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The Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art: By ROBIN LAURENCE
In the North Vancouver park where I’m meeting Bill MacDonald, Executive Director of the Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation for Young Artists, the Guerilla Grannies have been yarn-bombing. We walk among a stand of colourfully dressed trees, towards the gleaming, floor-to-ceiling windows that curve around the entrance to the North Vancouver School District’s new Education Services Centre. Located on the main floor and mezzanine of this building is the equally new Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art. Complementing the gallery is an array of studios, classrooms and offices – all designed to serve the needs of the Artists for Kids program. The Artists for Kids Trust (AfK) was created in 1989 through the energy and vision of two North Vancouver educators, MacDonald and Ken James, who teamed up with three of the West Coast’s most acclaimed artists, Bill Reid and Jack Shadbolt (now both deceased) and Gordon Smith, now 93, to create a way of funding enriched art education in schools and the community. The idea, MacDonald explains, was that AfK would purchase works of art from Canada’s leading artists, who would then create and donate an edition of original prints, the sale of which would provide direct funding for visual arts programs for young people. Over the past two decades, MacDonald says, “AfK has worked with over 100,000 young people, published more than 60 print editions and acquired 500 works of contemporary Canadian art.” The AfK collection ranges from Rodney Graham’s large photograph, School Yard Tree, to Takao Tanabe’s atmospheric painting, Barkley Sound, Broken Islands II, to Betty Goodwin’s mixed-media drawing, la mémoire du corps, XII, all on view in the Smith Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, AfK Teaching Collection of Canadian Art. Designed by Paul Grant of Grant + Sinclair Architects Ltd., the gallery boasts 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, 25-foot ceilings and state-of-the-art climate control – quite a change from the old school gymnasium that previously housed and showcased the collection. The wooden door into the new gallery was carved by Rick Harry (Xwalacktun), a Coast Salish artist; this door and other First Nations art in the collection help weave the idea of gifting together with that of potlatching, MacDonald explains. Naming of the gallery, after one of AfK’s founding artist-patrons, a beloved painter who has continued to show support and commitment for the program, puts a public face on the collection and its associated programs. And although the expanded facility enables AfK to open exhibitions to a wider community of art lovers, the focus will continue to be on school-age kids. “The one thing I’m most delighted with,” MacDonald says, “is that the name of Gordon Smith is going to be equated by young people with knowing about great Canadian art.” The Gordon Smith Gallery is located at 2121 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, BC. |
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