Libby Hague: Every Heart Can Grow Bigger

Having such a curious and inventive mind Libby Hague has been a prolific Toronto based Artist specializing in video and large scale print installations. She has taught printmaking at Sheridan College, and is known for her paper collage and constructed installations; that deal with disaster, hope and the precariousness of consequence. Understanding the resilience and fragility of paper Libby knows this is why it is the perfect medium for expression.

Born in St Thomas Ontario, and growing up in Montreal, Quebec;  Libby has been creating sculptures and stories of contradiction, violence, love, death, disease, and vulnerability. Moving freely amongst these narratives has given her a unique vantage point as a storyteller. From here she remembers as a child how her passion grew with the fragility and strength of paper. Cutting up and pasting characters from magazines and catalogues.

Collecting and navigating her passion for literature Libby shares how her love of reading changed how she saw the world, how her love transcended language and boundaries of relationships and characters. How moving amongst these narratives gave her the opportunity to speak through paper about dialogues she finds in the environment around her. How they may be obscure, but there is a thread of reality running through all of them.

To connect with Libby Hague: http://libbyhague.com/basic.html

Podcast Credits:

Audio Links from https://freemusicarchive.org/
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

*In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess known for her prophetic abilities. She was cursed by the god Apollo so that while her prophecies were always true, no one would ever believe them.

Transcript

[Speaker 2] (0:04 - 1:09)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creatively Thinking Podcast. Join Carolyn Botelho as she uncovers the inspirations behind some incredibly creative minds that are orbiting our local communities. Hi Libby Hague, I am so happy to have you on the show today!

I have been following you since Loop Gallery. You are a Canadian artist based in Toronto, Ontario. You are known for your large scale print installations and your work has been exhibited in prominent galleries across Canada and internationally.

So I will just take a deep dive into the questions and the first one I'd like to ask all artists. What led you down this path as a career choice? Was it loving what you can do with your hands, your emotional insights or something else?

[Speaker 1] (1:10 - 2:51)

Well, first, hello, Carolyn, and thanks for inviting me on your podcast. I think that's a good question. And I wonder if you're keeping score, like how many artists say they began with an attachment to working with their hands, because that I would be in that group.

I can even remember the first things I used to make, which were playing with blocks. So sitting in my brother's bedroom and piling up the blocks. And there were only a limited number of blocks that I had.

And so I had to build something and then I would take it apart and build something out of the blocks again. But there was a really important part of that process for me. And that was dragging my mother in, who was usually in the kitchen, very traditional upbringing.

And I wanted her to look at it. And I wanted her, you know, hopefully to admire it, but just to recognize that I had done something. And then I felt free to take it apart.

And I realized that is the way I've been working my whole life. You know, a lot of my work I build and then I take it apart. I love I like to have it seen by people.

You know, I love it if they do really like it. But, you know, it's mostly, you know, a desire to communicate with other people and to not be the tree falling in the forest. But I love I just really love working with my hands.

And I'm lucky to have found that when I was, I don't know, four years old or whenever I was doing that.

[Speaker 2] (2:53 - 3:03)

Yeah, that that is really nice to just to just be able to stick with something from such a young age and just know that that's what you really want to do with your life.

[Speaker 1] (3:03 - 3:08)

Yeah. And it's a luxury to have life kind of organize itself so that I could do that.

[Speaker 2] (3:12 - 3:28)

Having the experience of teaching printmaking, have you found these two positions creatively complement each other? Have you found you are an influence while instructing or do the students influence you with their perspective?

[Speaker 1] (3:29 - 6:15)

Students influence me with their enthusiasm and their eagerness and the intensity of their their emotional lives, which, you know, always spilled over into the classroom or, you know, often did. But I think the influences went both ways. I don't I never know how much I influence students.

I don't think I was the best teacher in the world. But I I learned a lot from the process, as I said, from my students and also from my colleagues, because we had group crits at the beginning and end of every term. And I had really intelligent colleagues.

And when I had gone to school, I hadn't had much exposure to critical thinking. I don't think that was part of the way art was taught back then. At least it wasn't taught at Sir George Williams that way.

And so it was kind of a lacking that I had, I guess, and teaching and sitting in on crits and speaking with my with my colleagues. Sort of filled in that gap. So the learning went two ways.

And I suspect that's that's how it often is. You know, I didn't want my students to become clones. I wanted to try to help them find an enthusiasm for for printmaking.

And I wanted them to find their own voice. For me, that was like one of the most important things to give them the confidence to pursue the ideas that were meaningful to them. Because I'd seen teachers who turned out like one of my teachers was Molinari.

And you wouldn't believe how many fellow students in those in that class would turn out striped paintings. I look back, I cringe because, oh, my God, he must have seen that. It was just, you know, you can't really compete with (Guido) Molinari when you're in second year painting.

So and it's just, you know, kind of ridiculous to to try. And in fact, yeah, I think it was it was pretty clear he was contemptuous of, well, not just the students who did the striped paintings, but like most of us, he said, he used to say, you don't know anything. This was directed not especially at me, but at the class.

He'd say, you don't even know how to make pasta. And I don't know if he walked out of the room at that point, but it kind of felt in memory like he was almost doing that, spinning on his heel and walking out.

[Speaker 2] (6:16 - 6:22)

So but anyway, and so so Molinari, I'm not totally familiar.

[Speaker 1] (6:22 - 7:04)

That name sounds familiar, but you can look it up afterwards. He was a leading sort of abstract artist from that was like the late 60s. And he and Gaucher were the leading, like the most prestigious teachers in the school.

And I think they were well aware of it. And so, you know, they well, anyway. Well, anyway, they set examples that were they were interesting examples.

They didn't necessarily teach by teaching, but they taught by, I don't know, their presence, I guess, their flair, their flamboyance.

[Speaker 2] (7:04 - 7:10)

So, yeah, yeah, they had it. Yeah. And you said you were saying you were at Sir Williams.

Where is that?

[Speaker 1] (7:13 - 7:34)

Oh, well, it's the early iteration of Concordia. It used to be called Sir George Williams University in Montreal, and it amalgamated with Loyola College. So the two amalgamated and became Concordia back in maybe seventy two or something.

I don't know. Seventy one. I'm not sure.

[Speaker 2] (7:36 - 7:53)

OK, working primarily with fiber arts over the years has created boundaries for you, even if they are not clearly defined boundaries. How do you find printmaking has limited or broadened your understanding of your imagination?

[Speaker 1] (7:55 - 8:07)

Well, it's you know, I don't really think of printmaking as being part of fiber arts, but it was but I guess it is. It's true. But I don't find it an especially useful category.

[Speaker 2] (8:08 - 8:15)

But I know it doesn't sound good, does it? It's just it's just that's how they want to classify you.

[Speaker 1] (8:15 - 11:08)

Well, not many people, but there was a really interesting artist at Loop Gallery called his name is still is Gareth Bate. And he organized something called the World of Threads, which was a fiber arts, a fiber arts international show that he organized in Oakville. He did it for a number of years with his mother.

And I think I did submit to that just because, hey, it's an opportunity. So if he wants to call printmaking fiber arts, I'll go with it. But it's not my it's not what I would instinctively categorize printmaking as.

And also, I feel a kind of pride about printmaking that I don't want to conceal printmaking. It's interesting. There's always been a kind of a status of prints that I ascribe to the fact that they were less expensive.

And so, you know, if they're less expensive, they must have less like not just monetary value, but they must be less significant than, say, painting or sculpture. They were, you know, a kind of minor art. But I always was aware of how how many things could be said through printmaking.

So I kind of resisted that a little bit. And as far as the constraints, it does have constraints, but I find them useful. Like if you think of the tyranny of a blank page or the tyranny of, well, if you were a lithographer, it would be a freshly grained stone that you're about to draw on in any situation.

And it's the same with subject matter, too. If you could do anything, it's too big a field. You kind of need to narrow it down and define your focus a little bit, I think.

So the constraints that come from printmaking, I have found useful. And like, for instance, you can the ability to repeat is you can say it's a constraint. It's also a tremendous advantage.

It's like one of the essential, you know, building blocks of the media. And since I work in mixed media, I have multiple constraints that I can work with and I can put them down or pick them up. But I find all those things useful just because it helps me focus, I guess.

I don't know if that makes any sense to you.

[Speaker 2] (11:09 - 11:26)

Yeah, well, it's like the. The boundaries you're saying that you have are just what the medium allows you to do, and those give you the structure that you need to give you the guidance to to take the direction you're going.

[Speaker 1] (11:26 - 11:26)

Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (11:26 - 11:27)

Is that is that about it?

[Speaker 1] (11:27 - 12:25)

I think so, because, you know, when I was in school, I didn't really study much theory. But one of the one of the significant emphasis of the time was this idea of truth to materials. And I've always thought that that's really important that, you know, what's the point of having anything look like something else?

Why not just have it look like itself? And that has to do with the natural constraints and abilities of a medium. It goes to what I see as kind of an honesty that relates to the medium and integrity to the medium.

And you've got to work out where that lies for every different medium, you know, and it'll be multiple. So one artist will see one thing and another will move in a different direction. But I think there has to be that integrity there.

[Speaker 2] (12:28 - 12:39)

Yeah, exactly. You need to be honest with the medium and the constraints that it has. You can't take it anywhere that it's not willing to go.

[Speaker 1] (12:40 - 13:09)

Yeah. Although later I'll give you a clue. I'm going to end up talking a little bit about some foreshadowing here.

I was going to talk about Picasso and there are rules. And then there's people who break rules, right? Because, yeah, there are constraints that you normally associate with, say, ceramics.

And he'll just go in there and ignore it and do something that blows everybody away. So there's rules. And then, like all rules, there's people who are able to break the rules.

[Speaker 2] (13:11 - 13:14)

Yeah, the rules are there to be broken, right?

[Speaker 1] (13:14 - 13:19)

Yeah, but we're not all able to do that, you know, equal facility.

[Speaker 2] (13:23 - 13:39)

Your printmaking work is quite playful and in some ways childlike. How has the public gallery circuit categorized your work? How has your unique and original style found its niche in the marketplace of Toronto?

[Speaker 1] (13:40 - 15:55)

Well, I don't know that it's really found its niche. Maybe I'm still waiting for that niche. But I kind of feel a little out of step with the current zeitgeist, I guess.

I'm not really particularly moved by theory. So I've always felt, you know, you have to be true to yourself. And because I don't feel like I especially fit in, I feel like, well, it gives me a kind of liberty to do what I'm compelled to do or what I want to do.

There was a colleague, actually, at Sheridan, who I remember saying, you know, you have to be really lucky to do work that's of the time you're in. I guess she was thinking that if that was the case, then the world you're in will recognize what you're doing. You'll get that validation coming back.

But the thing is, I think if you don't, if that doesn't happen, you just have to go on anyway. So, yeah, you know, I mean, I do find a lot of... I like to laugh and I like to play in my work, let's say.

So I don't think that's something that's necessarily valued, but it's something that I value. So I just kind of keep going my own way. And because I'm somewhat apart from a marketplace, because I don't sell very much, I don't feel the constraint to satisfy a dealer or be practical.

It's kind of crazy. But that's the kind of liberating zone I operate in. Yeah, I know.

I know. I did tell you, I did mention earlier, I'm very fortunate. Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, and I've been there, I've had galleries and they would tell me what I could show.

[Speaker 2] (15:55 - 15:59)

Who wants to be a slave to an agent or a gallery?

[Speaker 1] (16:00 - 16:15)

It wasn't a satisfying experience. And they scared me. I used to be frightened to go in their galleries because they were so intimidating.

But that's, you know, the power role that was established. It's very effective from their point of view.

[Speaker 2] (16:21 - 16:50)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they sort of make it out to be that way. What do you find is what drove you into your love of storytelling? Your installations focus on disaster, hope and consequence.

How do these subjects complement your style or your printmaking process?

[Speaker 1] (16:50 - 16:54)

I think my love of storytelling began really with my mother again.

[Speaker 2] (16:55 - 16:56)

That's a lot of questions.

[Speaker 1] (16:56 - 20:35)

She used to read to my brother and to me at lunchtime. I guess they read at night, but I remember the reading at lunchtime. So we would come running home from school and she would have like, I don't know, soup or sandwich or something for us for lunch.

And then when the lunch was over, which we ate pretty quickly, there would be she'd read from a story. And she would I remember her reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. And I still remember, you know, she was describing that.

I don't know if you've read that book, but there's a scene where Tom and Becky are in a cave. And I don't know if their candle blows out or something, but they're they're trying to see their way around a corner. And Tom reaches out his hand to sort of feel where the wall is.

And his hand is grabbed by another hand. And oh, no, it's the most dangerous, most terrifying person in the world. It was Indian Joe.

And my brother and I nearly had a heart attack. And I still remember, like, you know, emotion really lodges memory inside of you. And then we would beg for another chapter and sometimes she would, you know, you know, exceed and then we would run back to school.

So that was the story of my introduction to storytelling, I guess, and the power that it have and the pull that it had. And and, you know, it's sort of out of that grew a love of literature. And that's continued all my life.

I was kind of a shy kid. And so literature was a way of starting to understand the complexity of the world and get out of. We lived in a little suburb, so I think it just opened up the world for me, really.

And then. As far as the rescue and disaster scenarios, I think that that kind of fills a psychological need I have for two parts. One is like to tell the truth and to and to think about the things that I see that are.

Difficult in the world and and then the need to kind of be rescued from it, both to give that to other people and to provide it for myself. So so to create the scenario of danger or disaster and then the comfort of rescue. So that part is maybe not entirely honest because the rescue doesn't always happen.

But I guess I kind of want to see that. And. Pardon me.

Yeah, so I feel like I come up right to the most totally total destruction and then come back. And I see myself kind of as a Cassandra figure that way, that I'm showing you what could happen if we don't change our way as a kind of cautionary tale. So I think I think that's how it.

That's how the need functions in me, I guess, is that I don't always work that way, but I think I think that's a that's a part of it.

[Speaker 2] (20:43 - 21:14)

And we'll be right back. Being raised in Quebec, has language impacted how galleries, spectators or other artists interpret your work? Would you say your narratives are beyond the spoken word or the need to communicate verbally?

In other words, do your installations speak for themselves?

[Speaker 1] (21:18 - 27:09)

When I was showing in Quebec, if there's text in the work, often what they will do to accommodate the requirements that every every word in English be translated into French is there'll be signage. So the title will be in a place and then any quotations that are in English have to be translated there. And so but, you know, it's not it's it's not visually as present.

But if I'm showing in Quebec and I have enough time and the work does have a text in it, I will search for text phrases that are in French and then I'll incorporate them in French. So then I don't have it in English. But I liked there's a lot of French writing that I like.

And I had a show in Laval last year and I was I was getting ready for that. I was trying to read. I was like, I got to get more fluency in French.

It was bad. And so I would read French books. And so if I found quotations that moved me, I would write those out and incorporate those in the pieces.

So I did try to to do that. And. I know I tried it, I tried to do that, but I find that text gives gives the work a kind of specificity.

And I've also found it's it's a useful entry point, whether you speak a language or not. I find that people are not confident when they're looking at visual visual works. I think that's less true in Quebec, where I think there there's more enthusiasm and exposure to art like in a broad section of people.

So more a broader section of people. I think go to galleries and like what they see. And so they're learning and they're also comfortable.

And here in Ontario, I find people are art makes people a little nervous, you know, that they they're they're afraid that they'll they'll say the wrong thing, that they'll look foolish and that they don't get it properly. So I think that having a little bit of text gives people confidence, like, oh, here's something I understand. I understand text.

And I had a big show in Mississauga and I had I put little bits of text around the bottom because you went around the gallery. And what the text did was it slowed people down and it was it could be it could work in different ways. So it would be like an interesting counterpoint to the to the imagery that was that was, let's say, playing or or not.

And it gave me pleasure because if I use a quotation, I love the language of the quotation. So it just I thought it just broadened the experience of the work and and it gave viewers confidence. And I don't know, I had a show at Harbourfront that Patrick Macaulay curated and it was called Habitat.

And it had text in it. And I, I wanted to have quotations, but not have quotations that were identified on the wall. It would look too messy.

But I wanted them to be somewhere in the room because it was sometimes it was pretty interesting to see who actually said something or the context in which it was said. So I'll tell you two examples. One was one of the examples said, I want to punch him in the face.

And the person who was in the gallery told a group of businessmen who were coming through, you know, that there was a quote somewhere in the gallery by on the wall by Donald Trump. And they went it was like a treasure hunt. You know, they wanted to find the quote by Donald Trump.

And that was the quote. But so that was a show that was, I don't know. I don't know when it was maybe.

I think probably when he was president the first time around. So, you know, he was well on his thuggish trail, I guess, by then. But then the other one that I had in there, like there were many, many.

But one was furnish yourself with two very short, sharp knives. And I like that little frisson that it gives because there's a lot of violence in some of these pieces. And you assume that the violence was directed at another human being until you saw, oh, the quote comes from Julia Child describing how to butterfly a leg of lamb.

Oh, she goes on about the knife should follow the bone very closely. And you thought, geez, this is like horrific. But then, you know, I'm a vegetarian.

So on another level, I see like, well, what do you know? Obviously, I prioritize human beings over over lambs. But I, you know, I appreciate that there's a violence in the act of.

Killing and eating animals, too, so that's, you know, kind of a double like frisson or something there, but. Anyway, I find it hard to keep track of my ideas, but I think that text works for me in multiple ways. I don't.

Yeah. So I'm not even sure whether that answers your question or not.

[Speaker 2] (27:10 - 27:29)

I was asking how language plays a part in your work because you grew up in Quebec. If it changed your narratives or if your narratives were even impacted, like they even just they sort of stand on their own.

[Speaker 1] (27:30 - 28:54)

Yeah, that's right. Well, you know, work gradually evolves, and now the work I'm making doesn't have language in it right now, but it. Well, the last body of work doesn't, but the next one probably will.

But yeah, in Quebec, you know, in Quebec, you're aware of language in multiple ways. Back in the 70s, it was very fraught to speak. Well, either language, kind of, to be honest, but I think fortunately.

Some of the inequities of French society that used to be, you know, have too much English domination are not present any longer. I think I see the French-Canadian as kind of confident and like a creative presence in the world, certainly in my world. And, you know, and that goes to language, too.

So now, actually, people in Montreal anyway, it's a much easier kind of back and forth of English and French.

[Speaker 2] (29:00 - 29:05)

Yeah, that's what I remember. Montreal is both sort of more equal for both languages.

[Speaker 1] (29:06 - 29:33)

No, no, Quebec, not so much, but that's the way the voting patterns happen, too. And I think a lot of people, a lot of Quebec is still fairly rural in the sense that people don't travel that much. They wouldn't necessarily have met an Anglophone in person.

So exposure brings tolerance, I think, to a certain extent.

[Speaker 2] (29:36 - 30:00)

Yes. Yes, I think that as well. Your hybrid style of working has set you apart from other artists.

How have you seen your creative practice evolving over time? Has your unique approach kept you separate or has it led to interesting integrations or collaborations you didn't expect?

[Speaker 1] (30:00 - 35:53)

Well, I think if you saw my studio, you would understand why, you know, I'm always blending things, why there's so much hybridity in my work. I have the luxury of having a studio where I can have sections of wall with just ideas, let's say, where things like I can see the promise in some aspect of a piece, but I haven't resolved it. And I don't want to get I don't want to give up on it so I can pin it up there.

And it can be these can be pieces of sculpture, pieces of just things I find, you know, paintings, prints, all kinds of things. And so I find I can see things, they're sort of part of my peripheral vision and I can just sort of integrate things. And I love not knowing what I'm going to do, like I can see I have a problem.

I don't know how to solve it, but I can somehow you turn your head and you see something, your eye falls on the right thing and you can just sort of bring it in. So I would say that the confusion of my studio really encourages a hybrid kind of practice, because you're always bringing in past things and current things and jamming them together. I like, for instance, combining, this was a new thing for me last year at Laval, sculpture with animation projection, because I had these large tables made and I had little sculptures, which were made from litho plates.

So they had the imagery of my characters, let's say, in this kind of futuristic looking scenario. But then I could project onto that with animation and the animation would kind of, it would carve out shadows by the things that it concealed. So it, and also because the, this is going to be hard to follow, I think, but because the animation was formed from images of the woodcuts that I developed in a 3D application and kind of twisted around in there, it was like a reflection of the character, but in a slightly more demented way, let's say.

The piece was called We Are Multitudes after the phrase by Walt Whitman, and the theme that I was kind of working with was another, I had used in another exhibition that was called The Heart in Conflict with Itself, which was a quote from Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech, acceptance speech. And he said that was like the real purpose of literature was to kind of explain or explore the heart and conflict with itself. And I thought it was quite a profound idea.

And I, I'm always trying to look at the complications and the contradictions of human beings. And so the fact that I could have a figure who was standing there and then project that figure in a different way through animation, I thought I could just show how complex we are. And I think that I wanted to show that, well, like through that piece, but other pieces too, this idea that we are all incredibly complex, like we both have capacities for destruction, and I guess tenderness or whatever is on the other side of that, that we're we're both those things at once.

And I think different circumstances allow certain aspects to come to the fore. And I think if you think of that idea, that what you'll do is have maybe more patience with yourself and greater tolerance for other people knowing that, yeah, maybe somebody was a thief or a murderer or something, but not that it exonerates them, but that there's something else within that person. And within the confines of justice, I think it suggests to me that you don't give up on people, that in terms of incarceration, you have rehabilitation programs that not everybody can be rehabilitated, but don't give up because there's good and bad in that person.

So try to find the part that can be built and that can be improved, but recognize, I don't know, just all those different tendencies. It's what that's, I think, why I work with people, like images of people, because I find people so interesting. And, yeah, so I'm kind of trailing off the spot, I'm afraid.

[Speaker 2] (35:55 - 36:39)

It's OK, no, because I understand what you're talking about, about just like the complexities. I was just going to say, yeah, the complexities that we see in people and that you also are reading about in literature. It's really easy to sort of just grab hold of those quotes and those sentences that just really speak to you.

And then they just sort of lead you down this path of what you can do with that and how you can creatively make something bigger than yourself of what those sentences or quotations are, like you just really connect with them.

[Speaker 1] (36:40 - 37:09)

And if I've quoted somebody, it's because they say it much better than I could. And I appreciate the poetry, the fluency of their language. Mm hmm.

For instance, this fellow that killed the American, I guess they were congressmen, a congressman and congresswoman.

[Speaker 2] (37:10 - 37:11)

Yeah, in Minnesota, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (37:13 - 38:01)

You see the rage that is channeled online and they're not the person who is fueled by that rage is incapable of seeing at that time the good things that this person has done, like this congressperson has done. They see just the person who is fueled by that rage is incapable of seeing at that time the good things that this person has done, like this congressperson has done. They see just the like they've flattened them out.

They've just given them a simple label and they hate that.

[Speaker 2] (38:01 - 38:20)

Yeah, I don't know how to put it into words either. But it's just there's so many layers, so many different aspects of people that it's good to remember that it's just it just leads to, you know, violent, intolerant actions.

[Speaker 1] (38:20 - 38:55)

And that's, well, the media perhaps does, but I'm thinking, yes, social media does, and some people are very susceptible to that. And, you know, maybe this guy will, well, who knows? It's the States, so he probably is headed for the electric chair or something.

But if there's time, he might be able to see how misguided his actions were. Who knows? I don't know.

It's a terrible situation for sure.

[Speaker 2] (38:58 - 39:08)

I mean, yeah, the media just wants to make them into monsters. In your most recent exhibition at Bicetera, this is an Anglophone saying it, so I'm not sure.

[Speaker 1] (39:09 - 39:22)

It's just like a little acronym. I just say it, B-I-E-C-T-E-R. I wouldn't even try to pronounce it.

I've never heard anybody try to pronounce it. Yeah, because it's a long name.

[Speaker 2] (39:23 - 39:26)

Oh, okay. It's actually words in, okay.

[Speaker 1] (39:26 - 39:32)

Yeah, like Biennale Internationale d'Estampes de Trois-Rivières. That's the password.

[Speaker 2] (39:33 - 40:14)

Okay, you said it much better. I don't know. And we'll be right back.

In your most recent exhibition in Trois-Rivières, your work speaks of a cathedral and how historically it took a community to build one. How does this translate in your narratives metaphorically? How is this, and many other metaphors, a tool for you to communicate your precarious content?

[Speaker 1] (40:14 - 45:18)

Well, the reference was actually in a show called Toute à la Foix. That was in Laval last year. That was something curated by Jasmine Koliza, and the B-I-E-C-T-E-R show was a print Biennale in Trois-Rivières that I just came back from last night.

I think the reason that seems pertinent is that you're aware of the amount of effort, volunteer effort, that goes into mounting these shows. Well, in Trois-Rivières, the woman who's, I don't know whether she's the president of it or not, but she's been fundamental to creating a very good Biennale in Trois-Rivières for, I don't know, maybe 25 years or something like that. She's worked so hard.

I see the effort that goes into making something that's worthwhile like that. All the volunteers, all the struggle of trying to raise money when some funder turns his back on you, and the amount of effort to make it a really good show that is considerate of artists, respectful of their work, that takes a lot of people. That's what I was thinking, that when people used to build cathedrals, it might take a hundred years, so they weren't building it necessarily for themselves.

They were building it for their grandchildren or further along the field, further along the road, I guess, that they had a sense that there were things that they were part of that were bigger than themselves. That, I think, came from the faith, the religious faith that they had, but it's just interesting the distance we have come. Yet, so many of the things that I have participated in have come about through collective efforts.

I've been a printmaker for a long time. Traditionally, printmakers, they work in a collective studio, because when you're starting out, you're just coming from university, let's say. You don't have the money to buy the tools or the space to put the press, so you need to have a collective place where you can go, and that means you have to have fundraising and space management and things like that.

It just fulfills a lot of needs, but it requires effort, and it requires reciprocal effort, because places like Open Studio will provide me with so much, but in return, I will contribute through donations to fundraising. All the other artists would do that in the 80s, and I guess later than that too, but we all used to contribute to fundraisers that they had, and we'd all do cooking in the kitchens, like in our own kitchen or in community kitchens, and we'd made it work, and that was actually, it was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding, because you were part of an enterprise, and you were working together on something that was big, that mattered to you, so I think, as a printmaker, I think especially I'm kind of aware of that, and then after Open Studio, I showed at Loop for many years, and Loop was the same kind of thing.

It was held together with the money that we all paid every month as part of our membership, and then a huge volunteer contribution as well, and that's what kept it running until the landlord got greedy and upped the rent, and we couldn't afford it, and that turned out to be a blessing for us, because it was turned out it was just before COVID. If we'd signed a five-year lease, we wouldn't have even been able to walk in the building, so we would have all been impoverished, and so anyway, we just, we got lucky, and he didn't, but I'm not feeling too much pity there, but pardon me.

[Speaker 2] (45:18 - 45:19)

I said I'm sure he's doing fine.

[Speaker 1] (45:20 - 46:00)

Yeah, I think he's got a nail salon in there or something, but so yeah, that's why I'm a big believer in collective action as a result. I don't donate as much time to them anymore, but I still believe in the importance of that, and when I look at a lot of big social problems, I think that is the way to achieve success is through collective action. I think, you know, Canadians are sort of more communitarian than Americans, so I think it's kind of, I'm hoping it comes more naturally to us, but who knows?

Times change.

[Speaker 2] (46:01 - 46:07)

Working together does make a lot more sense, and it does get a lot more things accomplished.

[Speaker 1] (46:09 - 46:17)

Yeah, and it gives you like emotional support as well to be working on something that you think is worthwhile.

[Speaker 2] (46:20 - 46:32)

The titles of your installations are very intuitive and dreamlike. Do you discover your titles while creating, or do you start with them before the content is created?

[Speaker 1] (46:34 - 47:48)

You know, it kind of coalesces. I keep a little notebook. I carry around this back-breaking pack sack, and it's not that it's a very big notebook, but I carry a lot of stuff in there, and in there is a notebook, so I'll write it down in there.

Sometimes, if I'm working on a show, I actually will have a list of potential titles, and until I find the title, it's like, I feel like I'm floundering a bit, like I really want to hang it on that title, but I, you know, I begin. I don't just wait for the title, but I'm waiting for the right title to come before I feel the piece is finished, and there's so many ways the title can work, you know, but since I'm reading, I usually read a lot. I'm always coming across phrases that strike me, so yeah, I think it's just through keeping a notebook.

I think if I had to sit down right now and write a title, I would be blocked, but if you are, if you can flip through a book where you have titles, you're sort of already in motion.

[Speaker 2] (47:48 - 48:10)

Things are happening, so yeah, because they're, some of them are just, they're just, yeah, they're really, they're really sort of striking in a way. Like I had, oh sorry, I didn't, I was just trying to think of one right now, but I couldn't, I just remember that some of them are just, yeah, they just, they just pop, they just, I don't know.

[Speaker 1] (48:11 - 49:27)

Oh good, well that's when it just clicks and it comes together. Yeah. But I had a show that was just like an online show through, well it was another organization that somebody asked me to take part of, so I'm part of an enterprise that way, and it was a series of shows that Penelope Stewart put together, like an umbrella framework of artists, and it was on Artsy, and I tended to put things up that were digital prints, and the last series I did that I put up there, I would have the imagery, but it wasn't finished until I actually had the title, and because they were digital, I could put the title and make it a very graphic element in the piece, and that totally clicked it, and when somebody says, oh I love the title of this piece, I'm like, yes, thank you, you know, because it wouldn't exist without the title in a way. I probably wouldn't have, I wouldn't have released it, I wouldn't have had it printed if I didn't find the right title, so it's satisfying when you do.

[Speaker 2] (49:29 - 49:39)

Have you ever waited like a really long time to get the title, or is it just like in the final weeks or something that it just sort of shows up?

[Speaker 1] (49:39 - 50:09)

Yeah, I think it varies, you know, hopefully you find it earlier rather than later, because you know, you do frequently have a deadline, it's for a show, and so you know, at a certain point you have to start getting out publicity material, and you want to have a title for that, but yeah, it's fun, I like doing that, and once you're looking for titles, you're in just a state of receptivity, so stuff kind of comes your way.

[Speaker 2] (50:13 - 50:26)

Artistically, you have admitted to being influenced by many contemporary and historical artists. If you had to pick the top five, who would they be, and what gives them those primary spots?

[Speaker 1] (50:29 - 50:35)

I'm glad you didn't say like the top, like the only one, I'm glad you me five chances.

[Speaker 2] (50:35 - 50:40)

Yeah, you couldn't limit it to one, yeah, I knew they had to have a few.

[Speaker 1] (50:41 - 1:02:05)

That would be cruel, cruel, so I put number, well these aren't really sequenced, but I put Van Gogh first, because I feel I love him, I pity his suffering, and I admire his talent, and his dedication, and his intelligence. I mean, sometimes he's just dismissed as, you know, a depressive madman, or something, but he was such a suffering, intelligent individual, and I used to keep, in fact, I think they're still there, but probably at the bottom of the file, his letters to Theo by the bed, and I'd read a few pages at night, just you know, it gives you, if you need courage to go on, you see what he went through, and it's just kind of heartbreaking, and endlessly admirable, and so when I think of Van Gogh, I think of his beautiful paintings, his, you know, the unique style, but I honestly, I want to go back and be his friend, I think I want to cook him dinner, or something. I can't believe how he suffered, it was and how his genius kind of shone through in spite of that, so I would give him, I would say he would be my top spot. 

I mentioned Picasso earlier, and that's because of his ability to just reinvent himself. I think he had such facility that I think sometimes he bored himself, this is my hypothesis, and that he was so good, his hand, he was afraid that his hand would get too slick, he didn't want to become too mannered, so he would move to other disciplines, and whenever he did, I think he kind of made his hand innocent, so he could begin, and he could be like a child again, let's say, and so when you look at, say, the ceramics he did, or the glass, or the prints, he broke all the rules, and because he was such a genius, he reinvented the forms, sculpture, painting, I mean, whatever he did, he reinvented himself, and I find that extremely exciting. I know he was not such a wonderful person in real life, but if I can put in a plug for him, somebody told me recently a story about Picasso being given a choice between, you know, if there was a fire, would he save the painting, or would he save the dog, and I thought, because I thought he was like a bit of a, on a personal level, like an egomaniac, and not so nice, let's say, I thought he'd probably choose the painting, but no, he's without hesitation, apparently he chose the dog, so he immediately would have my estimation, but I thought, but you know what, he's so good, he could do another painting, and I guess he realised that, you know, but he was also like socially committed, and so yeah, I really like Picasso, I've been, you know, influenced by his style, his work for a long time. 

Another artist that has influenced me, and who I admire, is Harold Klunder, he is a Toronto artist, well, well, Ontario artist, and he was a visiting artist at Open Studio many years ago, when I was working there, so you had to be discreet, you couldn't really watch him working, but it's amazing what you can pick up through peripheral vision, so what I learned from him was how every mark mattered to him, and because he was, he had such talent, and the talent was recognised, he was treated very deferentially, let's say, and so he had a printer there, you know, who would do the kind of the work, let's say, like the physical preparation, grind the stone down, coat the plate, do all that kind of thing, and present him with it, and then he had to do his part, which was, he had to make the work, and what you could like, do the drawing, or whatever, and he, you could see him kind of gathering himself, he was kind of fastidious, I thought, and you could see him gathering his psychological preparation, and then he had the ability to act as a kind of conduit for the emotion, and the thought with the emotion, and get it down as a mark, on the stone, on the plate, on the piece of paper, but it was just, that was his one job, not to be distracted, but just to make the mark that had the total authenticity, and integrity, and he did it very well, so, and he treated himself with a lot of respect, and he treated the, he treated every sort of sketch he did, also with a kind of dignity, and respect, by like, putting, dating a lot of stuff, I don't know, I found that very interesting, and very, like, that was a lesson that stayed with me, the importance of every mark you make, like, it's not, like, it all matters, you have to, you can't settle for something, you have to always do your best, and he did that, and he had printers who enabled him, but honestly, he really produced some splendid prints in those days, and when I was, he had asked me to come up to Wells BC to do a workshop in watercolour, which I did, and so we shared a studio, you know, as well as doing the teaching, and he kind of taught me, again, like, that peripheral vision, he kind of taught me how to look at an art book, because I realised I, I'm looking too quickly, and he would open a book, and he'd take his hand, and he kind of, let's say he was looking at a book on Velázquez, so he'd open it up, he'd be looking at a painting, reproduction of a painting, he'd spread it out with his hand, like, as if, if he could, he would be caressing the painting, but he wasn't in Madrid, he was in, he was in Wells BC, so he puts his, he spread his hand over it, and then he'd look, and you're aware that he's not turning the page, he's just looking, and it's as if he's looking at that image as if it's the last thing that he will ever see, he's just totally absorbing the image, the composition, the colour, and that was a lesson for me, like, in, in deep, slow observation, so I, I learned a lot from him, I have a lot of respect for him. 

The other person I want to mention is (William) Kentridge, and, you know, you've got to respect his intelligence and his talent, and he's, I liked his animation vocabulary, I like the fact that he created his own personal style, and that that style wasn't slick, like, I, I do animation, but I don't like it to be slick, I like to see the human hand, and you can certainly see that in his work, you know, he treats it as a metaphor too, like the erasure that happens, but, what would I say, I was in London a couple years ago, and I went to, just lucky that the Royal Academy show was on, he had a solo show, and the work was just spectacular, and he had prints that were maybe, I think, I would think like 16 feet square or something, he's enabled by great talent that he brings into his projects, so he's a very able collaborator, he, he, you know, he works with, he's got a real sensitivity to music, theatre drama, what else, well, animation, painting, I mean, he does so much, and, but what was new for me in this show in London was that he had a great sense of humour, and he, he had these scenes that are, like, shot with, with two cameras, and then placed side by side, so it would, one would show him drawing, and then the other, he's standing there as the critic, and like, he would say, he doesn't know what he's doing, and so he goes on like this, and it's, it's just hilarious, and I didn't realise that he was such a good mimic, and, and I was, I was thrilled that he was like a very funny guy as well, and could make fun of himself, and if your listeners want to see some of these things, Mubi has a whole series of some of these, I think it's called My Life as a Coffee Pot, something like that, and then there's the series, The Norton Lectures, which are also brilliant, and those are, I think they may be from Harvard, I'm not sure, but anyway, they're online, you can find them on YouTube, so all this is very, very accessible, and he is somebody I think we can all learn a lot from, and then the third person I want to mention is, yeah, Yael Brotman, she's a friend of mine, and I get to see her work develop, because we are friends, and I've seen her work change over the years, I think she is a little like the knight on a chessboard, because she can take two steps forward, and then jump sideways, so she's got a very agile brain, I think it comes from studying literature, and I think it gives her an awareness and a sensitivity to poetry, and so she's got a poetic imagination, and she has, she's constantly reinventing herself, she works very hard, and yeah, so I find her a good example nearby, is very encouraging to me, and I guess those are the examples that I thought I would list.

[Speaker 2] (1:02:07 - 1:02:18)

All right, well I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna need the spelling of all of them, oh okay, the ones that, the ones that I don't recognize anyway, I was, I was interested, that was, that was interesting that you mentioned Harold Klender, because I really

[Speaker 1] (1:02:18 - 1:02:30)

love his work too, yeah, it's wonderful work, yeah, he had, I liked his show at, well, I like all his shows, but he had a really great show at Clint Rohnish recently, I hope you got to see it.

[Speaker 2] (1:02:31 - 1:02:32)

No, I didn't.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:33 - 1:02:34)

Oh, where are you based, in Toronto?

[Speaker 2] (1:02:35 - 1:02:44)

With all of the storytelling you have done, with your many solo and group shows, what would you say has been your biggest achievement creatively?

[Speaker 1] (1:02:45 - 1:05:37)

Well, you know, it's hard to say, so I thought I'll just go for my last show, because it was the one in Laval called Tout à la fois, you know, it brought, tout à la fois means like everything at once, and what I was thinking was this nature of, the complicated nature of human beings, like the good, the bad, it's all, it's all in there together, and it was a really hard show for me to put together, I was, it was a large space, and it was just like a square, a cube, and I was kind of daunted by that, and so I had to figure out how to, how to move around the space, how to break it up, and what I was going to do, and because it was so big, like, I don't, I don't know, in my mind, it's like, I think this is probably right, like about 40 feet by 40 feet, that's big, maybe, maybe it was bigger, I don't know, it seemed enormous, and I remember going back for a second visit, and I thought, oh my god, it's as big as I remember, but anyway, I thought, I need to have sculpture in here, so I need to do some sculpture, and I had some things I'd kind of started, but I needed to continue with those, so I was basically making, doing a show where I only had one segment that was work that was already done, and the reason that's important is, like, if my work is very hands-on installation, with lots of different things, I need to be able to spend time focusing on all those things, so it's, it's daunting, actually, and the curator, Jasmine Koliza, was great, well, she was the director of the gallery, but she was great, because she gave me three weeks to install, and she gave me a team of six people, and the curator was Angela Braham, who's now opened up, or now running a new gallery in St. Catharines called RAIN, and she came down as well, and helped with blocking out, and giving advice, and all along, she'd been very helpful, kind of, like, steadying me, you know, like, you can do this, because it was, when it's, you know, I'm used to managing one thing, but not managing multiple things at once, and realizing that when the install comes, there's going to be multiple things to, to fuss over, so that was maybe my biggest challenge, the woman who was, like, the, what would her role have been, she was kind of, like, the person who was in charge of the mechanics of bringing the work in, she, she said to me, well, you know, you have to make a list of all the work, every piece that's coming into the gallery, and all the sizes, and where it's going to go, and I thought, I did say, I don't really work like that, you know.

[Speaker 2] (1:05:38 - 1:05:40)

Oh my, yeah, that's, that's impossible,

[Speaker 1] (1:05:41 - 1:07:48)

that's, like, a whole other week, just writing it all down, and to write it down, you have to thought it through, too, but I hadn't made the work, and I was just, like, oh my god, this is too horrible, but it actually was a very good discipline, because it forced me, it forced me to do that, and, and then I had a list, where I could itemize where things were, because that's the next problem, you unpack everything, and then, oh my, where is this, where is that, because there were, you know, a couple thousand pieces, anyway, I think if I did a big show again, I would, I would be following her example to the extent I could, but, so that was helpful, and the installers they gave me were very sensitive, they all had, you know, different abilities, and then, you know, like, for the dessert, I had this lighting fellow come in, who was so talented, and, and the, the lighting equipment was so, was so fine, that he, you know, he was just so sensitive, he could really shape things, and he was, you know, he could shape the story with what he did, it made the work, was the lighting, actually, and I had my experience at Loop, where if you, if you had a light bulb that was on one painting, you probably didn't have a light on the other, where you, you were juggling, so here it was just a luxurious experience, so it was, it was a great experience, but it was also exhausting, and I figured that it was all the sleep that I lost when I was preparing the show, I felt I needed after it, because I really needed to recover, it was like I was physically beaten down, I thought, I may never have another idea again, but, but it was, it was so rewarding when it all came together, really, really rewarding, and then they had wonderful programming for children there, so that was great to see as well.

[Speaker 2] (1:07:51 - 1:08:06)

It was probably just emotionally and physically exhausting, and when those two come together at the same time, it's, yeah, and the question I was asking you was, in your biggest achievement, creatives, are they the same?

[Speaker 1] (1:08:07 - 1:08:41)

I think so, yeah, because it was, like, all these different things came together in that show, I was excited by the new work that I had produced, and I felt like any one of a number of things could go off into its own direction, so, yeah, I thought it was, like, very physically challenging, but I thought that's what made the achievement of it challenging, or successful, I guess, was that it was so hard to do.

[Speaker 2] (1:08:43 - 1:08:57)

Yeah, working in installation for over three decades, what would you say has been something that you have learned that you didn't expect, and what would you say has been your biggest challenge? So, maybe it's the same kind of question.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:58 - 1:10:45)

It kind of is, because what I was going to say is physical strength, like, I wouldn't have thought when I was a young art student that being physically strong was really a big part of it, especially if anything you do has a sculptural component, but print is, I used to do lithography, and you're moving big stones around, and you need to have, you need to have strength, and so that kind of resilience, you need to have a kind of mental resilience, too, to prepare yourself for all the things that you do that you like, that nobody else likes, to keep going, you know, when that kind of thing happens, which will be, like, most of the time, and so I thought that, you know, like, to have, you know, emotional and physical strength, and I thought, I work half-time in my studio and half-time on the computer, so I think that what I learned working in sculpture is the importance of, again, working with your hands, like, trying it out, just don't think you can do a sketch and translate it.

Anyway, so I think just playing around with things in space, and in making some of the things I've made, I found what I anticipated didn't happen because I didn't factor the gravity factor in, so I would say just testing things out in space, in actual space, you'll get ideas from doing that, and it will, it's pretty important. Things that you think will go up, nope, it's just going to come down, so, you know, work away at it that way, so, yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:10:46 - 1:10:54)

We have reached the end of our questions for the interview, so thank you so much, Libby Haag, for taking the time to be on the show today.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:55 - 1:11:05)

Okay, well, thank you. Thank you. Well, nice chatting with you.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:05 - 1:11:06)

Yeah, nice chatting with you.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:07 - 1:11:09)

And stay cool.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:10 - 1:11:28)

Yes, you too. Thank you, bye. Bye.

Join me next time as I go down another rabbit hole with another creative professional on their insights, their inspirations, and their ingenuity.