COMMENTARY

Let's Not Forget Our Kin
in the Country

BY PAM PATTERSON

The traditional rural woman is hard working, responsible, honest and a great family supporter. But she also faces the realities and stress of isolation, financial hardship, low paying or few jobs, lack of daycare and minimal support network. For women who add to this the job of independent professional artist the situation is even more complicated.

Simply being unable to run off to a film or an art show can unnerve the newly arrived rural woman. Winter can be especially traumatic and, as contact with other artists becomes minimal, occasional visits to urban art events begin to feel like trips to another planet.

Materials, supplies, books are difficult and expensive to acquire. Advanced workshops and classes are often found only in larger centers. If you are able to get a gallery show, you will have to cope with the expense of crating and shipping your work since funding from the arts councils doesn't always cover the cost of transporting and insuring the artwork, or of the artist's travel, accommodation or other expenses involved in just leaving home for a few days.

As a committed artist living in Banff, Alberta, I'm lucky to have contact with the larger art community but it still isn't enough. For some, leaving Toronto or Montreal can end our careers. We lose our urban contacts and stand faced with the need to convince the city galleries that our work will still be strong. We start to wonder if we have similar aesthetics. We may see ourselves and our work as feminist but fear recrimination from our hard-line urban sisters.

So why do artists continue to live and work in rural areas? Why do urban artists such as me keep attempting to make it in the country? The rural life has much to offer: fresh air, a slower pace and fewer environmental stresses. Studio and living spaces are affordable and the distance from the sources of mainstream trends in art can leave the artist free to pursue her own directions without the pressures of the city's art community.

In some communities, cooperative galleries (such as Gallerie 96 in Stratford, Ontario) or small groups (such as the Fine Arts Guild, in Mitchell, Ontario) are beginning to bring rural artists together. Regional galleries in centers such as Kingston and Calgary help provide a transition between the rural and urban worlds.

I feel the work of women artists in the regions needs to be more visible. Most major art magazines and galleries present the work of urban artists. Let them look into the work of artists in the country. Bodies such as Visual Arts Ontario and the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils are improving the sensibility of rural women artists. But more must happen. A dialogue must start. Urban artists, galleries and critics need to be more open to the directions of those artists working in rural Canada. Rural artists also need to rise the urban challenge in order to keep their work on the cutting edge. They should show their work in larger centers and enter into discussion no matter how frightening that might be.

We have a common starting point: we are all women. The fact that we are all artists gives us a focus for discussion. Openness, acceptance, curiosity of each other's work, living situations, commitment to feminism, will keep the lines open. We have so much to share and build on. Let's not split and isolate ourselves, but as women striving to be accepted as professional artists, let us find a way to continue the movement towards a greater cooperative community.

Pam Patterson just finished a term on the faculty of the Banff Centre. She has been making performance art for the past eight years and is an Equity actor and director. Recently she co-ordinated a Celebration of Women in the Arts at the Banff Centre