Current Exhibitions

WILL, Mary Louise Shannon
September 9, 1944 – Sampson, New York
October 20, 2021 – Calgary, Alberta
 

Mary Shannon Will, an artist known for colourful, witty ceramic sculpture and vibrant abstract painting, died of ALS on October 20 at Chinook Hospice in Calgary. A senior member of the Calgary art community, she was 77.

Shannon Will was born in Sampson, New York in 1944. Her childhood was spent in Seattle, Washington and then in Madison, Wisconsin, where Mary completed high school. Mary credited her father, an amateur artist who served in the US Navy and later worked in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, for encouraging her creative bent. After a year at Coe College, a liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she studied ceramics at the University of Iowa (1964–1967), the Tuscarora Pottery Summer School (1966–1967), and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (1970–1971). Mary moved to Calgary with her husband, artist John Will in 1971, and immediately set up her ceramic studio at their home in Lower Mount Royal.

Albuquerque was Mary’s life-long second home, a place she returned to annually. She loved taking trips into Santa Fe with her sister Michelle and her dogs to comb second-hand stores for unique pieces of turquoise jewelry and collectibles. While traveling throughout the southwestern United States and Canada, rarely would Mary and John miss a roadside attraction where a postcard, souvenir “floaty pen,” antique thermometer, or western-themed café cup and saucer would await them. Trips to New Mexico often included visits to Taos, Chaco Canyon, Acoma, Frijoles Canyon, and other ancient Pueblo sites that are home to the diverse Indigenous peoples of the Southwest and are places Mary held dear since first visiting them with her parents. Over the years, the people, light, colour, and cultures of the Canadian Prairies, New Mexico, and the Southwest intertwined to weave a strong network of relations and experience that shaped Mary’s life and art.  

Mary made art for over 50 years. During the 1960s and early 1970s she made functional studio pottery, but her pots quickly morphed into brightly coloured ceramic sculptures that recall sensuous botanical and biological organisms. Around 1980 Mary visited the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design while John taught summer classes there. Here her existing interest in systems, rules, and chance blossomed to guide her use of colour and pattern in a series of abstract geometric ceramic sculptures made between 1978–1985. These works with their glowing glazed surfaces of solid and graduated colour precisely patterned with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny dots and dashes mark the trajectory of her practice for the years to come.

Mary began to make prints, drawings, and paintings using highly subjective systems and processes from the mid-1980s on. In the mid-1990s, Mary was an artist resident at the Banff Centre for the Arts where she discovered a synergy between the pixelated digital technology of Photoshop and her method of working with generative systems, patterns, chance, and colour. After much trial and error—and good-hearted collaborative toil with the computer technicians—Mary began producing archival inkjet and mixed-media works with paint where grids of digital pixels glitch and dissolve under the artist’s subjective systems.

From 2005 on Mary returned exclusively to painting small, intimate, and square works where the layers of colour glow and shimmer to create a jewel-like depth. These works are intuitive responses to the people, places and things that shaped the artist’s experience and perception of the world in which she lives: a trip to India with her friends Gisele Amantea and Peter White, a place in New Mexico, a residency with Jeffrey Spalding at the Tao Hua Tan International Artist Retreat and Residency (China), a shape from a doodle done while watching film noir. Mary, being a bit of a rascal, was unlike other conceptual artists and never allowed the system to completely override her personal responses to the process or materials. Beauty was her endgame.

Mary, you are as unique, eclectic, and colourful as your work. We will sorely miss you Mary but are truly grateful to have shared in your life. Thank you for the rich legacy you have left us in your work, through it the depth and richness of your life will live on in full colour.

Mary Louise Shannon Will is survived by her husband John Arnold Will, her sister Susan Michelle Shannon (Los Angeles, California), her brother John Thomas Shannon (Missoula, Montana), and is predeceased by her brother Robert William Shannon.

You can view more of Mary's artworks in the AFA's collection through the AFA Virtual Museum.

Group of Seven.

Three words that thrill Canadian art lovers everywhere. And while much of the work produced by the Group of Seven focused on eastern Canada, did you know there was a strong connection between Alberta and members of the Group of Seven?
 

This connection is explored in an exhibition now on view at Government House in Edmonton. Aptly titled Alberta and the Group of Seven, it was developed by independent curator and writer Mary-Beth Laviolette in partnership with Gail Lint, Art Collections Consultant with the Arts Branch.  

If this exhibition sounds familiar, a version of it, curated by Laviolette, travelled around Alberta from 2016 through 2018. The AFA Art Collection team installed the exhibition in Government House, made up of work from the Government House art collection, the collection of the Government of Alberta and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts art collection as part of our exhibition loan program. Click the arrows above to see a short slideshow of images of select artworks in the exhibition. 

Click on an artist’s name to see their work in the AFA art collection.*

Artwork ready to be installed at Government House. Far right: Illingworth Kerr, "Forest Reserve, Spring". 1973. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. 

I had an opportunity to ask Mary-Beth Laviolette a few questions about this exhibition and the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven.

AFA: What is the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven?

MB: A number of early Alberta artists like H.G. Glyde and Catharine and Peter Whyte sketched and painted alongside members of the Group such as A.Y. Jackson and J.E.H. MacDonald. Jackson, for instance, did not drive, so artists like Glyde and members of the Lethbridge Sketch Club drove him to different sites to sketch or paint outdoors. Banff’s Peter and Catharine Whyte knew MacDonald and Lawren Harris from their outdoor excursions in the Rockies.

AFA Art Collections staff, Gail Lint and Jackie Flaata, install an artwork in Government House

AFA: Why do you think these artworks still have so much resonance today?

MB: First of all, they are memorable works of art. I mean, Euphemia McNaught’s oil of Monkman Creek simply glows, while Jackson’s small 1935 oil titled Foothills, Alberta captures so much of the distinctive character of the coulees. There are a lot of striking artworks from this period that are not only landscapes but also depictions of small-town Alberta and especially their grain elevators. Most of those [the grain elevators] are now gone and were not admired as artistic subjects at the time. Annora Brown of Fort Macleod was even advised in her own town there was nothing worthwhile to paint, and she should go to Europe where they had windmills, such as France! I guess there was a feeling that art happened somewhere else.

AFA Art Collections staff, Neil Lazaruk (left) and Duncan Johnson (right) install on Government House H.G. Glyde’s "Stream Under Grotto Mountain, Near Canmore". 1948. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

AFA: What do you want people to take away from this exhibition?

MB: There is such a thing called ‘Alberta art’, and it has a very fine legacy that connects into Canadian art. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, but it needs to be said.

AFA: How do these artworks fit into the story of Alberta art?

MB: They all do. For example,  A.Y. Jackson’s 1943 painting of the newly constructed and remarkable Peace River Bridge was done at a time when the Alaska Highway was being built for reasons connected to the Second World War. H.G. Glyde, then of Calgary, accompanied him as an artist on this trip north.

Installed in Government House, Left: Euphemia McNaught’s "Monkman Creek". 1985. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts;  Right: A.Y. Jackson’s "Peace River Bridge". 1943. Oil on panel. Collection of Government House.

AFA: Do you have a favourite artwork or artist in the exhibition?

MB: I have a lot of admiration for all of the early artists no matter where they were based, like Euphemia McNaught and Annora Brown. It’s good to know that next year Brown will be one of the artists featured in a national touring exhibition being organized by the McMichael Collection of Art in Kleinburg, Ontario in connection with the Group of Seven’s centenary. Everyone will be asking who is Annora Brown and where is Fort Macleod?

Interested in seeing these artworks and more in Government House? Free, guided tours take place on Sundays and holiday Mondays.

Mary-Beth Laviolette is an independent art writer and curator based in Canmore, Alberta. She specializes in Albertan and western Canadian art.

*Note: Two artworks mentioned in this article are not part of the AFA art collection. A.Y. Jackson's Peace River Bridge and Foothills, Alberta are in the art collection of Government House.

Written by: Kimberly Van Nieuvenhuyse, Writer/Social Media Officer

Absence Inhabited is curated by Ashley Slemming, and Dear Alan is curated by Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por. Both exhibitions have been generously funded though the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Emerging Curator Fellowship.  
 

Absence Inhabited

This exhibition represents 29 artworks by 27 Alberta artists. These artists all highlight unique perspectives on object-hood and have contributed to a rich survey of domestically-situated artworks. These works ring into focus notions of intimate home spaces within a continually growing and interconnected relational world. 

Curator's Statement (excerpt)

The works featured in this exhibition all tell different stories. The represented objects all appear to hold a patina or residue of life, yet all the objects presented are inanimate lifeless forms. Absence Inhabited consequently serves as an examination of absence representing presence and the inherent states of being that are reflected in these various artworks. The range of objects represented allows for consideration of the concept of home and being from a variety of viewpoints - and challenges us to think about how we live, communicate and function on a day-to-day basis. 

Ashley Slemming, curator, Absence Inhabited

About the Curator: Ashley Slemming

Ashley Slemming is a Canadian embroidery and print artist based in Calgary, AB. Her work invites curiosity into our sentimental connection with repetition, pattern, and colour in both nature and textiles.  In her conceptual art practice she often explores the parallels between human and animal behaviours that are revealed by our relationships to our living environments, both man-made and natural.

In addition to the AFA's Emerging Curator Fellowship, Ashley has explored curatorial avenues as a Curatorial Intern with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. She has completed her BFA with distinction in Printmaking from the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Dear Alan

This exhibition represents 32 artworks by 31 Alberta artists. 

Curators' Statement (excerpt)

Dear Alan brings together a dizzying number of landscapes from the AFA permanent collection, displayed in a digital gallery, salon style. Rather than present works within a cohesive curatorial theme, based on typical modes of exhibition-making that rely on continuities such as concept, form, or historical period, this exhibition seeks instead to show varied, and at times disparate, artistic approaches to landscape representation, across time and medium—a curatorial methodology that speaks to an impulse to approach art through a productive un-knowing, a state of wonder, that eschews the reliance upon expertise in a given area of research. Like the permanent collection itself, which in all institutions shifts and morphs with changing leadership, access to funds, and artistic vision, Dear Alan chronicles the ebbs and flows of the AFA’s ever-changing collecting ethos and the evolving artistic and political sensibilities in Alberta more broadly.

Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por, curators, Dear Alan

About the Curators: Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por

Natasha Chaykowski

Natasha Chaykowski is a writer and curator based in Calgary. Currently, she is Director of Untitled Art Society. She has organized numerous exhibitions, discursive programs and arts-based events. Chaykowski held a curatorial assistant position at Art Gallery of Ontario, co-curated the annual Emerging Artist Exhibition at InterAccess in Toronto with Nancy Webb and is the co-recipient of the 2014 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. She was Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Curatorial Studies and the Editorial Resident at Canadian Art magazine in 2014. Her writing has been published in Carbon Paper, the Art Gallery of York University, esse: arts + opinions, Canadian Art, Gallery 44, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

Yasmin Nurming-Por

Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Toronto, Ontario. In 2017, she was the recipient of the 5th Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, and an Alberta Foundation. In addition to the Emerging Curator Followship exhibition, Dear Alan (co-curated with Natasha Chaykowski), 2018, other recent and upcoming projects include In shadows of the individual (2017); My curiosities are not your curios (2017); TV Dinner (2017); ARCTICNOISE (2015); At Sea(2015); and Blind White (2015). In 2015-2016 she was a sessional faculty member at Humber College in Toronto. In 2017 the position of Assistant Curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and currently holds the position of Research Assistant at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Both exhibitions are available to view on Google Arts and Culture. 

About the Emerging Curator Fellowship

This fellowship is designed to support the growth and development of curatorial talent by contracting an individual or ensemble of individuals to develop content for an online exhibition of Albertan visual art. 

This initiative is intended to bring a new perspective to the artworks and artists featured in the AFA collection.

Jim Picco's Plastic Bag is part of the exhibition Absence Inhabited. 

Alan's Untitled is part of the exhibition Dear Alan.

This summer, we are excited that three short films from our art collection will be showcased as part of our AFA travelling exhibitiong (TREX) program in Southeast Alberta - Medicine Hat.

Plan your visit:
 

View it for free in-person: TREX Southeast art gallery: 2, 516 3rd Street SE, Medicine Hat, Alberta

But wait, it gets better ... the films will be projected on the outside of the building for the month of August where it's visible from the sidewalk. Note the gallery will be closed for internal operations the month of August so this provides an alternative for the public to access art on the exterior of the building.

Media Arts:

The Little Deputy

Trevor Anderson, The Little Deputy, 2015, video, 0:8:51 minutes, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

• Trevor tries to have a photo taken with his father.
• World Premiere: Sundance Film Festival
• Trevor Anderson is a writer, director, actor and former video store clerk whose short films were presented at a variety of international festivals. 

Dark Horse

Yvonne Mullock, Dark Horse, 2016, video, 16:28 minutes, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

• Dark Horse uses symbols synonymous with cowboy culture; the Stetson hat and horse, as tropes to explore Calgary’s long and entwined history of ranching and the city’s historic annual Stampede event. Using print, video and sculpture Dark Horse explores an innovative horse-centric printmaking method and invites viewers to delve into cowboy identity and Western mythologies that hover over the history and collective memory of folklore traditions in Calgary.
• Yvonne Mullock received an AFA International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) Residency in New York Funding in 2017. Her artwork was selected in numerous exhibitions in Alberta and world-wide. 

Wake Up!

​Jessie Ray Short, Wake Up!, 2015, experimental film, 5:57 minutes, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

• Wake Up! highlights the legacy of eighteenth-century Métis political leader Louis Riel and raises questions about colonialism.
• Jessie Ray Short is a filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. Her work touches on Métis history and visual culture.

Click the arrow icons ( < or > ) above to scroll through images.

Image descriptions:

• image one: a black and white image of an older man is sitting and is wearing a cowboy hat, and vested suit. Beside him is a young boy wearing a cowboy hat, vest, jeans and his side pocket holds a gun in a gun belt.
  
   
• image two: A brown hair person is hidden behind a brown horse. A blonde woman wearing a white artist apron and long sleeved black shirt, where she is holding a mono-print of a cowboy hat in front of the horse
  
   
• image three: A young man with curly brown medium length hair and moustache. He is wearing a white shirt and brown vested suit.

This week’s Work of the Week is Blue Picture Stand by Sidney Kelsie.
 

About the Artist: Sidney Kelsie (1928 - 2000)

A Black man of Caribbean heritage, Sidney Kelsie was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1928.

He joined the Canadian Navy at the age of 16, before going to work at logging camps. After suffering serious injury to his legs in a logging accident, he went to work as a house painter. He had to give that up in 1979 due to his old injuries, and at the age of 53 and retired, he started fashioning cut-out wood shapes which he painted in colourful hues and hung in the yard of his Edmonton home. Passersby began taking an interest in the hanging artworks and would occasionally ask to buy individual pieces. Kelsie would often comply and in this way could supplement the meagre income that he shared with his wife Louise. Gradually, his art began to attract attention from serious collectors as well as art dealers.

Completely self-taught, Kelsie would accurately be described as a “folk artist.” His art was a product of his own imagination, although critics have pointed out connections to other “yard art” creators. Mostly African-American, it is speculated these individuals may have been carrying on a traditional West African practice of hanging charms in trees around the home in order to protect the home-owner and provide healing and spiritual affirmation. Kelsie didn't have much to say about such theories, however, and, in fact, was reluctant to even call himself an artist. Nonetheless, what he made was appreciated by long-time art collectors and by ordinary people with no knowledge of art.

Kelsie's art did receive its share of official art world recognition, including in 1996, when some of his pieces were included in a major show of folk art at the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art in Kleinburg, Ontario, curated by Calgary art critic Nancy Tousley.

Exhibition:

Check out the "Sidney Kelsie: Right in your own backyard" exhibition at AGA in-person to see the artwork that we have loaned out until August 1, 2022. Free admission to AGA in Edmonton is the last Thursday (4-7pm) of every month. Get your free ticket to a community tour of Kelsie's exhibition with David Staples July 28, 2022 event.

Or listen to the audio documentary to learn more about the artist, what art meant to Kelsie, and how his legacy lives on.

Explore the AFA's Virtual Museum to see other works of Alberta artists.