By Stacy O’Brien
Ottawa artists not only struggle to find a place to show their work in Ottawa, but also struggle to get arts patrons interested in a city where many visitors and residents support federal institutions like the National Gallery over local ones.
But many people in the arts community say that for the city to thrive, there has to be a thriving local arts community.
Karina Bergmans, 31, recently created her art business, Kaleidoscope, through which she markets her paintings, sculptures, digital images and installation pieces.
Her studio is small, the size of a tiny office, and located in a room next to her bedroom in the apartment she shares with her boyfriend.
Her hardest challenge has been finding a market for her commercial work so that she can pursue more conceptual, but less profitable ventures. “Creating a niche and demand for your work can be difficult,” she says.
Bergmans has tried to display her art in stores, restaurants and artist-run galleries, and has worked with interior designers. Right now, she’s working three or four months ahead to find locations to display her art. But she explains that most galleries book a year or two in advance, and are difficult to get into.
“That’s one of the challenges. You really have to plan the shows and plan where the money is coming from,” she says. “You always have to be thinking about what is coming up next.”
Her latest show, What I See When I Close My Eyes: ColourForms is being displayed at the Mercury Lounge in the Byward Market.
Crystal Beshara agrees that without resorting to restaurants or pubs, finding a place to show her art has been difficult. Beshara, 29, is an Ottawa artist and a graduate of the University of Ottawa. She does traditional watercolour paintings of old buildings, portraits and animals.
Although her work is usually well-received, finding a gallery to show her paintings is difficult.
She often displays her work at outdoor exhibits during the summer.
“There is a real lack of public exhibition space,” she says. “If I turned to commercial galleries they might dictate the path I take and what I create because they’re more sales-oriented.” Beshara has had friends, who are artists, move to Montreal or Toronto because they feel there are more opportunities there than in Ottawa.
One of the difficulties for local artists is not having enough public venues for their work to be displayed, says Peter Honeywell, executive director of the Council for the Arts in Ottawa.
He says that local groups also wind up competing with federal institutions in the city for audiences and charitable contributions.
“Ottawa is unique in that we have the federal level,” says Honeywell. “I don’t slam the federal institutions — they bring in wonderful exhibits — but there is a perception that that is all we need.”
Pat Durr, an artist who paints, makes monoprints and uses video in her artwork, agrees that having the federal institutions has held back the local arts community.
Durr, who has lived in Ottawa since the 1970s, says that for a long time Ottawa didn’t even have a public art gallery because it wasn’t seen as necessary with all of the federal institutions. She says Ottawa got a public gallery about 20 years after most major Canadian cities.
“I don’t understand people that have no sense of their own place. You live here and work here,” she says. “You should have a certain pride in your place.”
The State of the Arts in Ottawa 2001, a report by the arts council, found that the large federal arts presence, with the National Gallery and the National Capital Commission, “camouflages” the low level of support to local arts initiatives. As a result the report suggests that young local artists are likely to move out of the city if their talents aren’t recognized.
Durr says that without local artists, the city will suffer. “It will be a boring place. It will be standardization from one side to the other,” she says.
Honeywell agrees that if young artists leave Ottawa, the city will lose more than their talent; residents will also eventually lose their quality of life in the city.
“By not having arts we lose economically and socially, and as we see talent move out of this city, we also see other businesses leave as well,” he says.
Arts in the city contribute to residents’ quality of life and make the city attractive for others to move in, Honeywell explains, adding that people become engaged in the community by taking part and contributing to art exhibits and festivals.
“Having a thriving arts community is core to our human nature,” he says. “We need that within ourselves. A hundred years from now we’re not going to remember the sewer that was built, but we will remember the songwriter or the song they’ve written, or a great piece of art.”