Experience important part for B

From page 38

Like Carc, Bainbridge found the
native villages heavenly; she
adored their bohemian charm.

It was there — Bella Bella, Seton
Lake and inland to Lillooet —
where she captured and secorded
in charcoal and paint lone
wooden churches and the faces of
young native women — ‘‘my
squaws,”’ she says with affection.

"She's the kind of woman
who, even today, would sleep in a
car in order to capture an image,”
friend and admirer Jane Clark says
of Bainbridge’s pioneering spirit.

But Bainbridge sees nothing
courageous about how she has
lived her life.

“| just feel the only way to be
happy is to do the things you love
and the things you fear."’

Clark, who nominated the West

_ Vaneeuver painter for the Order of
B.C. last year (According to Clark,
Bainbridge was “very disap-

pointed” not to win, But the artist
joked that she was secretly reliev-
ed: “I didn’t want to buy a new
dress and go to Victoria and
behave myself.’’) considers Bain-
bridge enormously important as an
historical artist, and bemoans her
lack of recognition.

“There aren’t many astists
whose work shows what Van-
couver looked like in the ‘30s and
‘40s, noted Clark, the mother of
rock star Bryan Adams. “We
aren't Paying enough attention to

er”

| “In Bainbridge’s King’s Avenue.
home, hundreds of canvases lean

:, against the wail in a room she has

devoted entirely to her art.

Some date as far back as the
early 1930s when she used to
climb up from her West Van-
couver log cabin to the eastern
edge of Cypress Park and sketch
the Japanese community at work
in the old cannery below.

Clark, who has re-nominated
Bainbridge for the Order of B.C.,
wasn’t the first to notice the artist’s
B.C.

“When (Group of Seven
painter) Lawren Hiarris and ALY.
Jackson saw her trekking around
in the middie of nowhere, they
were impressed because they
were doing the same thing in On-
tario,’”’ observes Clark.

Bainbridge met Harris in Van-
couver in the ‘30s and went east
to ‘investigate’ his Ontario stu-
dio some 10 years after Carr.

She met Jackson in Toronto asi
can still remember him sitting with
a paring knife peeling fruit while
discussing the finer points of paint-
ing. :
“When I met Lawren Harris he
was involved with Horseshoe Bay.
A {ot of them (artists) came nere to
paint the white cliffs and Howe
Sound,” the Vancouver Schoo! of
Art grad recalls, warming her
hands before a crackling fire.

“He laoked at my work anc
told me to paint bigger. But |
didn’t,” she giggles like a teenager
gossiping on the phone. “‘t
painted the way | wanted to.”

When it came to her life and ca-
reer, Bainbridge always did things
her way. Perhaps it is her disdain
for rules and formality.

in 1937, after exhibiting for the
first time at the Canadian Royal
Academy, she watched her col-
leagues flock to abstract painting.

She refused to break away from
the representational art that had
served her so well, however,
believing ‘‘it was too easy to just
slap paint down on the canvas”
without regard for form.

“We were told that abstract
was in, that representation was
out, and that we were wasting our
time doing anything else. But |
never took any noiice.””

Today Bainbridge’s work hangs
in Buckingham Palace and Canada
Ho ‘se in London, but over the
past 60 years she has sold very lit-
te of her art.

it was Clark who convinced her
to exhibit a portrait of a young

NORTH VANCOUVER

Jack Shadbok she captured just
after he enlisted in the military in
1942.

Bainbridge says she never liked
the piece, and so it sat in her
garage gathering dust for 50 years.

She put the portrait into the
Downstairs Gallery in West Van-
couver and not surprisingly, it sold
ina flash.

While Bainbridge seems almost
indifferent about the sale, she is
disappointed the Vancouver Art
Gallery didn’t purchase the we.ck.

“When you consider Shadbolt,
who is of the same artistic era, he
had Doris (his wife) to promote
him and she’s done a fabulous
job,” says Clark.

“An artist needs a promoter,
and Unity has never had one. She
could never sell herself, and frank-

THE CORPORATION OF THE

ly I'm glad she didn’t, because
now we have this wonderful col-
lection. It isn’t scattered here and
there.”

Asked why she did not sell more
of her work, Bainbridge casts her
eyes to the ground and grows
silent.

After a few minutes she res-
ponds: “I don’t like selling my
work. it’s the experience that's
important to me.”

But she would be the first to
agree that she’s been a hopeless
self-promoter.

“at's not good to spend your
life being pressured, Complete
freedom is hard to get.”

She leans over the table and
adds with a high-pitched laugh:
“Here | am today, though, being
completely egotistical,”

cee rer

DISTRICT OF NORTH VANCOUVER

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARINGS

B OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN AMENDMENTS & REZONING BYLAWS

The Council for The Corporation of the District of North Vancouver will hold Public
Hearings under the provisions of the Municipal Act in the Councit Chamber of the
Municipai Hall, 355 West Queens Road, Nort. “:ncouver, B.C. on Wednesday,
Escembar 2, 1892 following the Public Hearng in respect of Bylaw 6477,
commencing a: 7:00 p.m., te consider the following:

BYLANY 6487 “Rezoning Bylaw $50”

Applicant:

Schaeol Society

Location:

2725 St. Christophers Road.

Proposed
Amendment:

To establish a siting area.

Lot D, Biock 13, District Lot 2025, Pian 9928

Mr. H.S. Chase, Architect on behalf of the Vancouver Waldorf

Attribution of meaning
left up to the observer

Asiting area is required to Identify the location of a new elementary
school building.

Purpose:

From page 34
_¥ the contradictory nature of reality
‘artificially recreated.

“What is ultimately revealed in
these seemingly naturalistic paint-
ings is the supremacy of abstrac-
tion in art.

At the Equinox Gallery, Richard
Prince undertakes a similar intel-

‘ lectual enterprise but utilizes quite

.. dissimilar means.

: Concerned with the structuralist
and possibly deconstructivist im-
plications of symbol and sequen-
tial temporality, Prince explores
three basic themes: the philosoph-
ical landscape as an Aurora and

_ the two Minoan Sites that, func-
tioning as tableaux vivants, vague-

“ly allude to the dramatic myths of

- antiquity; the ‘‘scientific’’ Mod-

~ ern Spirit Series 1-V, which inake
poetic observations on the artifice
of science by employing such re-_
curting motifs as linked batteries,
‘glass disks, and human hands
bearing conducting rods that Icok
suspiciously like magic wands; and
the cinematic narrative seres as in
Ad Litteram, which uiiizes the
process of sequentialization to
emulate the fictional effect of
cinematic montage.

Like Andue, Prince implements
highly recognizable objects,
plaster casts of hands, replicated
battery ceils, light bulbs, loaves of
bread, etc., all exactingly realized
in artificial mediums, and general-
ly but not always to equa! scale, to
convey his purposely ambigt:--us
disclosures. .

But whereas Andoe :-.entionally
restricts his subjects co the
delimiting confinement of the flat
canvas, which forces the issue of
compositional abstraction, Prince,
in eliminating the confining
framework altogether by floating
his fabricated objects close to the
wall, evokes and intensifies the
abstraction through the ellipses
achieved by providing only tan-
talizing fragments of static scenes

and implied narratives.

And while symbolic suggestion
attaches to ali the objects, no
specific signification is implied,
which invites the participation of
the observer in the formulation of
the essentially hypothetical fictions
alluded to in the exhibit's titie.

As seemingly dissimilar as the
above two exhibits might at first
appear, both provide persuasive
testimony in support of the sup-
position that the tilusion of reality
generated by art is at bottom just
that, a deftly but abstractly articu-

. Jated illusion.

Though Andoe’s subjects in their
stark simplicity acquire a timeless
archetypal quality, they in fact
have no more specific
iconographic significance than the
ambiguously charged components
of Frince’s suggestive scenes and
philosophical inventions would
have if considered out of context.

In both cases we are given the
raw material of symbolic expres-
sion (and hints), but in both cases
the attribution of meaning is large-
ly left to the observer.

If pricrity is placed on the im-
plications of these works rather
than uf the specific intentions of

the artists themselves, a rather
curious conclusion can be posited
aboui the paradoxical essence of
creative expression.

Although all art is abstract,
whatever its contents, precisely
because all art derives from the
so-called artificiality of rational
consciousness, abstraction, being
subject to such hypothetically
generated “laws of nature” as
mutation and evolution, is itself a
natural phenomenon after all.

As both these shows demon-
strate, the varieties of abstraction
in art are as copious and as
mutable as the varieties of human
experience.

Clearly the meaning of abstrac-
tion is not as simple a snatter as it
used to be!

* * &

BYLAW 5488 “The District Ofiicial Community Plan, Amending Bylaw 15”

Applicant:

Scheol Society

Location:

Lot J, Block 13, District Lot 2025, Plan 9928

2701 St. Christophers Road.

Proposed
Amendment:

Purpose:

with the adjacent school use.

BYLAW 6489

x k

‘The Lynn Valley Core Area Official Comm

Bylaw 2”

Applicant:

School Society

Location:

tot J, Block 13, District Lot 2025, Plan 9928

2701 St. Christophers Road.

Proposed
Amendment:

Purpcse:

with the adjacent school use.

BYLAW 6490
Applicant:

ek *

“Rezoning Bylaw 951”
Mr. H.S. Chase, Architect on behalf of the Vancouver Waldorf

School Society

Location:

Lot J, Block 13, District Lot 2025, Pian 9928

2701 St. Christophers Road.

Proposed
Amendment:

Purpose: |

Mr. H.S. Chase, Architect on behalf of the Vancouver Waidorf

To change the land use designation FROM Residential TO Institutional.
7o reflect the permanent institutional use of this property in association

unity Plan, Amending

Mr. H.S. Chase, Architect on behalf of the Vancouver Waldorf

To change the iand use designation FROM Single-Family Residential
TO Institutional.

To reflect the permanent institutional use of this property in association

To rezone the property from Single-Family Residential 7290 Zone (RS3)
to Public Assembly Zone (PA). :

To ensure the zoning indicates the permanent institutional use of this

property in association with the adjacent school use.

Copies of the Bylaws, resolutions, supporting staff reports and any relevant
background documentation may be inspecied at the bAunicipal Hall Monday through
Friday, except Statutory Holidays, inclusive, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30

p.m. Information is also available at the District Libraries.

All persons who believe their interest in property may be affected by the above
proposais shall be afforded an cpportunity to be heard at the Public Hearings.

Colleen G. Rohde

Manager ~ Legislative Services