Taking a unique glimpse into an artist's world
Susan M. Mertens first discovered Jack Shadbolt's art when she was working as a Vancouver Sun intern in the 1970s. As she tells the story in Montecristo magazine, she recalls being "seriously flummoxed" by what she recalls as "a motley collection of vaguely organic forms (animal? mineral? vegetable?) floating on murky backgrounds with abstract hints of landscape."
Still, this somewhat bumpy start would be the beginning of a friendship that would last a quarter-century, culminating in the publication of "Jack Shadbolt: In His Words".
Mertens, a long-time art critic and Lions Bay resident, will launch her new book at 7 p.m. on November 14 at the Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby. To celebrate that event she agreed to share a glimpse into the process behind the creation of this very unique book.
Jack Shadbolt has long been considered one of Canada's most prolific modernist artists. In describing his work, Mertens says he "created a distinctly personal form of modernism rooted in the landscapes and mythology of the West Coast."
Before their deaths, both Jack and his wife Doris Shadbolt donated their personal and professional papers to the University of British Columbia. Mertens gained access to their archives by applying for special permission from the head archivist of the Rare Books and Special Collections department.
"Strict protocols and security are enforced, including white cotton gloves to handle the materials," Mertens tells The Watershed. "I discovered a real treasure trove and there was no doubt in my mind that it warranted its own book."
From the start, Mertens was intent on pulling together as complete a picture of Shadbolt's life as she could. "I strenuously didn’t want to write a standard biography and, while I now know an awful lot about Jack’s psyche, I don’t consider myself his biographer in the academic sense," Mertens says.
Instead, she came up with the idea of using Jack’s own methods to guide her through the collating of the book. She says she took care to weave Jack's own words – his poems and excerpts from letters and personal journals – to create an impression of his life’s journey. The format meant Mertens could annotate the pages with comments and explanatory notes in her own voice.
When his painting wasn’t going well, Shadbolt would try to fire up his creativity through creating collages. Instead of beginning with a blank canvas, he would overpaint bits of previous painting attempts or cut up magazine and newspaper photos to create something new. Mertens says she put these same techniques to work while compiling the book. "I arranged his materials to suggest rather than tell, to open possibilities for ways to understand both Jack and his works. I found it immensely satisfying creatively."
This was no speedy process. From the time Mertens first began searching for any written work Shadbolt left behind to the publication of the book was five long years. Mertens notes that Shadbolt had produced three books over his lifetime. "I think he had wanted to do a fourth but ran out of time and energy," she says. "I call this the memoir Jack never quite got around to writing."
Mertens has worked as a journalist and arts critic since she wrote for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record while still in high school. She says she has always loved doing research, and then finding interesting ways to communicate all she discovers, and this book proved no exception.
"The book’s introductory essay is where I used these skills to contextualize Jack's work and his complex personality for a 21st century audience. But what proved most useful in shaping the materials to create ‘an artist’s book’ as opposed to an ‘art book’, were the decades I’d spent watching dance and theatre, listening to music, engaging with visual art from Old Masters to experimental film. I got the sense of rhythm and pacing, the echoes of repetition and resonance of juxtaposition from them. Each element of these complex works of the imagination exists in relationship with every other element and, ideally, the whole conveys more than its parts."
Shadbolt and his wife left a practical legacy in the form of the annual Shadbolt Art Awards for mid-career artists and the SFU Shadbolt Fellowships, one of which supported Mertens in the research and creation of the book. For Mertens, the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby is a reminder of his relentless advocacy work to improve both the conditions and status of the arts and artists as crucial builders of community.
"As long as Jack’s artworks exist, new generations will have the opportunity to see beyond the evident beauty of, for example, a butterfly or a West Coast forest to something more elemental about the wonder and chaos beneath the surface of our everyday life," says Mertens.
She notes that Shadbolt's Butterfly Transformation series is on display at the Audain Museum in Whistler.
Susan M. Mertens will launch "Jack Shadbolt: In His Words" with an illustrated talk at 7 p.m. Thursday, November 14 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby.
This is another in The Watershed's series featuring Lions Bay artists.
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