Confederation Centre

Remembert this? Well, today it became these, invitations for Catherine’s Confederation Centre Art Gallery show, which opens on February 24, 2013:

The Prince Edward Island letterpress cut was a loan from Ian Scott; the headline are in Akzidenz Grotesk 48 point and 60 point, the date and time in Bodini Bold 24 point and the credit line in Bodini 12 point.  Because I only had one “Island,” I had to run each of the 75 copies through the press 3 times, and then another time for the black, so it was a 3-4 hour job. But I’m very happy with the result.

Catherine’s show, Changing Environs, has been open at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery since the beginning of the month; it’s really quite wonderful, and one of the highpoints of my day is wandering through the Centre lobby on the way to or from coffee and seeing something I didn’t see before (can there be any greater gift from a love than the opportuntity to see into their soul through their art?). 

The “official opening” (where there’s wine and cheese and talk of “conceptual intentionality”) is coming up on February 24, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. at the Centre, and you are all heartily invited (Catherine’s parents will be here, and they live in Ontario!). I started work – late, admitedly, but better than never – on the invitation for the opening; it will be printed in two colours on my letterpress, and here’s the black set up and almost ready to print:

I hope to have these printed and off into the hands of patrons of the arts Friday or Monday.

Catherine and I started off as neighbours on George Street in Peterborough. I remember clearly the first time I laid eyes on her: she was wearing clothes covered in paint. Over the months of that summer as I began my slow, slow wooing process I experienced her life as a working artist mostly through the sounds of her pounding on some piece of metal or another in her backyard-cum-studio. Fortunately, Catherine accelerated the wooing process – my “five year plan” was much under her patience threshold – and by Thanksgiving we were a couple. We’ve been together ever since – 22 years.

When we moved to Prince Edward Island in 1993, one of the first magical things that happened was that Catherine took up residence in a studio on Victoria Row, a spot that, until the week before we arrived, had been Lester O’Donnell’s law office. She worked there for two years, and then reluctantly gave it up when we moved to the country. When we returned to town and Catherine went looking for a studio again, the magic was obviously still in the air, as she was able to move back in when Ben Stahl, who had been there in the intervening 13 years, moved out.

Almost since the day she moved back in, she has been working on a body of work – in fibre these days, mostly, not metal – related to Prince Edward Island and land use and the environment. Along the way Oliver and I have had a backstage pass to the creation of everything from fabric potato plants to a large wall hangings. I’ve schlepped a dory around, helped her figure out how to scan $20 bills, and, mostly, watched from the sidelines as her studio slowly filled with work.

The rest of you, I am happy to say, will get a chance to see what we’ve been seeing, as in February the Confederation Centre Art Gallery is mounting a show of Catherine’s recent work, Changing Environs. The show opens to the public on February 2, there’s an opening on February 24th, 2013 in the afternoon (Facebook event), and the show will be in place all spring. You should make sure to see it; it is, if I don’t say so myself, rather wonderful.

One clear signal that you hanging out with an art-insider crowd is overhearing frequent use of the word maquette, a word almost never heard elsewhere. If you’re an art-outsider, dropping an m-bomb (“did you see MacDougall’s maquette for his biennale piece?”) will allow you to immediately blend in (note strategic use of word biennale to add spice). Thrown in an intentionality and a representational here and there and soon you’ll be going to the coolest parties.

All of which I say by way of introducing you to four interesting maquettes currently on display in the subterranean hallways of the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, all shortlisted entries for the Centre’s commission for a new piece of outdoor sculpture for 2014:

You can see these maquettes and learn more about the artists and their proposals by visiting the Centre and looking in the glass displays opposite Memorial Hall (as I write there’s still some documentation, and perhaps a missing maquette, still to come).

In a bid to learn more about the Confederation Centre of the Arts’ history, I sought out Frank MacKinnon’s book Honour the founders! Enjoy the arts! : Canada’s Confederation Memorial in Charlottetown at the public library. The book, which details the history of the Centre from conception to birth, is a fascinating primer on how to accomplish an impossible project. My favourite passage is this, relating the initial reaction of Premier Matheson to the idea:

The premier’s reaction was all that could be expected at the time: “It cannot be done but if it can we will not stand in your way. You are on your own. We trust it will not cost any money but we will provide the site. If it is a gift we will accept it.” “Will you maintain it?” I asked. “Of course,” was the easy answer when success was not expected. And the premier gave hostages to fortune when he agreed to keep politics out of the project and discourage the interference that so often has ruined local enterprise on the Island and elsewhere. On several occasions he warned that I alone would take the blame should anything go wrong.

For anyone seeking to carry out a project that seems so absurd as to be dismissed out of hand at the mere mention of it, MacKinnon’s book is a must-read, for he provides, in compelling detail, how he managed to assemble the political will required to build the Centre. We owe him a debt, both for the Centre itself, but also for his willingness to lift the curtain and show how it was done.