view . summer 2010
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Ferraro. “It was an intensive period of drawing in the English
countryside along with exploring the area, including Stonehedge, at
a time when one could still walk through the ruins,” she says.
An artist whose latest work takes in photo-based archival digital
images and/or collage, Tarailo has had her video Ice/Figure in the
recent Media City Film Festival in Windsor. Some of her images
have also been published recently in Windsor Review and appeared
in the travelling exhibition, “Sense of Place.”
Mudpuppy Gallery artists
The School of Visual Arts has influenced the lives and art of Rob
MacLellan, Robert Honor, Judith Chappus, Stephen Gibb, Rocco
DiPasquale and Shannon McPherson. In May 2010, they teamed
up to open Mudpuppy Gallery in Amherstburg, ON, a co-operative
space that aims to focus on local artists and produce a healthy
cultural spirit in what they call “our great little town.”
Honor was among the first to graduate from the current school
in 1975. Chappus got her BFA in 1984, Gibb and DiPasquale a year
later. McPherson and MacLellan also studied there.
“My fondest memories of my LeBel days were hanging out with
other students and discussing and proving art in meaningful ways,”
Gibb recalls. “I remember hanging out with Rocco and Judy in one
of the painting studios and dreaming big things about our futures.
We may not have hit all our marks but here we are, almost 30 years
later, coming together with what I feel is a useful and hopefully
rewarding project.”
n
v
In the early 1970s, a group of young arts faculty and
students hunted for the location for their arts program,
which had long outgrown its limited space.
Professor Bill Law recalls finding an old factory, the
General Fire Extinguisher plant that had also been used
as a distribution centre and sales office by Packard
Automotive. The building, which still has a molded letter
‘P’ that can be seen across the street from McDonalds,
had a glass wall around what is now the LeBel Gallery
that fronted Huron Church and was once a showroom for
Packard cars and parts.
Law says it was a “very futuristic building” for its time, with
copper coil heating in its floors and lots of functional space.
Working with Tony Doctor, who taught painting and
worked as an architectural draftsman before, the group
drew up some concepts and submitted them to the
University with a request that the building be purchased
as the new School of Visual Arts.
The University purchased the property, started
renovations and in 1972, students were taking classes.
“The facility was just unbelievable,” Law remembers,
adding it was “probably the superior facility of any place
in Ontario.”
And it had a rich history. Law recently met an electrician
who told him that Packard actually used it to get around
high car import duties in the 1940s. Packard would
preassemble cars and ship them
across the U.S. border into Canada as pieces to be
assembled in Windsor.
School founder Joe DeLauro, whose lasting art includes
the nine-foot tall bronze Giovanni Caboto sculpture in
front of the club that bears his name, presided over the
move to the new building. Since then, the School has been
a source of creativity and controversy, at times.
Julie Sando, a photography professor at the School,
recalls a performance by the band Luxury Christ. During
one party, the band’s singer Nancy Drew was rigged up in
a body harness and flew around the room.
In 1999, a photograph published in The Windsor Star
showing a male high school student accompanied by his
mother and sister chatting with two naked female arts
students at the School generated some controversy. The
episode was decried in a Star editorial as having crossed
the line of good sense.
In 2004, artist Iain Baxter&’s Northern Waters, a
collection of 10 bottles of water on a shelf that was
exhibited at the Art Gallery of Windsor, generated
controversy but was one of the reasons the professor
emeritus won the Governor General’s Award.
They all owe a debt, in part, to the vision and can-do
attitude of a group of young faculty and students who, as
Law says, “were stupid enough to say, ‘Oh, we want that
building’ and the University would get it.”
Preserving the Ego (crown series) by Stephen Gibb, hung at the
Mudpuppy Gallery.
HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS
