Rodman Hall Show

   When I went round the Rodman Hall show at NAC on April 21 2016, Steve Remus, who was showing me round, had to explain to me that each exhibit in the show was a comment on Brock University's move to withdraw from its commitment to support Rodman Hall as a public art gallery for at least 20 years.  These comments were all so subtle that they simply could not be heard by ears used to the loud voices of commercial advertising or indeed to the cutthroat competition  that goes on in any modern university for status, recognition and grants.  So it is highly unlikely that they will be heard by the Brock administrators who are making this decision.
 
   They are certainly not being heard by the general public in spite of the fact that this show was featured in an article in the "St. Catharines Standard."  When I mentioned this move to some friends who are quite lively and aware, they were astonished.  They had no idea of it.  In spite of its appearance in the local newspaper, the news that Rodman Hall, after having been a real centre in St. Catharines for the visual arts, will probably be obliterated, seems very much a private affair between the artistic community and the university.

   I am tempted to speak in the voice of a child and say "The Emperor has no clothes."  But that would be futile when Brock dresses up so much as a patron of the arts and spends so much money to do so.  The projected move will probably go forward with nothing being broken but a few hearts and a few careers and at least part of the future of the visual arts in Niagara.  An important pillar of the cultural community will have been removed with really very little fuss or embarrassment. 

   I feel this shows how little genuine creativity for its own sake is valued in the modern world.  We chiefly want commercial success.  And yet how badly we want creativity in our everyday lives.  Even a little creativity would suffice to save some people from the depression, the addiction, the various types of mental illness and the temptation to suicide which besets so many in the western world today.  Even such a minimal attempt to support the creative urge as keeping Rodman Hall going might be a finger in the dike against the flood of meaninglessness that threatens to engulf us. 

   I imagine what chiefly concerns the Brock administrators is the drain on Brock's finances that subsidizing Rodman Hall might represent.  But Brock did have faith at one point that this might not be a losing proposition.  After all, it did look at one point as if  Brock University itself might be a losing proposition as all the universities seemed in danger.  I remember it because I was on the faculty myself at that time.  One of my colleagues suggested that I might find alternative employment decorating ceramics.  I forget what he thought he might do, but it was nothing very elevated.  This did not come to pass.  We had faith in ourselves at Brock and survived.  Let us have faith in the arts and have faith to the end, not just part of the way.  
  

                                              

Small Feats Sunday April 10 2016 

As always with Small Feats, what really strikes me is the sheer variety.  Given that there are 200 works in the show and on average each artist has submitted three pictures, even I, with my limited capacity for arithmetic, can tell that there must be between 60 and 70 points of view represented.
   When I come to Small Feats each year I like to select a few pictures as my favourite and actually buy one.  I am trying to economise at the moment and in any case I picked up a dozen pictures for free at the memorial service for George Sanders, an artist whom I greatly admire and from whom I bought a half dozen pictures in his lifetime, so I am not buying a picture at Small Feats this year.  But if I were I would have a hard time to make a choice.
   In spite of the variety there are certain themes that tend to turn up.  I was struck by the news, some years ago, that when one monkey starts washing a potato before eating it, pretty soon all the monkeys start doing it, even ones who have no contact with the innovative monkey, although none did it before.  And one of the few things I remember from my course in philology is that when people start making a grammatical mistake it occurs across an entire generation and ends up as accepted usage.  So in any group of sentient beings telepathy is definitely at work and this seems to be the case here.
   The animal kingdom, especially birds, seems to be represented in this show at a level above chance.  There is a whole series of crowned owls poised above excerpts from Machiavelli, there are several brightly coloured parrots, there is a songbird depicted with detailed realism and one young woman is shown cuddling a goose against a background of flowers.  But animals also appear.  The same young woman is shown cuddling a fox against a background of flowers, a bear appears with a Russian hat, there are two charming squirrels back to back, and I particularly liked a picture of a horse's head and mane depicted in a variety of vibrant and quite unrealistic colours and wildly flowing brush strokes.  Also very appealing was a painted skull with embroidered flowers.
   Even so these are not the pictures for which I would have lashed out $200 each, that being the set price.  That accolade would have gone to one of three truly beautiful pictures of sunrise and sunsets over Lake Ontario.  But that is my personal preference and there is something for  pretty well every taste, which is just as well, given that this is a fundraiser.  I hope it is a successful one.