Other Traditions: Hidden Depths

Meanwhile, a Qu’Appelle crafts tradition was forming, thanks to the innovative ceramics program in the art department at Regina College, which had also produced the Regina Five (Ronald Bloore, Ted Godwin, Ken Lochhead, Art McKay, Douglas Morton). Several leading “studio potters”—Elizabeth Hone, Victor Cicansky, Russell Yuristy—rooted themselves near Lumsden-Craven, where Beth Hone and her painter–printmaker husband, McGregor Hone, still live and work. Among their artist neighbours is the sculptor–photographer John Nugent (like the Hones, a former teacher at Regina College). In his Clifford Weins-designed St. Mark’s Workshop Nugent crafts the cut- and welded-steel constructions that grace the slopes of his Lumsden “sculpture farm.”

Arthur F. McKay
Craven

Arthur F. McKay
Craven

Ernest F. Lindner
Portrait of Mac Hone

Ernest F. Lindner
Portrait de Mac Hone

McGregor Hone
East of Craven

McGregor Hone
À l’est de Craven

Besides resident and visiting artists and crafts-workers (including the Danish-born Folmer Hansen, of the Hansen-Ross pottery, founded in Fort Qu’Appelle in 1961 and still active), the “Belle Qu’Appelle” has inspired poets, novelists, musicians, naturalists, and historians.

Folmer Hansen
Decanter set

Folmer Hansen
Service à vin

Like the Georgian Bay, Muskoka, and Haliburton districts of Ontario, the valley has long been a commercialized vacationland, yet continues to spark artistic responses from such diverse talents as Dorothy Knowles, Ivan Eyre, Greg Hardy, David Alexander, Wilf Perrault, Catherine Perehudoff, Rick Gorenko, Bob Boyer, Wayne Goodwill, Don Foulds, Don Hall, Orest Semchishen, David Thauberger, Patrick Close, Sharon Labatt, Landon MacKenzie, and Zhong-Yang Huang, among many others.

David Thauberger
Valley Café

David Thauberger
Café de la vallée

Richard Gorenko
Who Calls

Richard Gorenko
Qui appelle

Don Hall
Near Craven

Don Hall
Près de Craven

As the Calgary-based Ted Godwin comments, “To one . . . used to hills and rivers that carved their way into the landscape from the top, it was a shock to encounter a valley system carved from below the considerable overburden of the Glacier. The ‘valley’ is virtually non-existent from any distance and only reveals itself when one is on the lip . . . actually dipping into it.” So it is with the “hidden” art of the Qu’Appelle.

by co-curator of the exhibition Qu’Appelle: Tales of Two Valleys, Robert Stacey