Edifice: Exploring Art, Archives, and Architecture puts Vancouver's old buildings in a new light

As part of <em>Edifice: Exploring Art, Archives, and Architecture</em>, Graham Winter tries to show the beauty of a familiar skyline

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      A delicate pinkish-gold tints the very top of the Marine Building and is reiterated on a mountain peak far beyond. In Graham Winter’s photo-realist painting of one of Vancouver’s most iconic structures, day is breaking across the city, a bank of fog sits over Burrard Inlet, and a few windows shine a faint yellow into the stillness. Carefully rendered details of the building’s beautiful terra cotta decoration, outlining each of its dramatic setbacks, remind us of what’s left of our city’s architectural heritage. They also speak to the way Winter has chosen to honour the early to mid-20th-century buildings that he grew up with.

      “I’ve been staring at these buildings since I was a kid,” Winter says, sitting in his Mount Pleasant studio and speaking of the historic structures he has spent the last couple of years scouting, photographing, and then painting in oil on canvas. “I could see the downtown skyline from Kensington Park, where we used to play,” he recalls. “The BC Hydro building, the Vancouver Block, the Hotel Vancouver.”

      These are the subjects of three of the 10 works that make up Edifice: Exploring Art, Archives and Architecture, Winter’s new show at the City of Vancouver Archives Gallery. (It runs until August 26 and is complemented by a panel discussion, this Wednesday evening [June 9], and a walking tour on June 12. For info go to the Heritage Vancouver , Web site). Others range from the Rogers Building at 470 Granville Street, built in 1911-12, to the 1929-31 Royal Bank Building at 675 West Hastings Street to the Guinness Tower (1055 West Hastings Street), designed by Charles Paine and constructed in 1967-69. Winter recalls his excitement, as a child, when he first encountered the Guinness Tower’s modernist style.

      From Gothic-looking gargoyles, neoclassical cornices, and art deco ornamentation to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe–style faí§ades of steel and glass, the architectural character and details of these “edifices” contribute to the sense of our city’s history, recent and long-past. Winter casts many of the buildings he portrays in an enchanted light, romanticizing them as he awakens us to their charms. Crows, pigeons, and seagulls—the ubiquitous, unloved birds of our urban everyday—also take on a romantic quality in these works. “It’s a conscious decision to put birds in most of these paintings,” he says. They give a sense of scale, he explains, and emphasize Vancouver’s place in the natural world.

      A self-taught artist who has been obsessed with drawing and painting the built environment since childhood, Winter depicts buildings that many of us walk past every day without looking at twice—certainly without looking up at. His images, which include a night view of the faí§ade of the MacMillan Bloedel Building and a daytime detail of what he calls “the spine” of the Electra, formerly the BC Hydro Building, are not simply about nostalgia for a picturesque past. They also lay claim to the modernism that marked Vancouver’s emergence into a mature sense of itself in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Designed by the Arthur Erickson–Geoff Massey partnership and built in 1968-69, the MacBlo edifice declares its West Coast setting in its allusions to once-massive old-growth forests. “It really feels like a building that belongs here,” Winter observes, “as opposed to the European influences of the older buildings.”

      An edifice decidedly not portrayed in this series is the one that houses the City of Vancouver Archives. Located in Vanier Park, southeast of the Museum of Vancouver, it’s a long, low, raw concrete structure built into a grassy berm. Yes, it respects its park and seaside setting. No, it doesn’t obstruct the view. Still, it has all the architectural presence of a World War II bunker. You have to be motivated to search it out, something that Winter’s highly accessible show in the archives’ recently refurbished gallery should redress.

      City archivist Leslie Mobbs talks enthusiastically about the new exhibition program he is overseeing in his facility. He’s looking, he tells the Straight by phone from his office, for art that complements the archives collections, which essentially record Vancouver’s history. “We thought that we would try and program the space so that it was more active or dynamic,” he says, “not strictly just about archives but about documentation and a way of seeing—of looking at the city.”

      In presenting Edifice, Mobbs and his staff have collaborated with Miriam Blume, who produced the show, and Heritage Vancouver. The Archives Gallery, until now, has been an underutilized space, Mobbs admits. With shows like Edifice, he hopes to draw a wider audience to the place and to animate the archives’ collections.

      As for Winter, he’s happy if his work inspires people to regard their urban environment with greater appreciation. He recently showed his paintings to a client who, on seeing them, burst into tears. “ ”˜I’ve been looking at these buildings for years and most of them I think, “Who the hell built that?” ’ ” he recounts her saying. “ ”˜And you’ve managed to make them beautiful.’ ” Then he adds, “These buildings are beautiful. You have to be a little bit patient and study them. Take a look.” He smiles, then repeats, “Take a look.”

      Comments