Local artists gear up for one of the biggest weekends of the year
News
Posted By Hamish MacLean/Canmore Leader
Posted 1 month ago
It's called the Canmore Folk Music Festival, but a long-standing Canmore potter sees it as being about more than just the music.
"There's a lot happening here in Canmore in the arts," John Borrowman said. "It comes and goes in waves, but there's quite a bit of activity these days."
He pointed to the fact that 14 other working artists' studios surround his Elk Run area studio Of Cabbages and Kings.
"What's happening in the arts scene in Canmore is pretty big for a small town and it's one way that the Folk Fest gives back to the town — supporting the local art community, showcasing their work.
"It's always had a strong craft component, right from the first year."
He was there the very first year.
In the early years the festival was hosted at the site of what locals know as "the red barn" — the building now occupied by the Canmore Community Day Care in Larch.
A flat-bed truck would pull up for the bands to play on, and Borrowman said, there were as many as 15 or 20 booths with locals' work.
"It was pretty neat," he said. "It was just a real small town thing in those days. The attendance was all local so it was just a big party."
The 33rd Folk Festival will see 35 artisans and 16 food booths. There were over 70 applications for the artisans booths and Carol Picard, administrator of the Folk Festival, said that there were two main criteria when looking at applications.
The goods had to be handmade and sustainable.
There is a waiting list for vendors booths and though the applications were first accepted in March the Folk Fest is still receiving inquiries about space.
The festival has come a long way since year one when they made a profit of $87.
Vendors have come a long way too. —whether it's a vendor who sells Tibetan handcrafts where the money goes back to Tibetan refugees, or the money made off sales goes back to the women's cooperatives in India, micro-businesses, where the goods are produced — there's a variety of merchandise, from wooden instruments and furniture, to clothing, jewelry and pottery.
And one way to stay sustainable is to keep it local.
Borrowman started a pottery studio downtown in 1974 and at that time through the 1990s, he said, that 80 per cent of his work left the community, while 20 per cent was purchased in Canmore. Now, he said, that ratio has flipped. The local market buys most of what they can produce at the studio.
"Canmore's growth has been really recognizable when you think back to how it was maybe 30 years ago . . . The business in Canmore is such, now, that you can expect to sell the brunt of what you're able to produce right here."
But this year, while Borrowman won't be manning a booth, his daughter will.
Katie Borrowman and Julia Schumacher are two Canmore potters who work out of the Of Cabbages and Kings studio and will be selling their work at the festival.
Last year Schumacher shared a tent with Of Cabbages and Kings, but this year she will present her work under her own banner.
The Christmas craft fair and the Folk Fest are the two big events of the year for Borrowman and Schumacher and artists and artisans like them. And as the Folk Fest approaches all three kilns are firing at the Canmore pottery studio.
"As long as there are people dancing, we'll be selling pots," Schumacher said.
The two potters have quite different styles.
"Julia's Julia," the younger Borrowman laughed. "Everyone's got different styles and everyone's got different aesthetic preferences."
Borrowman characterized her friend's work as looser: the colours run together, there are vines and swirls and her work is often green, her teapots have bamboo handles.
"People use words a lot, but more natural, more green . . . 'organic' that's a good one.
"All her big sculptural things are always organic."
Borrowman noted that "the monsters" — works by Schumacher that move away from a strictly functional base — are some of her favourites.
Some of them are flowerpots, all of them are different.
Schumacher's keen on doing things differently.
She's bringing down a "jelly-bean pot" to the Folk Fest, where the person who guesses the closest to the amount of jelly-beans in the pot, wins a piece of work from the artist.
Schumacher's favourite pieces of Borrowman's might be, she said, the casseroles she produces.
Borrowman's pots can include a mountain motif on the side — she cuts into her pots while the clay is still wet — and her work always displays what Schumacher called "the glaze control" that she has.
"There's just a lot going on in them," Schumacher said. "And every little mark, every throwing ridge, accentuates the glaze."
Glazing is one of the dirtiest parts of the process and the last step.
"If things have gone wrong, you might not know until you pull them out of the kiln and you've put a lot of work into a piece that's not going to work," Borrowman said.
The teapots each potter produces are some of the most time-consuming pieces that they make.
There's about a dozen steps in any piece from start to finish and that stretches over a couple weeks minimum," the older Borrowman said. "So when people ask that question it's really hard to answer.
"Because it's five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 10 minutes somewhere else . . . .
Schumacher related the story of James McNeill Whistler's fireworks. He was criticized for his work in the late 1800s because, "it was just spatters of paint on a dark background," she said.
"People thought it was garbage, and said, 'it probably only took him five minutes to make it, how long did it take him to make it?'"
His answer, she said, was the work of a lifetime of painting.
The two potters have been planning for the Folk Fest since April.
Schumacher has a booth at the Canmore Mountain Market every Thursday this summer, but the Folk Fest will be an important weekend for the establishing artist.
For Borrowman too it provides good exposure as the crowds come in from Calgary and elsewhere.
And at this point both are making sure they have a good stock to ensure they have a good selection of their work available.
hamish@canmoreleader.com
