are creative in their own ways. “I work for a bank but I like to think I’m a creative person,” says Hirsch, a cautious promoter of Florida’s work. He also points out that other attempts to diversify the Alberta economy, such as encouraging a magnesium industry in the 1980s, have failed, and that there’s no reason to think creative industries are immune.

“If Alberta is to compete for the best talent, the province must foster an environment that encourages the arts to thrive.” —Alberta Chambers of Commerce

Other critics have said the idea of a creative class is hyped up, or accused it of masking the decline of the arts sector. Indeed, Calgary Economic Development’s 2010 creative industries profile, written to espouse the strength of the sector, showed that most of the industry’s growth between 2004 and 2009 was only happening in non-traditional creative practices, such as design, and in sectors surrounding the creative core, such as PR and consultation. But the more traditional elements of the creative economy, from recording artists to art dealers, were shrinking almost across the board.

“You can’t draw a direct link to the economic health of an urban centre just because you’re going to put a bunch of artists in the centre and support them,” says Jeffrey Anderson, executive director of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA). He challenges that part of the Richard Florida school of thought. However, that doesn’t mean arts support doesn’t have important social value, he says. “We know that having art in communities leads to greater social cohesion, that it brings people together in a positive way. Art, in all its forms, has a lot of tentacles. Not just economic.”

Edmonton mayor Don Iveson does believe that the creative industries—especially the fine arts—can pay economic dividends in unforeseen ways. “You can be a better pipeline engineer if you’re stimulated by creative experiences in your community,” he says. But cities also need denser cores for that intellectual friction—what he calls the “bumping in the hallway effect.” Like Naheed Nenshi, Iveson has made infill development and density a major issue. Only then can creativity and innovation become more than buzzwords.

The AFA is the cornerstone of Alberta’s creative industries. Its grants support hundreds of arts organizations and festivals every year as well as over 1,000 individuals. According to the 2012 AFA report Arts Impact Alberta, the local arts sector is worth $378-million. The AFA was not affected by the latest cuts, but was sliced so severely in the Stelmach era that it has yet to catch up to its former $35-million budget. Still, Anderson says, artists are moving to (or back to) Alberta in droves. For a population of four million to sustain at least 10 renowned arts companies, such as Alberta Ballet, is a significant achievement. And this province’s cost of living is more attractive than Vancouver’s or Toronto’s.

According to the Canada Council for the Arts, the return on every $1 invested by government in an Alberta artist or organization is $15.75, compared to $12.92 in Quebec and $10.87 in BC. Yet the Council still only saw 765 Alberta applications last year, compared to 2,400 from BC. And that’s after a five-year plan to induce more grant applicants from Alberta. Perhaps the demand for the core of the creative industry—where the traditional arts such as dance, music and literature entertain us, provoke us, reflect our cultural identity back to us—is larger than its supply. Indeed, the population has grown by a quarter in just over a decade, but arts funding hasn’t kept pace, something Minister Klimchuk will admit: “We’re always playing catch-up.”

And yet, there is still a labour shortage in most economies, creative or otherwise. Employers here offer some of the best salaries and benefit packages, yet have positions to fill. A thriving arts sector is one of the best enticements left. As the Alberta Chambers of Commerce put it in a 2011 report, “If Alberta is to compete for the best talent, the province must ensure that it fosters an environment that encourages the arts to thrive.”

Indeed, while the creative industries on their own won’t save Alberta from another bust or “bitumen bubble,” they can help, even if by just giving residents a reason to stay. According to Statistics Canada, only one in four people who migrated to Alberta for work between 2004 and 2009 listed the province as their primary residence (which means the rest paid income taxes elsewhere). To them, Wild Rose Country is a stopover.

“Alberta continues to be the ATM of the country,” says Hirsch. “People come here, they get their cash and they get out. In the long run that’s not a fantastic way to build a community. What’s here to anchor them and to keep them?” It may be a music scene that never rests, a theatre company premiering plays that go on to international success, a culturally vibrant neighbourhood or a refurbished warehouse like Startup Edmonton where people can think up and launch the next great idea. It will be something that strengthens Alberta’s, and therefore their own, identity. “This is not a Calgary versus Edmonton thing,” says Ken Bautista. “This is Alberta versus the world.”

Omar Mouallem is an Edmonton-based writer whose most recent story for Alberta Views was “Policing the Police” (June 2013).

The post Creative Space appeared first on Alberta Views.

I am used to basements. Many artists who are not international celebrities convert the subterranean rooms of their houses into studio space. Others renovate the garage or take over the extra bedroom, and some find one of the scarce affordable spaces available for rent in commercial buildings or the few artists’ co-ops. I made 62 studio visits during the process of selecting artists to show in the 2013 Alberta Biennial, and more as follow-ups. This is a large number. The carrot is that you can never be certain what you will find.

The first steps of curating the biennial went like this. The Art Gallery of Alberta, in Edmonton, issued to the province’s artists an open call for submissions. (The gallery co-founded the biennial in 1996, but its partner in this Edmonton/Calgary alliance, the Glenbow Museum, pulled out years ago.) Artists from all over Alberta—164 of them—answered the call. The gallery then sent the submissions, which included artist statements, Power Point presentations or slides, and CVs, to Calgary for me to review. Based on these files, I chose whose studios to visit and added a handful more.

The studio visit is a time-honoured and, I would say, privileged way for curators to see new art before it leaves the artist’s working space and appears in public. “The studio visit became a trope in modernism, and remains so,” wrote art critic and novelist Brian O’Doherty (who is also the artist known as Patrick Ireland) in his book Studio and Cube. “The visit has its etiquette and comic misunderstandings. The studio visitor is the preface to the public gaze. The visitor brings an environmental aura—collector, gallery, critic, museum, magazine. The studio visit can be a raging success or a disaster, a much desired ‘discovery’ or an intrusion from hell.”

During the studio-visit phase of the project, I tried not to be the intruder from hell, while I brought with me the “environmental auras” of museum, magazine and critic from my work as an art critic, curator and art magazine writer, both in print and online. Moreover, I was visiting as a guest curator from the Art Gallery of Alberta—my errand to make an exhibition that would be important to the artists who wound up in it, and to how they were perceived inside and outside the province.

An ideal studio visit presents an occasion for artists and curators to talk, get to know each other a little, swap ideas, ask questions (on both sides) and look together at art that might even still be in progress. This is probably my favourite part of the process. I learn from artists and from being in the spaces where they think about and make their work. I knew some of the artists who submitted to the biennial, but had never heard of or never met others. I travelled to Banff, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie and Edmonton. At home in Calgary, in addition to work by local artists, I saw one piece each by an artist from Black Diamond and one from Fort McMurray, both of which are in the show.

Visiting 62 studios between March and June 2012 was a challenge, but it was rewarding and fuelled by a sense of discovery that was often exciting enough for me to feel pumped. After this came choosing who was in and who wasn’t, decisions that really were difficult to make when it came down to the hairsplitting elimination round.

Wave Interference, by Robyn Moody, Calgary. (Courtesy of J. Guzzo Desforges)

Why does a curator choose one artist or work over another? This is the hardest part of the process to talk about in the abstract. I can say that it is based on knowledge, the experience of looking at a lot of art, and that subjective faculty known as taste, as well as other considerations. About three-quarters of the way through the studio visits, I noticed I was seeing references in contemporary work to Alberta’s physical, social, political and cultural geography to a degree I had not seen before. I started thinking about what that might mean. I thought back to the late 1970s, when I first moved to Alberta, and the debates going on then around the subject of Regionalism. I realized I had the opportunity to make a biennial with an unusually focused theme.

So some of my decisions were coloured by how well a work fit into the thematic construction of the show, which I started to shape once the studio visits were completed. The theme came out of the work. Put most simply, Regionalism and the old centre/periphery model of how ideas are disseminated in the art world have become obsolete in the age of economic globalization. In the work of contemporary Alberta artists, we see artmaking that goes beyond Regionalism. Call it Post-regionalism, if you like. I use the term for want of a better one. Although it may seem counterintuitive, my evidence for this shift is the artists’ renewed attention to, acceptance of and commitment to place.

Shifting the discourse of Regionalism to that of place—defined by human geographers as a meaningful location constructed by people and their practices—changes the subject position of the artist. This shift is “The News From Here,” as the title of the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art suggests. This eighth—and with 32 artists and collaborations, largest—biennial points outward and inward at the same time. The old Regionalism was a discourse imposed from the outside, from the centre to the hinterland, which necessarily was made to feel subordinate and inferior. Perceived dialogues, often in the guise of visiting artists and critics, went in one direction only, and folks in the hinterland were always running to catch up. In the 1970s many artists based in Alberta felt isolated, unrecognized and envious; many yearned to be elsewhere.

I wanted an exhibition important to the artists in it, and how they were perceived inside and outside Alberta.

Things are very different now. Artists here seem to feel a sense of identity connected to the specificities and textures of the daily, lived experience of a particular place. At the same time, they maintain practices that mirror place, produce innovative ideas and partake of the issues, ideas and technologies of international contemporary art, which they feel free to adapt, alter or counter within the context of a locale. In my essay in the catalogue of “The News From Here,” I take the position that place is a significant factor in the making of art, and that art is a significant factor in the shaping of place. Our art reflects who we are and want to be, and what we think and feel about how and where we live. It is a means by which we create and perpetuate our myths, at the same time that it strips away the image of provincialism. Influences these days flow from many directions. It is possible for artists to be “in place” and also to get some distance, the longer view.

Artists in 2013 Alberta show their work locally, nationally and internationally. One thing I discovered is how busy these people are. Connected to the Internet and social media, they are also cosmopolitans who travel widely, network, study abroad and attend international residencies, which today are offered in some 70 countries around the world. Some works in the biennial were conceived or worked out in artist residencies in places as different and far-flung as Colombia and Lebanon, yet remain deeply immersed in this place. Terrance Houle, for example, wrote the proposal for his short film Isstahpikssi (eestah-peek-see)—Ghost (2013) during a residency in Bogotá. The protagonist of the film, which is based on the French experimental filmmaker Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), is his Blackfoot ancestor Isstahpikssi, who becomes a time traveller via the alchemical vehicles of photography and film. His name means ghost. Houle, who develops his narrative using old family photographs among other image sources, makes of Isstahpikssi a witness to the history of relations between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans.

The biennial has become a popular exhibition format—there are 200 now held around the globe—whose job is to update its audience on what is going on in contemporary art, internationally or in a locale. Even before I started looking at work, I decided to stick to the biennial format and choose art made in the previous two years. This was not always strictly possible, but I came close. I decided not to include artists who had appeared in the 2010 edition, to make more space for unknown artists, and I came close. Jason de Haan, who collaborates here with Miruna Dragan, was in the last Alberta Biennial, “Timeland,” in 2010.

“The News From Here” is an exhibition of new and recent work in painting, sculpture that bends traditional categories, photography, video, performance, film and live cinema, a type of multimedia performance that includes image projections, voice and improvised music. This biennial includes a fair amount of moving-image art and a film program. I wanted the show to be fresh and to have the potential to surprise and illuminate through the works and their juxtapositions. (My other favourite part of exhibition-making is installing the show, shaping the visual and physical entity of the exhibition itself.) Several artists, including Faye HeavyShield, Laura Vickerson, DaveandJenn, Pamela Norrish, Chris Cran, Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton, and Houle, agreed to make new work for the show.

king! by Chris Cran, RCA, Calgary. (Courtesy of Chris, Cran, Trepnaier Baer Gallery, and Clint Roenisch Gallery)

When word got around that I had been invited to curate the 2013 biennial, people I ran into frequently posed a rhetorical question: “You’re doing this all by yourself?” My guess is that by asking a question that was really a comment, they were acknowledging two things: that curating a biennial is a big job, and that it is a big responsibility not to be taken lightly. The Alberta Biennial is an important exhibition. I did see the work of several artists I would have included but couldn’t because there was not enough space. (My first thought upon waking many mornings during the selection process was, will they all fit?) But as it is, I asked for and graciously was given more space than the Art Gallery of Alberta has ever devoted to a biennial before. Works in “The News From Here,” the second biennial to appear in architect Randall Stout’s award-winning gallery, can be found in the gallery’s facade, in Manning Hall and the special collections gallery on the first floor as well as the entire third-floor gallery and on the third-floor terrace.

That there was more good art than I could find a place for reflects the quality of work by Alberta-based artists. My eyes have always been bigger than the available gallery space. And, should it need to be said, I did not curate the biennial by myself. I undertook it with the support and consultation of Catherine Crowston, AGA executive director and chief curator, who let me run with my ideas, and her consummately professional staff. I kept waiting for someone to say no to a request, but no one shrank from things that might be a little out of the ordinary or difficult, such as craning a 7,000 lb., fully functional “tiny house”—The Cardiff-Miller House, by Emily Luce—up to the terrace on the third floor. What more could anyone ask?

Nancy Tousley was art critic for the Calgary Herald for more than 30 years. She received the 2011 Governor General’s Outstanding Contribution Award in visual and media arts.

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