Pteros Gallery: The Intercourse Of Art And Words In the visual arts, you pretty well have to know how to write
By Lynn Harrigan
Poets who paint and artists who write are the driving force behind Pteros Gallery. And where else but Toronto, Canada would you find such a space?Curators Virginia Dixon, a painter, and poet Randy Resh fervently believe that it is possible to succeed in both fields. Dixon asserts that although people may not be aware of their visual art, the writers whose work they show, “have every right to be there and to be known for it.”
In September 2001, after realizing that the relationship between art and words was integral to their own work, the pair partnered up. As their relationship blossomed, so did their awareness of the intersections between their respective mediums. Dixon points out that, “In the visual arts, you pretty well have to know how to write. You have to know how to present your work verbally and insert it into the context of an exhibit."
The first artist to show his work at Pteros was poet/painter bill bissett. Joe Rosenblatt, winner of the 1977 Governor General’s award for poetry, had a show of mixed-media drawings and surrealist collage in the spring of 2003. Poet Steve McCabe’s multi-media exhibit, The Wyatt Earp Project: Dallas 1963, featured paintings, mixed-media sculpture and an 11-minute video thematically relating to the 40th anniversary of JFK’s death in Dallas.
SEEDY, the gallery’s upcoming show, features assemblages, mosaics and driftwood figures by writer/artist Jim Christy.
Christy, along with bisset, Rosenblatt, McCabe and Menno Krant, has become a veritable P-gallery rat. Both Dixon and Resh embrace the significance of their relationships with the artists they represent.
“We do have a strong relationship with everyone we work with. It’s beyond just a business relationship – they do a lot for us and we do a lot for them,” says Dixon.
The Gwendolyn MacEwan project has become an important part of the gallery’s mandate. The project aims to raise the $15,000 necessary to finish casting and installing the bronze bas-relief designed by the late John McCombe Reynolds. The monument’s home will be in the Gwendolyn MacEwan Park on Walmer Avenue north of Bloor Street.
Pteros has organized auctions of artist-donated works and an annual reading in the park. Last year a limited-edition CD of archival recordings was presented to donors. Resh spent two years digitally remastering the 40 tracks, including a mix with composer Christos Hatzis. He notes that the project has afforded them access to some of the top writers in Canada and earned the gallery the respect it needs to continue to attract new and distinguished writers and artists.
When asked how running the gallery has affected their own work, both Dixon and Resh laugh ruefully and admit that the enterprise has turned out to be an all-consuming one. Both are quick to include that they are grateful for the opportunity to work in such close connection to some of the hottest tickets on the contemporary art and literary scenes.
Resh maintains that “you only grow by osmosis” and Dixon comments that she wouldn’t trade in the past five years for anything. Remarking on how running the gallery has expanded her own views on visual art, she says, “Even though my own production is significantly lower, I just feel like I’m far more of an artist when I do make something.”
The gallery’s upcoming show, SEEDY, is now up. In addition to pieces by Jim Christy, the exhibit also includes work by bill bissett, Catherine Carmichael, Virginia Dixon, Gary Michael Dault, Susana Wald and Ludwig Zeller. Pteros is located at 2255 Dundas Street West (1/2 block south of the Bloor/Dundas West subway station, next to Hugh’s Room), Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6 pm, or by appointment. 416.533.5159
Lynn Harrigan is a poet and freelance writer living in Toronto. Moon Sea Crossing, her first book and the genesis of the Bread & Water multimedia installation mounted in the Huron County Gaol in Goderich, Ontario last summer, will be published in 2005 by Black Moss Press. Lynn is currently at work on a new collection of documentary poems titled One Voice.
