New Ground: A Memoir of Art and Activism in BC’s Interior by Ann Kujundzic, with a foreword by Mary Schendlinger Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860015 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * I love memoirs like this. And really, we need so many more of them. So many stories still remain to be told,…
Read more #608 Kootenay art and activism
On the Curve: The Life and Art of Sybil Andrews by Janet Nicol, with a foreword by Robin Laurence Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $28.95 / 9781987915877 * See with Your Own Eyes: The Sybil Andrews Story by Laura Ellyn Campbell River: Campbell River Arts Council, 2018 $15.00 / 9780981207568 Both books reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb…
Read more #588 Love, labour, and linocuts
Drawbridge: Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia by Joan Boxall Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860022 Reviewed by Janet Nicol * A memoir told in ten lyrical essays, Drawbridge: Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia is Joan Boxall’s moving tribute to her brother, Stephen Corcoran. In the early 2000s, Joan became co-trustee of Stephen following…
Read more #584 Brother artist at the edge
The Ormsby Review presents a joint review of all ten books in the Unheralded Artists of B.C. Series from Mother Tongue Publishing of Salt Spring Island, 2008-2017. — Ed. Monika Ullmann, with an introduction by Brooks Joyner, The Life and Art of David Marshall (Mother Tongue: 2008) (UABC #1) Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, and Wendy Newbold…
Read more #573 B.C.’s forgotten artists
Love of the Salish Sea Islands: New Essays, Memoirs and Poems by 40 Island Writers by Mona Fertig (editor) and Gail Sjuberg (introduction) Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2019 $23.95 / 9781896949734 Reviewed by Theresa Kishkan * I first encountered the term “islomania” in Lawrence Durrell’s sublime Reflections on a Marine Venus, a memoir…
Read more #560 Arbutus, sandstone, & Salish Sea
Eppich House II: The Story of an Arthur Erickson Masterwork by Greg Bellerby, with an introduction by Michelangelo Sabatino Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019 $45.00 / 9781773270470 Reviewed by Martin Segger * This is the second volume in a series edited by Geoffrey Erickson and authorized by the Erickson family. (The first was Francisco Kirpacz:…
Read more #555 Arthur Erickson’s steel house
Flow: Poems Collected and New by Roy Miki, edited by Michael Barnholden Vancouver: Talonbooks 2018 $49.95 / 9781772012101 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * Condemned in utero as an Enemy Alien by the Dominion of Canada in 1942, the scholar and poet Roy Miki (born 1942) emerged as a pioneer of the Japanese-Canadian redress movement of the 1980s. Reviewer…
Read more #553 From alienation to adulation
Chinatown Ghosts: The Poems and Photographs of Jim Wong-Chu by Jim Wong-Chu Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527482 Reviewed by LiLynn Wan First published April 13, 2019 * When Chinatown Ghosts was first published in 1986, Jim Wong-Chu broke a silence in Canadian literature. This slim volume of poetry was one of the…
Read more #529 Poems & portraits of Chinatown
Graffiti, Canadian Style by Ernest Hekkanen First published in The Ormsby Review, April 9, 2019 * It was twenty years ago, in 1999, that Ernest Hekkanen wrote this diatribe about why Vancouver public art is so godawful, why Canada’s granting agencies can be foolish or corrupt, and why he rejected a contract from a respected…
Read more #527 Canadian graffiti
Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon by Karen Autio, illustrated by Loraine Kemp Vancouver: Crwth Press, 2018 $25.95 / 9781775331902 Reviewed by Ken Mather * At the heart of Growing up in Wild Horse Canyon is the beautifully illustrated story of the life of a Ponderosa Pine from a seed in the year 1780 to…
Read more #512 A Ponderosa Pine time capsule
Out of the Woods: Woodworkers along the Salish Sea by Pirjo Raits Victoria: Heritage House, 2018 $34.95 / 9781772032604 Reviewed by Grahame Ware First published Feb. 3, 2019 * There are trees … which in their single lives have spanned the entire history of civilized man. We woodworkers have the audacity to shape timber from…
Read more #477 Art of the forest and turbulent sea
Re-awakening Ancient Salish Sea Basketry: Fifty Years of Basketry Studies in Culture and Science by Ed Carriere and Dale R. Croes Richland, WA: Journal of Northwest Anthropology (JONA), Memoir Number 15, January 2018 $54.95 (U.S.) / 9781973968221 Available from Amazon.com through CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Reviewed by Andrea Laforet First published Jan. 8, 2019 * In this…
Read more #462 Baskets across the border
Copp House by Adele Weder, with photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2017 $24.95 (U.S.) / 9781939621887 * Downs House II by Christopher Macdonald, with photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2016 $24.95 (U.S.) / 9781935935285 * Merrick House by Anthony Robins, with photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions,…
Read more #457 Long live West Coast Modern
Revolving W and Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal of Vancouver Vintage Cafes and Theatres by Keith McKellar/ Laughing Hand Victoria: BoneYard Ink Books, 2018 $50 / 9781775357704 Orders: direct from author at www.laughinghand.com Reviewed by Grahame Ware First published Dec. 16, 2018 * This publication is an exciting and colourful recasting of Keith McKellar out-of-print,…
Read more #449 Keith McKellar’s Vancouver
Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada 1912-1990 by Anne Whitelaw Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017 $39.95 / 9780773550322 Reviewed by Martin Segger First published Nov. 16, 2018. * Geography challenges power. Anne Whitelaw has written an impressive geopolitical history of art institutions in western Canada. She demonstrates how…
Read more #425 Let them have art galleries