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Saturday, February 14, 2004

Christl Bergstrom Writing for Art Matters

I am an artist swimming upstream, like a salmon, going to her studio to spawn. Every weekday morning after a quick glance in the Edmonton Journal (What? no art news in the world?), I walk to my studio, four blocks from home. The studio was a store, on Whyte Avenue close to Old Strathcona, with it’s restaurants and bars. I am not close enough to have the active street traffic of my favourite neighbourhood. In its last life my store was a pawnshop. Sometimes when I sit all day painting without any visitors I think I should return the small space to a store. But then the public comes in to look at my latest art and I have a dialogue about life and my work. My favourite guests are of course my friends. Then there are other artists who want to find a space to exhibit their art. In Edmonton there are not very many places to do that. My Red Gallery is currently suitable to show only my own art.

I would like to find other ways to show my art and have produced a catalogue of the recent show, “On Being Didactic”. There is also a Catalogue of the two shows just completed, “View to Understanding” and” Dead Dog Dogma Series”. The other small commercial projects are greeting cards with my art images. Small steps that I hope will bring my art to the attention of more people.

With the dénouement of the last two shows I start a new series. PORTRAIT OF EDMONTON. This is our city’s 100th birthday. These landscapes are a series that include my walk to work. Every day there is a new piece of garbage thrown down with no care of who will pick this stuff up. I of course see it as a contemporary image of our time. The garbage seems invariably to be from fast food outlets. There is graffiti, embarrassingly bad, on most of the buildings. So I will try to create something from these contemporary, cultural images. There will be landscapes seen only when walking along a trail or a bridge. There will be images of the city as seen through the windshield of my car. I also like to imagine what the pioneers where seeing when Edmonton was declared a city in 1904.

I was born in Holland, where I walked on cobbled roads leading into the small farms that were thousand of years old. Village life did not change quickly, and the installation of the first telephone in my grandparents home was major event. The first automobile was impressionable, because my first ride was to the train to take the trip that would lead me to Canada. New beginnings are also the moments of our city. What we make of those moments is to be celebrated.

I remember the Secord House, which housed the previous Edmonton Art Gallery. In the 1970’s and 1980’s I remember the excitement of the New York Artists who did not hesitate to show their art in the New Edmonton Art Gallery. I remember a wonderful show of David Smith’s sculptures. The same year there was a 75th anniversary photo show, Alberta Communities. Another show was of “The Big Picture, Prairie Landscapes”. The abstract art of Hans Hoffman was shown at the Edmonton Art Gallery in 1981. His great influence was teaching and thus influencing artists everywhere. Other artists who had exhibitions in the EAG in 1981 were Giacomo Manzu, A.C.Leighton, David Milne, Robert Sinclair, J.W.G.MacDonald, Fred Varley and Daryl Hughto.
The new director of the EAG has his hands full in re-establishing our gallery’s place in my community. It is not a hopeless cause. The first step when looking for improvement is to look at one’s assets. I would like to see a website which shows all of the Edmonton Art Gallery’s collection. Then I would love to see that the EAG supports our local artists scene by putting together retrospective shows to travel to other galleries. The staff or curators should write about the goals of the EAG and pursue other curators to aid in promoting the importance of the collection and Edmonton artists. If the collection is not significant, cull it and rebuild the collection.

I just was introduced to the artist David Bierk, and know that the EAG has one of his works. When he died, homage by putting his work on display and telling the Edmonton public about this artist would have been interesting. Like any artist who looks at life and realizes that it is terminal, I see the Edmonton Art Gallery in it’s last death rattle without the ability for resuscitation. A new building, or even major renovations, is the least of its problems.

Enough said about the EAG. The following is something I wrote in 1999 before I had my art displayed in public.

“The desire to communicate is human. With amazement, early humans learned to share ideas with one another, beyond instinct. My world is visual and my words are often a shy imitation of what I want to communicate. To me, art is clearer. To understand the human need for art – is to believe that we want to share. We want to share our feelings, our thoughts, our knowledge and our fears with others. Sharing is often between people who have different levels of understanding, or knowledge. This disparity is sometimes the cause for great confusion and turmoil.

I believe that all people have an intrinsic desire to understand one another. Words are the most immediate way of sharing. However words used badly are often misunderstood. To put words in another person’s mouth is perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of all. To presume too much is an error. To believe you have the right to speak your mind to another person is selfish. I am guilty. Sometimes it is just a basic desire to communicate and share. My art is the easiest way to share that I know. It is uniquely me. My world of art often separates me from people who feel there is a secret to being an artist. I try to bridge that gap.”

posted by Christl at 11:37 AM

posted by Christl at 11:33 AM