Nomad Land: An Interview with Michelle Deanne Schultz
Zachary Ayotte, Christina Battle
If you’ve worked in the arts sector in Alberta over the last ten years, you’ve probably come to know the name Michelle Deanne Schultz—through her work as the director of dc3 Art Projects and Bookshop, as the former executive director of Latitude 53, or, most recently, as an independent arts consultant and strategist. Those experiences helped make Schultz a mainstay of Alberta’s contemporary art scene. But some of the most essential work she does—work we get only a glimpse of through her Instagram account, where she occasionally posts an image of a packed cargo van, or of her dog, Belle, tucked into the backseat of her car—involves getting behind the wheel and driving.
In addition to the many professional hats she already wears, Schultz is also a writer and researcher. Each year, she spends countless hours learning about the artists who are making work in Alberta. And though we live in a digital age, where seemingly everything is available at the tap of a screen, she typically takes a more traditional approach: getting in her car and meeting artists where they work. In some cases that means driving across town; in others, it means driving across the province.
Schultz’s primary goal is to support artists as they navigate professional practice. The time she spends getting to know them—as well as curators and institutions across the region—helps her do that job well. It has also developed into a project of its own: Schultz hopes to turn all of her research and road tripping into a book about Prairie artists.
Given COI’s theme this season—thinking about Prairie identity—we thought Schultz would be the perfect person to sit down with for one of our kitchen table chats. We talked to her about her work and about the state of the arts in Alberta today.
We’d like to disclose and to clarify that, while both the COI publication and Schultz’s research on Prairie artists have been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, this interview is not related to the Alberta Focus Initiative or the work that Schultz is currently doing as Arts Liaison Consultant for the Canada Council.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Christina Battle (CB): One of the things that we were interested in talking with you about is how you came to start visiting all of these different communities and art galleries? You once mentioned that it’s not easy to travel between places in Alberta—they’re quite distant, and they are distinct communities. So what was it that got you started on travelling around Alberta visiting artists?
Michelle Deanne Schultz (MDS): When I was reflecting on where this started, I went all the way back to my childhood, because I grew up in the Prairies. The first half of my childhood was in southern Manitoba, and then my immediate family moved to Alberta. As a kid, every year, twice a year, we would get in the minivan and drive 15 hours back to Manitoba to go see the grandparents and aunts and uncles for Christmas and summer holidays. So much of my childhood feels like it was spent staring out the window watching the Prairie landscape pass by. It feels like it’s a part of me.
I’m also somebody that needs to experience things in person. My formative years in the art world were in London and Los Angeles. I moved to London to go to grad school, worked there for a few years, and then moved to LA to run a gallery there. Even in my undergrad at the U of A—I studied art history—I think there was one course on Canadian art history. So when I moved back to Canada in 2015 I realized that my knowledge of what was going on in Canadian art was abysmal. I needed to educate myself. So really, the option for me was to get in the car and drive. I started driving around and just trying to understand what was happening in Canada, mostly in the Prairies.
When I landed back here, I took the role of director of dc3 Art Projects, a contemporary commercial gallery in Edmonton. We were working with a lot of artists in Saskatchewan, like Ruth Cuthand and Amalie Atkins who both make large-scale installations, and the logistics of transporting art on the Prairies is very complicated. So, for one of Ruth’s shows I rented a U-haul in Edmonton, drove to Saskatoon, picked up Ruth’s entire installation from Wanuskewin, where she was making the work, and drove it back to Edmonton, because that was the only way to get it here on time. So driving around was a necessity sometimes, as well. That’s really how I started visiting artists and building all of those networks.
CB: It’s amazing—even though I sense that your feeling at the time was: Oh, I need to know more, I don’t know that, even if you had stayed in Canada, you’d have gotten that knowledge. There’s very little conversation about contemporary artists who practice outside of the centre of the country happening in schools in Canada. So it’s almost like you created a model, and shared knowledge that never would have been known, whether in 2015 or now. As people in the Prairies, we recognize the geographical and cultural difference that limits how things travel, how information travels. It’s very interesting that that was your impetus, to be like: I’m just gonna drive around.
MDS: This is how I met a lot of people at institutions back then—I would just email them and be like: I’m showing up. I need to see your space. I want to see what you’re doing. I want to get an understanding of your institution. I was doing a lot of that.
CB: Do you find that the way technology has changed impacts the way you engage with artists or get to know their work? I’m thinking about major shifts, like social media.
MDS: I use social media for research, but I still want to see things in person, whether it’s an artist, an exhibition, or a space. I get a lot from being in a physical space. I always want to visit institutions to get a sense of the scale of what they’re doing and the feeling of their space, because I think a lot of that is lost online. I think with artworks, too, there are so many things that don’t translate well online that I feel like I need to experience. Even through the pandemic, my travels continued. While we were all locked down here in Alberta, Saskatchewan was still fairly open. When I would have that urge to get my gallery fix, I would put my dog, Belle, in the car, and we would drive five hours to the Remai Modern because they were still open, and I could still experience art. So that became an increasingly important place for me during those years.
Zachary Ayotte (ZA): It’s interesting—you go to visit spaces and you go to visit artists, but they don’t always overlap. There are lots of artists who don’t exhibit in spaces regularly. I’m curious how you engage with artists that aren’t accessible in the most obvious ways? How do you connect with them?
MDS: Logistically, I just email them.
ZA: But how do you find them in the first place? One of the things that we keep talking about in COI is how many artists—at least in Edmonton, but maybe in the province—are making stuff but maybe aren’t exhibiting very often, and are, as a result, a little bit siloed from the broader art world or art community. But you seem to have connections to a lot of people that maybe don’t have those relationships to galleries.
MDS: Around the time I was leaving my role at Latitude 53, I had a Canada Council research grant to research artists in the Prairies, and I also had some funding from the Edmonton Arts Council to interview local artists. The pitch for the Canada Council was basically: I want to spend six months driving around the Prairies interviewing artists to understand what is going on. I didn’t necessarily know what I was going to do with these interviews, but I felt like there was a gap in curatorial research happening in the Prairies that I really wanted to explore. So I started that research by engaging with six curators that were working across the Prairies that had areas of expertise outside of my own: Becca Taylor who at the time was at Ociciwan here in Edmonton; Tak Pham, who had just moved to the IKG in Calgary, but had been in Regina at The Mackenzie before that; Rose Bouthillier, who was in Saskatoon at The Remai for many years, but had just moved out to Newfoundland; Luther Konadu who was at Plug In ICA and in the process of developing C’cap in Winnipeg; Wayne Baerwaldt, who has been travelling around the Prairies for decades; and Naomi Potter at The Esker in Calgary. So I had initial conversations with all of these folks, and I was like: Who are you looking at? Who’s of interest to you? And they came back with huge lists of artists for me, which was amazing and so generous, and really broke open who I was looking at. Now, I just keep a running list of artists; it’s got 200-plus names and I’m constantly adding to it. When a new artist comes up on my radar, I jot it down, make a note of it. Because people know I’m doing this work, they will suggest people for me, people that I should be talking to. So I’ve been able to break out—it’s not just artists that are showing in institutions. When I started doing this research I was able to interview 35 artists for this project. Some I had met before; some I had never met. Everyone was really welcoming, and with each one of those visits comes more suggestions. So the project itself really expanded and continues to expand my network.
ZA: You’re somebody who wears many different hats. What hat you see yourself wearing when you’re engaging in work like that.
MDS: That’s a great question. At the moment, I see myself primarily as a researcher. Fundamentally, I have a complicated relationship with the curator hat. I don’t feel like I curate in the way that people expect one to curate. I don’t work in an institution; I’m not putting on exhibitions; I’m not doing the “capital C” Curator work. If you’re reaching out as a curator, there’s an expectation, or hope, of an exhibition or public presentation. Whereas when you’re meeting an artist as a researcher, there’s not necessarily that same expectation of a particular outcome. One of the things I think about a lot in the work that I do comes from one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. He talks about connectors—people who have one foot in many different worlds who are able to bring all of those worlds together. And really, that’s how I view the work that I do. I’ve got a toe in public art, one in artist-run centres, a bit in the commercial world. I’m in the Prairies but I’m also constantly traveling. I go to Art Toronto; I was just in Mexico City; I will be going to Venice in the spring. I think it’s important to understand what is going on in the larger art world in order to be able to bring all of those pieces together.
CB: It’s interesting, because artists are the threads across all of those different worlds. They’re the thread that connects everything through your research.
MDS: My research is always grounded in the artists; working with artists is what I love doing. That’s what I really took away from working in commercial galleries, because commercial galleries build relationships with artists over long periods of time. You’re representing an artist over years, sometimes decades, and over many, many projects. You’re building upon the work that you’re doing. When you’re working with an institution or on independent exhibitions, it’s a shorter-term engagement; you may not work with that artist again, or you may not be able to work with them for another five years. I missed building relationships with artists over time when I was working in non-profits, and it’s something I’ve been able to return to recently.
Everything I do is always grounded in the artists. I’m not necessarily trying to impose my ideas or readings on the work, or contextualize it the way an exhibition curator might. I think that’s amazing work; I think that’s really necessary work, but I’m more interested in supporting the work of the artist at the studio level.
ZA: Is that something that’s evolved for you—not your love for the artist, but the way that you’re thinking about your role?
MDS: Yes, definitely. I used to think of myself as more of a curator but I am moving further and further away from that. Right now, I’m still trying to figure out how to define my role, and the elevator pitch for what I’m doing. People ask all the time: What do you do? And I struggle to give myself any sort of title. I wear so many different hats depending on the project I’m working on. When I’m driving around the Prairies doing studio visits, I wear the researcher hat, but with other projects, I’ve used the term ‘strategist’ or ‘consultant.’
ZA: I’ve never heard you use the word ‘researcher’ before to describe your work, but it makes total sense to me, and I think it’s a really fascinating part of the process, and something that I had never thought of when I think about the relationship between artists and exhibitions, or artists and curators, or artists and the public. And I wonder, as you’re gathering all this information, how do you think about disseminating it into the world?
CB: Yeah, is there a bigger project at the heart of this research?
MDS: There is. One day I hope it will become a book; that is the goal. Someone recently described it to me as my life’s work, which was a nice way to think of it (and takes some of the pressure off!). I applied for funding a number of times, and didn’t receive it, so I just had to set the book aside for a little while, until I could find time and space. So I have to say, I really appreciated this invitation to speak, because it forced me to go back and look over some of my research and really motivate me again. I was like: Okay, I think it’s time to start thinking about this again; even if I can’t focus on it full-time, I can think about what the next step is. I’m continuing to build up this body of knowledge, but I want it to be shared and not live only with me. So I’ve certainly thought about what that might look like in shorter steps in the meantime, in order to kind of disseminate some of this work. But in the long term, I want to create something that’s lasting. And I do feel a sense of urgency. On my list of artists I wanted to interview were Alex Janvier and Aganetha Dyck, and I’m now never going to have that chance.
CB: As you were describing how you approach your role, and that struggle that you have with the curatorial hat, I was thinking to myself: I feel like this is also how I think about the role of curators. It’s a definition that I also struggle with, and consider and reconsider all the time. But that commitment to artists is, to me, what curators should be doing as a primary role, in the way that you’re talking about it—across geographies, but also across time, repeated conversations, and repeated opportunities to work together. I had never considered the commercial gallery in the way that you have framed it. That turned something on in my brain. It really is about relationship building, and to me, that’s what curating is as well. It seems like you’re situating your book in a more relational, conversational realm, as opposed to, say, an academic text or an art history book. It made me think about how artists are often written about from the frame of art history, especially those from certain geographies.
MDS: Actually, last summer, I was strongly considering pursuing a PhD just to give myself the time and space to write this book. I talked to friends in academia who said: Don’t do it.
Folks that I know and trust were like: I don’t think the PhD route makes sense. You’re going to have to do so much more work than the actual work that you want to do. There are other routes. So I’ve been thinking a little bit more about that. But I also think ‘the book’ is a hard pitch right now in this digital world we’re living in. There are a lot of questions around Why a book?—which was feedback I received from those grant applications. I still really strongly believe in the power of having books. I love those big, glossy survey books that are produced by publishers like Thames & Hudson or Phaidon, and I’ve used them as resources over the years. They capture a time and a place. It’s part of why I was so set on reinvigorating the publishing program when I was at Latitude 53—those little Garage editions and exhibitions catalogs—because I think especially in the Prairies, sometimes it’s the only way to get artists’ information outside of the region. You have to have something physical to put in the mail—you’re not going to get the curator from Toronto out to the gallery, but you can send them a catalog to introduce them to the work.
CB: Do you see an increased desire for more connection from artists, curators, whomever, in the arts here in the Prairies? Do you sense that artists in various areas want to get to know more about artists in other parts of the Prairies, or is it still quite isolating or isolated?
MDS: I think more than anything I’ve seen a shift in institutions, galleries, writers, curators in places like Toronto and Montreal wanting to know more about the Prairies. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a shift in people in the Prairies wanting to connect to one another, but I have seen people from the eastern side of the country show more of an interest in what’s happening here.
ZA: Why do you think that is? What’s keeping us from connecting with each other?
MDS: I’m not sure, to be honest. I mean, one of the very real barriers we’re dealing with is geographic distance. Recently I’ve been hearing more from artists about the barriers to showing across the Prairies. It seems like there is some kind of institutional ego getting in the way. There is this desire to be the first place, or the only place, to show this artist or this exhibition, and once it’s been shown at one small town on the Prairies, then it can’t be shown in any other space, even though it’s a completely different audience. I believe that institutions need to be doing more to foster those connections, building networks that would tour an exhibition from, let’s say, Winnipeg to Brandon to Regina to Swift Current to Grande Prairie. As the exhibitions moved, the artists would move, and that is really what will enable artists to connect with audiences and with each other. And from a resource point of view, as costs continue to rise while funding remains stagnant or decreases, I just think there’s something to be thought about in terms of creating networks that are working together. What could happen if institutions try to work together and circulate shows regularly so that maybe you’re only curating one or two exhibitions a year, but your exhibitions get out into the world and build audiences beyond your walls. And at the same time, you’re bringing in other institutions’ exhibitions, and building bridges to new artists and ideas.
ZA: Do you think that this is where the ego comes into play, where people are like: Why would I show this if it’s already being shown somewhere else?
MDS: I said ego, but I’m not sure ego is the right word. There is this idea of wanting to be the first person to show something, a prestige around it. I also think that it’s scarcity. I also think that most institutions are just so focused on the day-to-day of managing what’s around them that there isn’t time or space to step back and think about a bigger strategy, a bigger picture.
CB: In a strange way, I think that sense of scarcity also comes from access to funding. My artistic background comes out of experimental cinema, and a strategy there, especially in the US, is that you go on tour with your work, you call people up and you organize screenings as you go. It comes out of scarcity, and it comes from the reality of having no other real way to support getting your work out there. Whereas here, because we have this sense of security from funding—which we know is not so secure all the time, and is constantly still a struggle and still scarce—there’s a sense that we have to do something unique that no one else is doing in order to get the funding. Because there’s a sense that if you do something again, or you show an artist again, it’s gonna look bad in the grant. I don’t think that’s actually true, but I think there is that sense that we need to justify the money, even at the cost of not being able to afford to even use that money. It’s almost like the privilege of the system is working against everybody.
Photographs courtesy of Michelle Deanne Schultz
ZA: I’m glad that we have meandered in this direction, because I think one of the things I’m really interested in talking to you about has to do with money and thinking about commercial spaces versus non-commercial spaces. You are one of the people I know in this province that has experience in both, and I know that you think about money in relation to art a fair bit. Could you talk a bit about what your experience is in thinking about how artists make a living, and how your perspective has changed, having worked in different worlds?
MDS: Yeah, money often feels like such a taboo topic, but I think that we need to talk about it, because if you’re not talking about it and it’s all cloak and dagger, then the people who have the information are the ones that hold the power and control. And I think we really need to open up those conversations and be transparent about them. I want artists to make a living off of their art. I want to live in a society that values art and artists and is willing to pay them for that time and energy. I do think that for a lot of artists, financial success can also serve as an indicator of value, of being appreciated. This relates to Cal Newport’s idea of money as a neutral indicator of value—what are people willing to pay you for? I talk to a lot of artists about pricing, because no one is talking openly about how to price work, and the information students are getting in institutions and schools is not very helpful. And so much of that information is not widely accessible. Every time I’m at an exhibition or I get an email or anything that has prices on it, I keep that information. I have a whole database of pricing information that I keep on hand to help artists price their work. That way I can give them examples based on the stage of their career. You know, here is an artist in Toronto at a similar stage of their career, making a similar work. This is what their work is priced at in a commercial gallery— something like that. I think about the value of artwork in that way and try to be more transparent about it.
There are all sorts of ways to make a living as an artist, and if I am strategizing with an artist we talk about how to build a plan that works for them, but I increasingly think that diversification is important. As we’ve seen with the pandemic, cultural and generational shifts, changing job markets, and public funding priority shifts: no income stream is 100% reliable.
There’s been an interesting relationship in this province between commercial and non-commercial spaces. I found, working in commercial spaces, that the rampant art auction model in non-profit spaces was doing a lot of harm to artists wanting to sell their work and develop a sustainable market. Instead of buying work directly from artists or galleries, people would just wait for the next auction to ‘get a deal.’ What was important to me, running a non-profit, was to introduce a model to mitigate that harm by implementing responsible minimum bids and sharing the proceeds with artists.
The other place my brain is going is around commercial galleries and how they’ve changed how artists make a living. Commercial galleries can be thought of as a place where art goes to become a product, where art is bought to be on the market. But historically, if you look at commercial galleries in the 1960s, they are where the art world was congregating, the kinds of relationships that gallerists were building with artists were about sustaining a career–they were often paying artists’ rent, giving them a stipend to live off of, in the same way that patrons used to support that work. And I think that a lot of commercial galleries have certainly veered off that course in recent years.
CB: You mean in terms of maintaining that type of relationship with artists?
MDS: Yeah—and there are all sorts of different kinds of commercial galleries. There are the ones that just treat art as a commodity to buy and sell, and then there are the ones that are really dedicated to building up artists’ careers. And what we lack in the Prairies right now are contemporary commercial galleries. We’ve watched almost all the galleries on 124th Street in Edmonton disappear. There are a couple of galleries in Calgary—Norberg Hall in particular is doing really excellent work for their artists. I don’t think there’s any contemporary spaces in Winnipeg since Lisa Kehler Art + Projects closed. The commercial gallery trajectory is not the pathway for every artist, but it is an important part of the ecosystem. They are often the first place of support for some artists. I still go to Art Toronto every year, because that’s where I see the newest work coming out of artists’ studios from across the country. The Prairies don’t have a robust presence in a place like that—where the National Gallery is on the floor buying work and showcasing what they’re buying in their own booth, and curators from institutions across the country are there doing research, getting to know the works, developing relationships. And when our artists are not there, they are missing out on these opportunities.
CB: Earlier, you were talking about noticing people in Toronto and Montreal paying more attention to what’s going on in the Prairies. Do you sense that artists here have changed over the years as well? Do you notice people wanting to be connected with folks in, say, Toronto, and show outside of this region?
MDS: There certainly are artists that want to build those connections. But I also think a lot of artists aren’t even aware that it’s a possibility. They’re not seeing it as a thing that they can do. I think it was a huge loss when Canada lost the RBC Painting Prize, because quite often for young artists—like Emmanuel Osahor or Ally McIntyre or Wei Li—it was their first exposure to a possibility like that. And they would travel, and they would see the show, and connect to artists across the country and see what was happening outside of the community.
CB: They might take their own practices seriously in ways they never had before too, right? Recognizing that there is this world that they could be a part of. Through COI, we’ve been trying to get a handle on what ‘the Prairies‘ is, or how it works, or why it is we even consider it a whole, and I keep thinking about how a lot of it comes down to a lack—of spaces, of commercial spaces, of exhibition spaces, of connections. I don’t want that to sound super negative, because I don’t mean it in that way. I think before this conversation, I had been putting more of the blame on people outside the region for not seeing what’s going on here, because there are so many amazing things that go on here, but now you’re pointing to this bigger issue of the lack of opportunity that exists here.
MDS: I think we’re really isolated: isolated from each other, from other centres, and from the larger art world. I think the struggle is getting over that isolation. I recently read the interview that you did with Preston Pavlis. Bradley Ertaskiran, his gallery, found his work at the BMO 1st Art Prize, which no longer exists but was such an incredible opportunity for an artist to show their work in a place like Toronto. Even though Preston was the only student from Alberta, it was still a significant moment. That one opportunity led him toward a sustainable career.
CB: For many artists the step that gets them to the next level is missing, but they almost don’t know it’s missing. But you’ve recognized that absence. Do you attribute that to having gone away and seen the way that things operate in LA and London—and maybe other travels as well—and then realizing what was needed here?
MDS: For myself, yes. Seeing the way that larger ecosystems work was really useful. I am really interested in systems and the different ways that we connect things together. My mind kind of works like those conspiracy walls you see in detective movies that use string to connect ideas. At some point, I realized that there were few strings connected to the Prairies, even fewer in Edmonton; it was this isolated bubble. So I think a lot of what I was trying to do was to make those connections.
CB: Do you see particular strengths in artists, works, or communities that are a product of this region?
MDS: Yeah. I think that for myself, I would have never been able to do this kind of work had I continued to live in Los Angeles or London, or would have moved to Toronto. Those cities demand so much of your time and attention that you don’t have any for yourself. Having space to step back to see the bigger picture around you is how I’ve gotten to where I am. And that’s what I see as the strengths of artists here, is having time and space. It’s one of the biggest benefits of being on the Prairies, because you aren’t being pulled in all directions where there’s an opening every single night, there’s always something to be doing, something to take you out of your studio. But here, particularly when we have long, cold winters, it gives you time and space, that mental space. I think there is a benefit to not being in the centre of it all. Here you can really strengthen your own voice without everybody else in your ears.
But on the other hand, if you’re in your studio making work, that’s great, but what happens to that work? There needs to be a balance, a time when you step out of the studio and connect with others.
CB: I’m always blown away by how many artists here are working in their studios and making things in spite of the fact that they may never show it, because there aren’t many opportunities to show here. But connecting and seeing other artist’s work and learning from other artist’s work and being in conversation with it, only fulfills your practice and strengthens your own work. So for artists who are isolated by the geography of the region, how do you overcome that, not just the isolation, but the kind of thinking that comes along with it?
ZA: There’s a quote from Natasha Lyonne about two kinds of talent: the kind that has to do with your abilities, and the kind that is about knowing what to do with your abilities. I think a handful of people who have an artistic practice know how to make something and know how to turn their work into something more than a thing they do on weekends. But I don’t think many people do, and I don’t think it’s something that is taught or communicated, definitely not in art school. But it is something that you do, right? I think you have a specific sort of expertise in that area. And I wonder what you think about that sort of skill, how artists make that jump?
MDS: I think that sometimes it’s just hard for artists to imagine what that might look like for them. I’ve done a lot of artist mentorship, working with artists one-on-one, and one of the first things I often ask is: Can you identify a couple of artists whose career paths you admire? Think of somebody 10, 15, 20 years ahead of you. Who’s gotten to the place where you want to go? Let’s look at where they are showing, what kind of shows they are having, what kind of awards they are receiving. I ask: What is it that’s important to you? What does success mean for you? Where do you want to position yourself and your work within this larger art world? Then we look back at other artist’s CV, at their trajectory, and try to understand the different steps an artist has taken to build a career.
I want artists to make a living off of their art. I want to live in a society that values art and artists and is willing to pay them for that time and energy. I do think that for a lot of artists, financial success can also serve as an indicator of value, of being appreciated.
ZA: We talked about gaps and what’s missing, and I’m wondering, given your research and your expertise, what would you like to see? Is it about building up the community here, or is it about creating a pathway for artists that live here to markets elsewhere?
MDS: I think we need both. What I want to see here is more infrastructure for artists that allows them to build up sustainable livelihoods for themselves. But building infrastructure takes time; in the meantime, we need pathways elsewhere so that we don’t lose artists, so we don’t lose artistic production and artistic work. If you’re an artist and at a certain point you can’t sustain that anymore, you’re going back to work and taking a full-time job. You risk leaving your practice behind.
ZA: It’s a classic Edmonton thing.
MDS: We lose those artists. Sometimes they come back to it. Sometimes they’ll start making work again later on. I want to build things up so that doesn’t happen. And so, I think we need both: we need long-term infrastructure and short-term connections.
ZA: How do those connections happen? You’ve detailed some of your own processes, but you can’t do it on your own. How do things change in the short term?
MDS: Yeah, I think a lot about this. I do know that with the work that I do, I don’t have a lot of capacity for growth. As an individual working in a community, I am almost maxed out, and I can only do so much for so many artists, and it doesn’t feel like enough. I do think a lot about how something can be built to help scale. I probably think about it too much but I don’t know the answer.
ZA: I find scale is the hardest thing to achieve. Many great ideas fall apart once you try and scale them. I think it’s the hardest thing when it comes to systemic growth.
MDS: I think it’s both; I think part of it is a mindset more than anything. It’s shifting the way that we’re thinking about artists. I tend to use the word ‘career,‘ and not everybody loves that word. But what I’m really asking is: What future can you imagine for yourself as an artist? Those are the conversations I’m interested in having. It really is about shifting mindsets as well as shifting the very real opportunities.
ZA: Like seeing Preston (Pavlis) getting out there and realizing how this one step can then lead to part of a broader career.
MDS: Yeah, those things reverberate. Other students at MacEwan University can look and say: He did it; I can do this. Both Marigold Santos and Brenda Draney are such North Stars for people in Alberta. Having a few people out there in the world really helps build the realm of possibilities.
CB: You also mentioned infrastructure, and I’m interested to hear more of your thoughts on that. Maybe we can even hone in on Edmonton as a tangible example; thinking about the way that artistic practice goes in the city, what kind of infrastructural additions do you see as helping to get to where you’re wanting arts in the region to go? I was talking with Michelle Campos Castillo recently about the arts and the city in general and she used this term ‘slump,’ and it’s kind of been scratching at the back of my brain ever since. How do we get out of that slump? What’s the smallest first step?
MDS: Yeah, I think those are some of the most interesting moments, really, when you see recessions, slumps, whatever it is—that’s the opportunity you have to build something new. So I like to think of it as an opportunity. In Edmonton, we need space. We need a new space.
CB: It’s so interesting to think that a strength in this region is that we have so much space, but what we actually need is space. I love that. It’s such a strange conundrum.
ZA: It’s that intentional space, right? Many people’s studios are in their garages or their basements; they’re spaces that have been fashioned into studio space. And it does seem to be true about the arts broadly here—we are making it work, right? We’re changing the shape of the sector to fit the box that we’re putting it in, not the reverse, not building a box to house the thing.
CB: Edmonton artists are good at doing what they need to when they don’t have anything else. Everyone can figure it out, do it on their own, and excel at it.
MDS: That entrepreneurial drive that exists in this province actually can be a hindrance.
ZA: Especially because it’s very hard to reach the tipping point, to use another Malcolm Gladwell expression. I think that we’re really good at starting spaces, but keeping them running for more than five years is often tough. And it becomes a question of: How do you get over that hump?
Is there anything you think is not working here?
MDS: I think it’s the scarcity mindset that’s not working, this lack of working together to build something, this sort of isolation in terms of need is really hindering growth.
CB: As we’re talking about this, I realize that we keep coming back to talking about Edmonton specifically and Alberta slightly more broadly. One of the things that I think Zach and I struggle with is that we kept using this term ‘Prairies’ to talk about COI, and then we were realizing: Oh, actually, maybe we’re just talking about Alberta, or: Maybe we’re just talking about Edmonton. As you’re talking about a scarcity mindset, I’m thinking about boom and bust economies and how—not that that doesn’t exist in other regions and certainly across the Prairies—but it is pretty uniquely a part of the Albertan experience and history. Do you see a difference between artists working in Alberta versus other Prairie provinces?
MDS: I do, and this is something that really surprised me when I first started that research project, because one of the things I became really interested in that I was aware was happening in Alberta was artists doing things outside of city centres. Some of the people I talked to were Jude Griebel about The Museum Fear and Wonder that he and his brother Brendan are building; Adrian Stimson and what he’s doing out in Siksika; talking to Miruna Dragan and Jason de Haan about what they’re doing at Badlands Art Department; all the work that Peter von Tiesenhausen and Maggie Tiesenhausen have been doing up in Demmitt with Common Opulence and Doris Space for Art; and Sean Morel at u’s in Diamond Valley. There were all of these spaces popping up that I was so interested in, and my hypothesis was, these have to be happening across the prairies. But as I started traveling to Saskatchewan and Manitoba, I was not seeing that same thing. I started to ask myself: Okay, why is this? And at one point I was forced to recognize that numbers have something to do with it. Having grown up in the Prairies, I think of it all as one region, but then realizing that Edmonton is larger than all of Saskatchewan or all of Manitoba population-wise, there are actually vast differences that I don’t always clock. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, everybody is concentrated in Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg for the most part. But in Alberta, we are so spread out—it would take over nine hours to drive from Lethbridge to Grande Prairie and we don’t have regional trains. Because of that population distribution, things are being pulled in many directions. It also has to do with this idea of entrepreneurship and going out and doing it on your own. There are just different ways of thinking about things in Alberta, I think. I do see more community-building in places like Winnipeg, for example, or in Saskatoon. Maybe because it’s smaller, you have to work in community. It’s still something that I am trying to analyze, I guess, to understand the bigger picture.
CB: Without even totally knowing why, it makes so much sense to me. And I think this is kind of at the core of what we had been thinking. We kept saying ‘Prairies,’ and then we were like: Wait a second, and the more that we kind of struggle with it, the more I kind of feel like, actually, I think maybe we’re more interested in thinking more about Alberta. Hahaha!
ZA: And that might even be too broad, right? Hahaha! At least for the time being.
CB: It might even be, yeah. And it’s not just because this is where we’re from and what we know. I truly think there is something so uniquely interesting about what goes on here. You know, the term ‘entrepreneurship’ has come up a lot, as well as ‘outsider.’ I mean, it’s hard to not think about it all along with separatist politics too, because you can kind of see how we are very different here. Now, after this conversation, I’m starting to think more about boom and bust as well, because I think that the desire for people to be entrepreneurs comes out of that.
ZA: I agree.
CB: And I think it always has. And then when you apply that to thinking about how artists approach their practices or their careers, it also makes more sense to me that they just, like, hunker down in their converted garage. Or I loved how you phrased it, Zach, fashion their garage into a space and do the thing that works for them and not necessarily worry about: How do I get out of it—the garage? Even though that would also be very entrepreneurial.
ZA: But I wonder if it trains the public to not get too attached to a space, for example, and if that’s related to why people don’t show up at fundraisers or at exhibitions.
CB: Yeah, I think my theory about why people don’t go to exhibitions is that they’re spending so much of their extra time in their studios, and you kind of can’t do both, right? Because you’re hustling constantly but then it’s like, if everyone’s in their studio doing this work but they’re not showing it . . .Maybe they’re selling it. I don’t really know. Or maybe it’s just the desire to do it and to occupy your time with it. I don’t know. What motivates artists to keep working as artists?
MDS: I mean, I think for some artists, making the work is enough, right? They don’t want to show it. I have nothing but respect for that. But the work that I’m doing is with the artists who do want to. Recognizing that that’s not every artist’s path or desire, but for the ones that want that, I’m trying to build those bridges.
CB: I don’t want to apply the same brush to everyone, but, even if you think about artistic training and how you’re taught to think about being an artist, especially in post-secondary institutions, showing your work is always a goal. And I do think that a large number of artists also have that goal. But when you don’t have the opportunity, you talk yourself out of it, because you still want to make things. But, if it’s more energy and work to figure out how to show it, you’re just going to give up on that and spend your time making the things. I think, in most arts classrooms, the students are there because they want to show their work; the audience isn’t necessarily the same for all of them, but they want to share something that they’re talking about or thinking about with others. I think this is why Instagram has such a strong artistic bent to it, too, right? That desire to share what you’re making with others. I do think being able to see a strategy or a potential or a way to approach these things is the missing piece.
MDS: I agree. Or if the energy or work to show it results in rejection too many times, it’s sometimes self-preservation to stop pursuing that.
Photographs courtesy of Michelle Deanne Schultz.
ZA: I have two last questions: We started by talking about art history and how that’s what you studied and how you found your way into art. I’m wondering how much you think about that in relation to your work now. Because some of your research is art historical in a sense, but not totally.
MDS: I do hope that the work that I’m doing and the artists that I’m working with will contribute to future art history. That’s the legacy I would like to leave behind.
ZA: I don’t have much of a relationship to art history, but it’s interesting to me that you started there and you’ve ended here. Your work feels so rooted in the present.
MDS: Yeah, and the present has always been my interest. Even when I was studying art history at the University of Alberta I took as many contemporary classes as I possibly could because I wanted to know about the work that was being made now or closer to now. My undergrad work was focused on the YBAs and 1990s Britain, so I was interested in the most recent, I suppose, ‘art history.‘ That’s part of the reason I chose to go to Sotheby’s for grad school. I wanted to study contemporary art, and so I did a MA in Contemporary Art, where we were spending time in galleries, museums, and artists’ studios in London and getting a real sense of what was happening now. That was always my interest and that’s how I started working in commercial galleries because that is work that is often still wet on the walls coming directly out of artist studios. I wasn’t interested in studying objects. I was interested in understanding artists and the arts ecosystem.
ZA: Is there anything that we didn’t ask that you’d like to talk about?
MDS: One of the things I’ve been thinking about as we’ve been talking is the seasonality of the way that we work in the Prairies, because going back to that idea of geography, the majority of the population here is above the 50th parallel and we are so affected by the cycles of sun: light and dark, and weather cycles. We get harsh winters and sometimes harsh summers. Everything’s kind of being exacerbated by wildfire seasons too. I don’t know that seasonality necessarily affects the work that every artist is making, but, I think it affects everything in your life here. You can’t escape it.
CB: Yeah, I love that. It’s also one of the things I love most about living here, to be honest. That kind of collective survival of change. We’re doing it together; there’s something really wonderful about it.
ZA: That is the binding thing, right? I feel like it’s the thing everybody talks about. It’s the thing that we all acknowledge that we have in common.
MDS: We have to survive the seasons. It also grounds you in a place in a different way. When you’re thinking back to an opening, an exhibition, or a meeting, you’re like: Okay, what was I wearing that day? Did I ride my bike to go meet that person for coffee, or did I have to take off multiple layers and a parka when I arrived at the gallery opening? It creates a sense of cyclicalness. When I think back to my time in LA, it’s flat because it was always the same weather. It was always so nice outside, save for a few extreme wildfires and earthquakes, but you don’t have those daily points of reference in the same way.
CB: When you were talking about your book project, you said that you’re coming back to thinking about it again. How do you think about a project like that ending? Is it multiple volumes with different generations of artists? Or ongoing?
MDS: I think when I first started thinking about it, it was a book on the Prairies, but the more I started to recognize the differences in regions, I was like: Well, Alberta kind of needs its own book, right?
CB: Right.
MDS: So, I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s going to look like. It’s interesting, because we’ve had all these conversations about the book and what I do without actually defining it, which I really love, because we’re talking around it.
ZA: Contours. We always talk about the word and try to trace the edges of something, to figure out the shape of something that way.
CB: Maybe this is also something that comes out of the space and time that we have in this region too, where you don’t feel the need to define things so much. When you were talking about driving, that also goes very much in hand with this region—there’s something about that openness.
ZA: I keep thinking that there’s something about this place where we reject things that people embrace elsewhere. And I wonder if by not defining what you’re doing, there is more openness to it, or maybe more people trust it more somehow. Something you said made me think: So many of the models out there suck; why would we adhere to them if we don’t have to? I feel like the people who are trying to do things that offer a different way forward.
CB: A big part of that entrepreneurial spirit comes from a complete rejection of the way that systems are and maybe that’s also uniquely Albertan in some ways. You don’t have to do it that way. I feel like everyone tries and then realizes: I can’t do this. How do I figure it out on my own?
ZA: The thing that’s funny, the catch-22 of being here, is that there’s some public funding but not enough for anybody to survive. There’s just enough for people to scrape by and there’s nothing commercial, so nobody’s really making a living at it, right? I remember I was looking at the best-funded arts countries, and you look at some of the top ones, it’s like: Wow people can just be artists, and it’s enough to hold it all together. It’s fascinating to look at what gets made and what’s produced from that. I don’t just mean in terms of art; you know, little publishers pop up and you get all sorts of stuff that makes you realize: Oh, this is what happens when people aren’t spending half of their life writing grants. Have you written anything about your project that’s been published?
MDS: No, nothing has been published. I have a complicated relationship with being in the public eye that I am working on navigating. I’m sure it’s part of what has held me back from pursuing this book project—and other projects—more openly.
I think one of the things I am interested in about the work I’m doing is being invisible. I want the work that I’m doing to be about the artists. I don’t want it to be about myself. I have no interest in being at the centre of it. It’s about the work that artists are doing. That’s why I struggle to define the work that I do, or put a label on it. I don’t tend to speak publicly, or share everything that I’m doing, because I think the goals of the work that I’m doing don’t depend on me being visible.
CB: It seems like your methodology of working also is that way; you’re centering the artists that you’re working with, even in the way that you’re doing it. The way you describe your book, it feels like the structure of the book is also following that. But I think Zach’s question comes from an encouragement to also centre your role in it, because I think it’s a really interesting approach to curating and to art history. I feel like it’s super interesting what you’re doing and I think that was also part of our interest in wanting to speak with you about it.
ZA: Yeah, it’s incredibly labour- and time-intensive.
CB: Especially all the travel.
ZA: It must not be without sacrifice.
MDS: I don’t think it’s a sacrifice. It’s a lifestyle choice that I have made for myself. It’s a life that I’ve built that I really enjoy. I love being in my car on the open Prairie roads. I find that space so rejuvenating, just having that time and mental space. It’s a reset for my nervous system. It’s usually just me and music and my thoughts (and my dog). It is what I enjoy doing. I love being nomadic.
Michelle Deanne Schultz is an art consultant, strategist & curator who worked in public and private institutions in Canada, the US and the UK for over 15 years. Through MDS Art Consulting Inc. she focuses on supporting artists through strategy, project management, mentorship, and administrative support; and working with institutions & business to develop collections, strategies, policies and procedures that are artist centred, forward thinking and value driven.