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Composer Ricky Ian Gordon’s Met prep

by on April 20, 2012 in Leighton Artists' Colony, Theatre

Composer Ricky Ian Gordon in the Valentine Studio, Leighton Artists' Colony. Photo: Kim Williams.

It’s tricky to leave home when you love your life. As someone who lives in Banff, I understood completely when Ricky Ian Gordon told me this in our conversation in the Leighton Artists’ Colony, as he rounded out his third week of his Fleck Fellowship residency. Although life is grand in New York, a chance encounter with Kelly Robinson, director of Theatre Arts at The Banff Centre, brought Gordon to Banff.

“You need to extract yourself from your particular distractions and look at your work in a new way,” he says. “This place is very different. Usually there are small groups of artists. You aren’t sharing a dining room with 200 people. It’s so spectacular and beautiful here. It’s both intimate and epic.”

Following the success of his 2007 opera The Grapes Of Wrath, Gordon was invited into an opera commissioning program launched by Metropolitan Opera General Manager Michael Gelb, and he’s connected with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, composing music for an opera version of her play Intimate Apparel. She’s writing the libretto. “I sent Lynn a Facebook message to see if she had any desire to do it, and she did.”

Gordon has been working on the Met material here in Banff. “I was struggling for the first few days trying to find my voice. Lynn is not done with the libretto, but she told me it starts with a Cakewalk,” he says (Cakewalk is an early-20th century popular music and dance form that originated on Southern slave plantations). Writing that piece of music was his Banff breakthrough.

Working on a few projects, meeting artists from other disciplines, and doing an impromptu live performance in the Club has given him a few ideas. “If I come back to this place, and I would like to, I think it would be in a different capacity, possibly supervising a workshop or working with Kelly.”

 

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Podcast: An interview with Jill Barber

by on March 26, 2012 in Audio, General, Leighton Artists' Colony

Jill Barber, in the Hemingway Studio, Leighton Artists' Colony. Photo: Kim Williams.

For the past three weeks, singer/songwriter Jill Barber has been working on new music in The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony. In the circular Hemingway Studio in the woods, Jill isolated herself to write songs for the followup to her 2011 album, Mischievous Moon.

In the final days of her stay, Jill took time out of writing and recording to talk with me about love, inspiration, being married to CBC Radio 3 host and author Grant Lawrence and touring across Canada.

What is love? In a word, everything.

Listen to the interview now and keep your eyes on the blog for a video we shot in Jill’s studio.

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Ally McKay: Returning to shore

by on March 13, 2012 in General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Literary Arts

Ally McKay enjoying her return back to The Banff Centre. Photo: Kim Williams.

“When I started to think about my work, I really felt I needed – well I needed Banff is all I can say.”

When I heard Ally McKay was coming back to the Centre I was curious to know what she was working on and how she was enjoying her time in the boat.  She was kind enough to invite me aboard her ship for chamomile tea and a chat.

“I’m actually writing a couple of stories about coming back. One of the first things that hit me is that the Brewster transport actually lets you off at the door now,” says author Ally McKay. ”They used to throw us off the bus somewhere down St. Julien road in the eighties and we’d come walking up here with our suitcases!”

Of her eight times here at the Centre – “a perfect little infinity number and coming back to things,” as she describes it,  this is her first time staying in the Henriquez Studio, a refurbished  fishing boat which has washed up on the shore of the Leighton Artists’ Colony, and continues to be home to many new stories.  

The project I’m working on involves an island community so I thought the boat would be great.  

Ally McKay taking a break from the Captain's chair. Photo: Kim Williams.

Aside from her short stories, McKay’s next novel is a history of the Art Expeditions - an organization operating since 1988 planning trips for artists to explore Western Canada. She’s  also currently writing an essay inspired by an Art Expedition trip to Malcolm Island, B.C..

“On Malcolm Island there’s a utopian community called Sointula, a major seaport community which was founded by some Finnish people in the early 1900s. We’ll be going back in July for an exhibition of what we were inspired to create – and I’ve been writing.”  

McKay’s doctoral work and long-time interest in utopias drew her to Sointula, and it also influences her thoughts on journeys in general. “I think about the people who leave places knowing they will probably never see those places or those people again. In many ways we’re all motivated by a desire for a better place. In many ways we’re all utopists.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of people who have imagined a lot of journeys they’ve been on in this boat,” she says.

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A welding shop and a cathedral

by on February 29, 2012 in General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Visual Arts

 

Walking into Errol Lee Fullen‘s studio I am instantly immersed in his enchanted world of colour.  It’s no wonder the working title of this project is centered around the sun - the entire spectrum of colours hang in front of me.  

“Which one is your favourite?” he nonchalantly asks.

The pieces work together. I’m a little unsure if I’m really meant to pick one – the blue swirl, the metallic texture – I can’t begin to describe the intense vibrancy when I look at them as a collection.  Errol describes his work:

Visual poetry – using physical poetic metaphor – looking at one of my paintings says something different then if you were to describe it.

“I love this space,”  he says of the Gerin-Lajoie Studio in The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony.  “It either feels like a welding shop when I’m working  – or a cathedral when I’m cleaned up.”

To get started, he measures the walls in his studio, builds his canvases, hangs them all up, and begins to get a feel for the space.   

There is no way this project would have worked in a different space.  Those square windows – it all comes together.  Look out the windows and what’s out there and then look at what’s in the paintings – it starts to show up in the work. 

“For this project,” he continues,  ”I’m throwing metallic paint – literally. You end up getting stuff you couldn’t get any other way – and you couldn’t have done it if you had been in total control.”  

“The other night I mucked up this one” – he points to the plain red canvas on the wall – “it was late and I realized I never really liked it anyway, so I painted over it.   With Wild Styles, my experience was if you just go, go, go then you get it done – and it worked!  This time I’ve learned I just need to back off a little bit.  Just go and do some other things – walk more – just get outside more.”

Errol Lee Fullen has been an artist in residence with the Leighton Artist Colony every year for the last five years.  He was born in Camrose, Alberta.  Fullen exhibits his work locally and internationally.  He is best known for his landmark public and private commissions of paintings and sculpture. All photos: Don Lee.

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The Henriquez Studio: “Holding” writers instead of salmon

by on August 5, 2011 in General, Leighton Artists' Colony

The Henriquez Studio, or “The Boat” as it’s usually called, is by far the most unusual studio in the Leighton Artists’ Colony.  In 1985, The Banff Centre transformed a 10-meter gillnetter from Steveston, B.C., called the Elsie-K no. 1, into a functional artists’ studio.  I’ve often wondered about the story of the Elsie-K, and to satisfy my curiosity, I did some research.

In 1948, Bob Karliner, a fisherman from Delta, B.C., built and outfitted the Elsie-K for $7,100.  The mid 40s and early 50s were excellent years for fishing on the Fraser River, and after six years Karliner sold the Elsie-K so he could build an even larger version, the Elsie K no. 2. Our Elsie-K ended her fishing days in the Skeena River as a member of the B.C. Packer fleet.

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A clown in a boat on a hill

by on June 30, 2011 in General, Leighton Artists' Colony

Can you hear it? The whisper of the woods, the call of creativity, the promise of uninterrupted headspace echoing through Tunnel Mountain trees? The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artist Colony lures artists of all brushes with its siren song. I recently met a resident Leighton Artist, poet / clown Kirk Miles. Continue Reading →

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