A Jock McDonald Remix Project by Pete Smith.

This blog is a running journal that was made in conjunction with my artist residency at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada that took place between December 2014 and February of 2015.

To get an understanding of how this project fits into the larger scope of my art practice, please visit:

www.petesmith.ca


Saturday, January 31, 2015

Jamming at the Living Room

The Living Room is a community art centre in downtown Oshawa where anyone can go to make art. These are really good people doing good in their community.

I made these water colour on paper drawings there today.

All of these works are available for a $25 donation. You can check out the Living Room online HERE. Go hang out and make something! :)

Friday, January 30, 2015

Ok. So I just HAD to do this one more time.

Brainstorming's Over (Victory Lap)

Postscript: An Artist Statement

If you’ve been reading this blog, you should hopefully get a sense of why artist statements are difficult to write. (Although as far as that goes, I personally enjoy the process of doing them.) There are 110 individual entries on this blog (so far) that I’ve posted over the last two months. My thinking about this project has grown, shifted and evolved substantially over its course. How do I meaningfully condense 62 days of spiraling thought into 400 cohesive words of insightful elucidation? (Although, in fairness, my artist statements are rarely shorter than 1000 words. and this one will be over 2000.) How do I effectively and concisely communicate my intentions for this project while maintaining a (hopefully) genuine sense of fidelity to my necessarily meandering process? Really, this whole blog has been an artist statement. The funny part, however, is that 62 days is actually a really short period of time to make a solo exhibition. Like. Really short. Ordinarily, a show takes me six months. Imagine what a project like this would look like given an additional 120 days, and then try to say something meaningful about those 180 days in 400 words. Naturally, a lot of artists struggle with this part of the profession. Luckily for me (and hopefully for you), words have always come comparatively easily.

The easiest way for me to describe what I’ve done here is to say that I’ve made two exhibitions concurrently. The first is the exhibition itself, and the second is an exhibition about making this exhibition. Although I truthfully feel that both of these components actually comprise a singular enterprise that isn’t so neatly sub-divided, the clearest way to proceed is to discuss them separately.

The Show

This exhibition is my early 21st Century response to the work of Jock Macdonald, and it is spread over two different gallery spaces: Gallery A and the Art Lab. Although the Art Lab is ostensibly a “studio”, and the vast majority of the work in this exhibition was made there (while on public display), I have more or less considered it a gallery space in it’s own right. It’s just one that came with some readymade props in it to respond to (such as a desk and a set of drawing drawers). My initial artistic response to Jock Macdonald was an animation called, JMDRP_2 (double Parker mix) wherein I took works from the McLaughlin Gallery’s permanent collection by Jock Macdonald and (literally) mashed them up. The “music” that accompanies it is a song by Charlie Parker to which I manipulated the time signature and layered so that two versions of the same song, each with different time signatures, play concurrently. The wall paintings in Gallery A are made from segments of stills taken from that animation. The white paintings that are placed on top of the wall paintings are “automatic” paintings done as homage to Macondald’s late work, and the process he used to make them. Although I’m deeply skeptical of consciously doing anything subconsciously, Macdonald was deeply committed to the idea, and I made them in good faith while keeping to his described methodology. The central idea behind the paintings, however, was always their relationship to the wall paintings. I wanted to rearrange the usual relationship my paintings (and most paintings generally) have to the gallery space, which is colourful paintings on white walls. In this instance, I have put white paintings on colourful walls. To say that I’ve reversed this relationship is partially accurate, however, I think it’s a little more complex that that. These paintings, which manipulate warm and cool tones of white, are also quite textured and tactile. This is an important component of all of my usual paintings. So rather than merely reversing the relationship of painting to wall, I like to think that I sliced apart the various components of my work (image, material, figure, ground) and manipulated the way/order in which the usually occur.

The paintings that lean from floor to wall are made from the drop clothes the gallery gave me to make my wall painting. Although the patterns of paint drips were created accidentally, the compositions were very specifically chosen and cropped. The warning label stickers act as figure/subject in these found arrangements. Conceptually, I liked leaning them because the pieces started up as something on the floor, but as paintings, have been “elevated” to something that could hang on the wall. They don’t, however, make it all the way there because I liked them best while situated in an interstitial place between wall and floor. They just looked really good that way, creating lovely dramatic-looking shadows in their rear.

The series of framed works called “New Documents” are made by painting and stacking multiple layers of the printed transparencies I used to make my work. Aesthetically, they are reminiscent to me of the animation frames that they used to make in historical, hand made animated films. They do, however, reverse the traditional relationship between animation and frame. Traditionally, a still is used to make an animation. In this case, the animation has been used to create the still.

The Art Lab, as a whole, has been aesthetically arranged to look exactly like that: a research facility where art is made. My actual studio looks nothing like that because my actual studio is a disaster. (Generally, I function best artistically in organized chaos. If everything is always out, it’s easy to find. It’s just a matter of digging. It’s when I put things away that I run into difficulty finding things.)

The tabletop piece, called “desktop” is meant as an actual, real-life manifestation of the virtual desktops on our computers. On that desktop, I have carefully arranged an assortment of items related to this project: some books about Jock Macdonald, my Dre-Beats boombox, a number of sharpened HB pencils, a pencil sharpener, some business cards, the paint swatches I collected for my wall painting. Like the desktop on my computer, these are the things that I needed quick access to in order to complete my project.

On the wall behind the desk are a series of drawings on mlyar. These works, ultimately, were a response to the material. They’re drawn on drafting mylar meant for technical/mechanical drawings. Firstly, I just always thought this type of paper stock (available in most art supply stores) looks wicked cool. Also, good quality pencil crayons look kinda awesome on mylar. I made two larger ones that are on the top of the drawing drawers/vertical files. The images chosen are taken from stills from the JMD animation, although I entirely changed the source images colour schemes. There was no reason at all for this change other than personal preference. Colour choices are so hard/impossible to intellectually validate. There’s no real reason for mine other than optical experience and choice.

The framed charcoal drawing was made at home before I came here, and is actually based on my previous work. It just looked really good on that wall, and hey! Charcoal is always sexy! I kept wanting to take it out because it isn’t new work. But it just kept working so well visually in every evolving scenario that I decided it had to say. It might not make conceptual sense, but it does make visual sense, and for me, that is always going to be ultimately paramount.

The oil on paper pieces were the first paintings I made based upon the JMD animation. They are called Maquettes because they were originally going to have a different relationship to the white paintings in Gallery A. That relationship, however, just didn’t work out. So now, these Maquettes, are just painting in their own right. I’m still going to call them Maquettes though because that was their initial intention. They’re models for a failed idea.

The A Frame sculpture/painting thing was an earlier thing that had text on it. Then I painted an abstract painting over the top of it. That painting looked kinda terrible so I flipped it inside out. Then it looked kind of awesome: this big brown blank with a painting on the back. If you work really hard, and physically bend down to look, you can see the failed painting on its backside. That’s kind of fun? But I also like it’s blankness, that it inhabits a form of commerce and advertising but delivers no message. It’s a sign of a sign that thwarts it’s own signification. It is a big brown empty.

The plaster sculpture “Thing” is a piece of Styrofoam that I found in the IT Department at Durham College. It was used as packaging for shipping a computer. Firstly, it’s a beautiful shape. Secondly, it’s relationship to the computer, and the actual physical space that a computer occupies in the world is pretty interesting, and in keeping with the overall conceptual parameters of this project. Then I covered it in plaster to turn it from functional object into an aesthetic one. I liked the plaster because it’s clumpy. Also, I am kind of a bad sculptor, and the plaster intensified my badness. The amateurishness of its articulation gives it this feeling of pathos – transforming this cold, post-human looking thing into something handmade (and badly handmade at that.) The completed piece kind of reminds me of Wall-E.

Taken in its entirety, this show takes the work of Jock Macdonald as a starting point, and goes somewhere else. It combines digital technology with a wide variety of traditional artist materials, and hopefully, creates a place for them to perceptually coexist. I wanted to create an anachronistic space, where past and present could fluctuate in some kind of aesthetic dialogue. I am less interested in what this cohabitation means exactly than the process of exchange that occurs. There is an ecology to my working methodology. I don’t really create new things. I re-configure and rearrange things that already exist. I add on, place things in different contexts, and invent modifications. I never throw anything away. Everything has value because everything has use.

The Show about the Show

This part of the exhibition happened across the Internet. It was intended as a multi-platform aesthetic experience, and includes this blog, a Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter. Each of these platforms provided different access points into my working methodology and thinking. In all of this, I have tried to stay as true to my actual process as possible. Writing is always an important part of my process. As I work through my ideas, I write in a journal. For me, the process of writing helps to move things in my head from vague and abstract to concrete and discernable. I find tremendous value in that process. In this sense, I very much tried in my writing to pretend that no one was reading this. This was easy to do on Twitter, as I only have 16 “followers”. So Twitter was like a note pad for random thoughts, posted, more or less, as they entered my brain. It felt like I was screaming into a deep cave: a giant algorithmic abyss. The Internet itself. The blog, however, has been very well read. There have been over two thousand page views on this blog since I started this project, from all over the world. The fact that no one has “replied” to any of my posts, however, has helped it to feel like an internal monologue – like what it usually is to write in my journals. These are my "private thoughts" broadcast in a public forum. Because really, what is private anymore?

I have tried to show the role that research plays in my art production. How the things I read occupy my thoughts and slide around in my mind. How conversation shapes the parameters of thinking, but that I am also trying to pin the tail on a perpetually moving donkey. Often my research is more idiosyncratic than what occurs here, and is more like the excerpts I’ve provided from my “Car Library Notes”. In the case of this project, my research was far more focused than usual. My research primarily oscillated around the work and life of Jock Macdonald.

I’ve learned a lot about Jock Macdonald over the past couple of months. In fact, I feel like I’ve developed a fairly personal relationship with his ghost. He doesn’t seem to mind me calling him JMD, and he’s forgiven me for making fun of his haircut and moustache at the beginning of this project. JMD and I have a lot in common. We’re family men who, through art, try to provide a good life for the people we love. We teach art to people, and as such, act as conduits between art and the “public”. We are invested in the lively conversations that surround the practice of painting in our time. As such, we are creatures of the zeitgeist, diving in with both feet. Head and shoulders, knees and toes we are jettisoned through the torrential flow and throng of this pulsating cultural organism that has devoured us, swallowed us whole. It has already chewed up and spat out Jock’s remains. Someday it will have had its fill with me also. When it’s finally done my chomping, I only hope it belches with satisfaction.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Buchloh: That's one of the oldest cliches around. People always have resorted to music in order to save the foundations of abstract painting. Why is your only recourse that to the metaphor of nature, like a Romantic?

Richter: No, like a painter. The reason I don't argue in "socio-political terms" is that I want to make a picture and not an ideology. It's always facticity, and not its ideology that makes a picture good.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Notes from the underground

jmdrp_10

ink, graphite and pencil crayon on mylar

22 x 34 inches

2015

vernacademic? slackademic? arrogant dilettantism?

I dunno. Probably. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'd rather be an intellectual than an academic, an alchemist than a chemist, a flaneur than a sociologist. So ya. This is probably a form of arrogant dilettantism mixed with self-indulgent self-importance. But you know, whatevs.

Monday, January 26, 2015

A Toronto Jock Stalk

This is 4 Maple Avenue, Toronto. It's located just north of Bloor and Sherborne. Jock and his wife moved into an apartment in this building after returning from Europe in 1955. This is the last place Jock lived, and is where he had the heart attack that killed him in 1960.

The six-plex was recently sold. This is the real-estate listing.

This is Lawren Harris' "The Studio Building". It is located in the lower part of Rosedale, just north of Bloor and Church at 25 Severn Street. Jock hoped to get a studio in this building, but only seemed to be able to borrow A.Y. Jackson's on occasion. William Ronald, however, did eventually have a space in this building.

View of "The Studio Building" from "Lawren Harris Park", Rosedale.

This is the Roberts Gallery which is just south of Bloor on Yonge Street. It is the location of the first Painter's 11 exhibtion.

This is 23 Millbank Avenue in Toronto. It is located off Spadina in Forest Hill Village. Jock and his wife lived in a basement apartment on this property from 1948 until 1954. I knocked on the door and spoke to the current homeowner. He seemed pleased to know that a famous Canadian artist had once lived at that address. He told me that they had lived there for two years, and that the home itself is 14 years old. Apparently the garage in the back is original to the home. I forgot to tell him that his garage was where Macdonald made his studio.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

research notes:

Continued from, Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form, 2014.

Pg 176- December 9th, 1947

"The only review I read about the show had this to say 'The curio of the exhibition is by JWG - who has created a painting, apparently with part of the subject matter a woman, who has her viscara showing.' I nervously looked in the dictionary to discover what part of her anatomy was the viscara.' Just a bit relieved it was what it was."

"Things at the Art College are going nicely - have 2nd year painting students experimenting in expressive arts on Saturday mornings - results promising too + the are very keen + happy."

Pg 177- March 3rd, 1948 - "The interest was sufficient to fill the hall - that in itself must be rather disturbing to the chief who says 'nothing but Academic painting will be expressed in the Ontario College.' He does not know I have 70 painting students doing creative painting on Saturday mornings - he is never the to see what we are doing."

"Jackson (AY) is going away for 5 weeks so he is loaning me his studio. I expect to use the garage at home after that if the weather is warm enough."

Pg 178 - Macdonald bought his first camera so the he could take pictures of his work. The film took 6 WEEKS TO BE DEVELOPED. Crazy.

"At the Ontario College of Art the seed of modern creative expression isn't planted on a rock. The soil around it is slowly warming _ the first tiny root is digging down."

Barbara + I are going to Provincetown - Cape Cod - for two weeks in June - guests of Mrs. Margaret McLaughlin (Buick Motors). She is going to Hans Hoffmann's summer school + I am taking this chance of meeting Hoffmann." A footnote at the bottom of the page tells us that Margaret McLaughlin is "the painter Alexandra Luke". Had heard she married a McLaughlin, but I wonder if she was actually born McLaughlin? We'll see what Wikipedia has to say on this.

Ok. And I'm not even remotely saying that Lawren Harris and Alexandra Luke aren't really good painters. But Harris is a Massey, and Luke is a McLaughlin, and it would be pretty naive of anyone reading this not to think those facts haven't played a major role in the development of our national art history. But anyways.

In the summer of 1948, after working with Hoffman in Provincetown, the Macdonald's bought a 1935 Oldsmobile and drove across North America to Banff (where he taught for seven weeks) and onto Vancouver. Stacey and I really want to do this soon with the kids.

Pg 183-184: Macdonald was chose by the Canada Council to work/lecture in Holland. It sounds like an awesome experience for the Macdonald's, but my favourite quote in there is this: "Everything is practically given away to the Canadians here. The Breda people were liberated by the Highlanders + the Canadians + the have not forgotten..."

Pg 194 - April 15th, 1954: "In February eleven of the creative painters got together, rented a gallery in town + put on an exhibition of experimental painting. I was one of the eleven, the eldest member. We had a very successful show, with a number of sales + record crowds. It was a bombshell of the Art World in Toronto. It set "the established + recognized artists" on their ears, made them mad as the "Painters XI" received TV, Radio, news galore. And we sold six times more paintings than the Ontario Society of Artists did in their six weeks exhibition which followed us. I received a very nice letter from Mr. James J. Sweeney, of the Guggenheim, N.Y. in which he privately has informed me that he will come to see the work of the group."

Pg 195-196: The Macdonald's spent 1954 in France through some program with the Canada council. Most of the correspondence from the period (so far) is relatively touristy. My favourite quote from which is this: "There is nothing slower in France than the post office."

Pg 197- The date here is marked as "Probably 1957" by someone other than Macdonald. Anyways, he states: "Clement Greenberg, one of the most highly considered critics of the U.S.A. saw some of my early summer paintings + was decidedly encouraging. He said my new work was good enough for any top gallery in n.Y. + for any sake keep painting + listen to nobody about your colour, technique, comp or anything else."

"I use a lucite plastic, thinned down with turps, with straight oils, using ordinary house painters brushes by various widths. I like the flexibility of those brushes better than the hogs-hair brushes."

Pg 198- In a letter from 1959, Macdonald claims that a Painters 11 exhibition which was to be held at the Canadian Embassy in Paris was prevented by the Governor General of Canada, Vincey Massey. Hmmmmm.

He also seems to have developed some kind of rift with National Gallery of Canada director, Allan Jarvis. But you know, Macdonald does seem to just develop a lot of these kind of rifts. Just sayin'.

Pg 199- December 5th, 1959: On a recent trip to NYC, he wirtes "I also saw Clement Greenberg - the critic, the strange fellow (artist) Barnet Newman..."

December 10th, 1960. In a letter written by Barbara Macdonald to Doc and Riki: "This is not a happy letter but I thought you would want to know that James died suddenly of a heart attack on the 6th Dec. If I have the date wrong it is because I am still confused. The only thing that has buoyed me up is that his passing was so wonderful. I felt that I had been privileged to be in the presence of a great mystery. Although he was in great pain and in an oxygen tent he joked with the nurse + the orderly and at the very end looked straight + clear + said "Don't worry". So he did unafraid which is a great comfort to me."

This happened 54 years ago, almost to the day that I started this project. I'd be lying if I told you I'm not feeling kind of emotional right now. Over the past couple of months, I've started to feel like I know Jock. He's become a friend to me, and the candid tone of Mrs. Macdonald's letter has left me feeling, well, kind of shaken. I have sat on two death beds in my lifetime, and Mrs. Macdonald's letter reminds me very much of those experiences. I'll always remember those last looks my loved ones gave me before they passed - an all in one glance of love, gratitude and resignation. Mrs. Macdonald's letter has reminded me of what it is to grieve.

Notes from the underground

thing

acrylic on plaster

dimensions are smallish, and I don't really feel like trying to measure them.

2015

No need for additional commentary here, other than to say that this picture is clearly awesome.

Saturday night dad drawing

The only people I take requests from are my sons, Luke and Ollie. :)

Friday, January 23, 2015

Automatics (for the people)

So I reworked the white (what were going to be) text paintings yesterday. I decided on trying to make "automatic paintings" as an homage to JMD, and the process of his late work. If you've been reading this blog, you'll know that I'm very skeptical of the idea. I tried to think less, run with a stronger sort of immediacy, let my body do more of the work, and to trust my instincts. I am, however, keenly aware that those 'instincts' are highly refined through twenty years of practice and mediated by 39 years of looking. So if I was drawing from my "subconscious", I know that interior is not virginal terrain. But whatever. It was fun, and MORE IMPORTANTLY: they look like real paintings finally. (Er, I think. For now, at least.) They're still super hard to photograph because they're playing with warm and cool within tones of white. The top layers are warmer and painted with oil paint. The under layers are cool and painted with acrylic.

Don't Think (it can only hurt the ball club) 1

Oil, acrylic and graphite on canvas

60 x 48 inches

2015

Don't Think (it can only hurt the ball club) 2

Oil and acrylic on canvas

60 x 48 inches

2015

Don't Think (it can only hurt the ball club) 3

Oil, acrylic and graphite on canvas

60 x 48 inches

60 x 48 inches

2015

Don't Think (it can only hurt the ball club) 4

Oil and acrylic on canvas

60 x 48 inches

2015

There is a common expression that says: "If you throw enough shit at a wall, something will stick". Painters, more or less, take that expression quite literally.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Notes from the underground

Installation shot of my JMD inspired watercolour landscapes.

I also reconfigured my box sculpture yesterday. For now, I like it better. But we'll see how long these last.

reconfigured box sculpture one

reconfigured box sculpture two

reconfigured box sculpture three

Installation of Gallery A with reconfigured box sculptures

The other thing I worked on yesterday was this:

Studio note:

That was a whole lot of exacto knifing. I filled the text with thick, creamy white, brush-strokey oil paint, and then removed the tape. Because the whole painting is really subtle tonal variations of white, it is more or less impossible to photograph with my cell phone. That doesn't matter though, because the piece kind of sucks. It looks very "student", and that's just not good enough. This is a most unfortunate development as the html text was one of the central ideas in this show. Basically, if you type that text into a web site program, it will produce an image of one of my 'actual' paintings. Cool idea, right? Ya. I thought so too. But ya. It's totally not going to work. Maybe if I had another month, I could get them to work while maintaining the central idea. Maybe. But even if I could get the paintings to work individually as paintings, they really don't seem to work with the rest of the installation. The use of actual language (even though it's an 'unreadable' computer one) and actual written characters doesn't go at all with the abstract language displayed in the rest of the exhibition. So ya. I gotta figure out something else, and something quick. The paintings totally suck the way that they are, and I have a little over a week to make them good.

I totally feel like I'm on one of those HGTV cooking shows right now.

Oh ya! On a note that's completely unrelated to the rest of this post:

I met David T. Alexander at my Kelowna opening. He's living there these days. What an awesome guy. We had drinks afterwards and everything. Dude taught at friggin' Emma Lake. Like. For real.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Apparently, local broadcast television still happens. Good to see, and Sam did awesome! :)

Plein-Air Cell-Phone Watercolour Paintings?

In the thirties, Jock Macdonald would go hiking in the Rocky Mountains with Frederick Varley and or Lawren Harris. They would make landscape studies. Well, I couldn't go hiking with Varley or Harris, but I could go snowboarding down the Rocky Mountains. I had intended to make plein-air watercolour paintings from Big White Ski Resort near Kelowna. I brought some water colours and paper, but I forgot my paint brushes. So unfortunately, I had to settle for taking pictures with my cell phone and painting from them later. I did, however, paint these directly from my cell phone. I didn't blow them up on a larger computer or print them out first. So in that sense, they're a new kind of plein-air? Maybe? Ya. Not really. I totally would have used my laptop to make these paintings, but the wireless internet wasn't working at school yesterday, and I really wanted to make the paintings right then. So, you know, I did what I had to do to make that happen. In the end, I think it was for the best because painting from a cell-phone is really kind of hard. The phone keeps turning off, and then you have to go back into the program, find the picture again, etc. A giant pain in the ass really. But I think because it was such a giant pain in the ass, it prevented me from being too finicky and precious with these things. Regardless, these works are meant as an homage to Jock, Frederick and Lawren, and perhaps also to an idea of the once savage terrain they must have surely crossed to make their paintings.

I couldn't help but wonder, as I ventured up the mountain looking at the farms and housing scattered across, what the landscape itself would have been like in their time? Or even crazier, what it would have been like for the unfortunate buggers who decided to put a farm on the side of a giant mountain? I, on the other hand, conquered this summit by greyhound and gondola, then rocketed myself downwards at very high speeds.

The use of watercolour is for Jock. All of these paintings are 9 x 12 inches.

limited visibility

More trees.

As of yet untitled (Big White)

Monday, January 19, 2015

Reading through a Craig Owens article on seriality from 1983 (in advance of my Thursday class) makes me want to punch myself in the face.

It's not that anything he says there is wrong exactly. It's more that, how do you go through your life actually thinking that way about things? I mean why would you even go on? Dude is just so enthusiastic about his cynicism. Puke.

Friday, January 16, 2015

If only the camera could convey what my eyes can experience.

studio note:

I guess the real question here is, obviously, what is the difference between my art and my life? Where does one thing stop and the other thing take over? Which part of things is 'pertinent' and which part is 'extraneous'? Seriously. Damned if I can tell the difference. Regardless, all of this is happening because of that glass window they gave me that looks into 'my' studio, and thinking about what that means.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Notes from an airplane

It's kind of awesome flying over Canada at night - a spectacular darkness. The map on the tv monitor tells me I am somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. It is profoundly black out there. I cannot tell between ground and sky. Past the beacon of our wing's white light is a distant settlement - a haze of yellow glow on an imagined horizon. A moment later and there is melanoid nothing again, periodically interrupted by the pinprick of some faint illuminate.

studio note:

When I get back from British Columbia I'm going to get rid of those stupid boxes on the floor. They're terrible. I don't know what I was thinking.

I think most people underestimate the significance of the internet - like it's a fancy toaster or something. In fact, it is completely changing the basic conditions of being human.

Question: How do you raise your children in a world that changes so rapidly? How do you prepare them, protect them, when the conditions are in perpetual flux; when all the experiences you can relate to them are functionally obsolete?

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Correspondence with Victoria Sigurdson

Hello, Pete:

I finally found a few moments to look into your query –we have two photographs of Jock (the aforementioned one with students in the classroom and a second one with George Pepper) and we have some secondary sources of information (two Alumnus newsletter articles from the 1980’s on him).

If you are looking for insight into the pedagogy/curriculum of the school around Jock’s time, reviewing the yearly calendar/prospectuses would probably be useful. Jock is listed as an instructor in the calendars from 1948-1960; under ’Still Life & Composition’ for a time and then under ‘Drawing & Painting’ from 1952-1960. The prospectuses generally contain images of student work, which provide useful information in terms of assignments and learning outcomes.

In terms of locations where he might have taught, I did not find any references to specific office of classroom numbers. However, according to some committee minutes from the 1950’s, drawing and painting classes around the beginning of Jock’s tenure were held in the George A. Reid building (although the college was scattered across three different buildings at that time). When 100 McCaul was built (expanding the Reid space), it looks like Drawing & Painting remained in the Reid building on the 2nd floor along with newly allotted studio space throughout the 3rd floor of 100 McCaul. The offices for Drawing & Painting in 100 McCaul were centered along the west side of the building on the second and third floors (for example, on the second floor, I believe that this is the area beside the cafĂ© at the back of the Great Hall where windows look onto Grange park).

If you’d like to make an appointment to view the prospectuses or if you have additional questions, just let me know. I have time in my schedule this week for appointments on Wednesday from 9:30am-12:30pm or 9:00am-5:00pm on Thursday.

Regards,

Victoria.

--

Victoria Sigurdson MLIS, BFA Visual Art (Hons)

Head, Visual Resources & Special Collections

Dorothy H. Hoover Library