Interview with artist Les Graff for Dreamers and Doers.
Then the government decided
to down size and of course what happens is two things: they didn’t take the
money away, but what they did was make sure no tax dollars went in.
So only lottery dollars were going in and they dissolved the department
and the department was offering services. Instead
what they did was put the money through the Foundation, lottery dollars through
the Foundation. So the Foundation
says, if you want to do something apply for a grant.
But no longer could you apply for the consultative services, teachers,
all that kind of stuff that was going out there in addition to the grants.
So the emphasis to that was - you help yourself, and we’ll give you
some help. But it certainly was not
the program that it was in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.
Now, good or bad?
It’s hard to say. You know after 30 years of developing those kinds of programs
maybe it’s reached a point where there is a certain amount of independence
within the province. Other agencies
are coming in to being, they could take on the responsibility and some of them
have. The Visual Arts Alberta Association
has taken on a number of responsibilities, AFA has taken on etc, etc.
So all of them expand a bit
because they can get the grants to do that and its not necessary for government
to be so deeply involved with all the details.
But what is lacking is to make sure that culture works. It is not
only an activity - a culturally expressive activity - but also a prestigious
activity. And to have government
involved OK’ing things, helping things, opening things etc was really a good
thing. It was a stamp of approval
as well.
When you don’t have
government involved, well, you’ve got to find that stamp of approval some
place else. And I think that’s
what the visual art community is doing. It
is milling around, trying to find out what it all means right now.
The activity is as much as it was before.
It increases each year. So I
guess Alberta Culture along with the U of A, U of C and the Banff school was one
of those agencies that helped make that foundation, that base on which all of
the things that are happening now, could happen.
Q: Is this off loading
by the government?
I think that is one
of the problems, that structure is missing.
But also the other thing that is missing is the consultative services
that would help. That would come in
at the very bottom when ideas were being formed out there in the community and
say ok, let us help you with that.
Now to give you an example, I
was in Edson one time - we were talking and I said have you seen this exhibition
in Edmonton? No they had not;
they’d not made it in. I thought
what if we had the exhibitions come to them, but these were fragile exhibitions.
There’s no way we could get an expensive exhibition of ceramics out
there, but we could photograph it. And
so I talked them about what would you like to see in terms of slides?
How would you like to have it done?
So then we went back and
started a slide exhibition. So out
of that need grew an idea and there was an agency that was able to do it.
And that agency said we have that responsibility.
We’re a government department, we have that responsibility.
Now with non-profit
organizations that exist, there is a slightly different curve.
What happens is they don’t say this is our responsibility, their
responsibility is only their mandate. Whatever
they’ve chosen for a mandate, whatever their constitution allows them to do.
When they sat back ten years ago and said what will we put in our
constitution they determined what they are.
Q: Talk about the
Camelot Years.
You can teach
leadership and you can teach basic courses and out of it should grow leadership
but it doesn’t unless you’ve got a person who wants to lead.
When I started with the
government, it was the Social Credit years and they were doing something for
culture but there was no one there leading.
Like getting out and saying openly, in communities, within government we
would like to do this. We would
like do this in cultural situations. So
the budget grew little by little.
Then along came the Conservatives.
The first act they passed as a government was the Alberta Art Foundation
act, which said we as a government will set up a foundation and start collecting
paintings and art. Art that is
going to cost a fortune a number of years from now, so why don’t we collect it
now. We’ll collect it for the
people of Alberta and this will be a way of helping the artist, helping the
gallery etc.
So you had that kind of will
- they were a new government. They
wanted to impress. When the premier
left the province he took with him gifts of art to give to people in government
offices in other countries. At one
time we were not only buying stuff for the premier and senior cabinet members to
take with them; we were also involved with renting of art for the decorating of
government offices. We were also
involved with commissions that government wanted - portraits of lieutenant
governors, premiers and speakers of the house etc.
And that is all in addition to what we were doing to help the artist back
at the community level.
Alberta House came into being
in London England to promote Alberta and business and it was decorated with art
from top to bottom. Alberta House
came into being in New York it was decorated with art, in Tokyo was decorated
with art. Those were the Camelot
Years.
I mean the premier opened
exhibitions. Mrs. Lougheed opened
exhibitions, they used art. They
used art as a way of making their government creditable and making their
presence elsewhere creditable as well. It
was wonderful in that way. Probably
most people don’t realize how much they assisted the arts community.
Not just handing out dollars, but actually using the art.
If you have the government of Alberta buying a painting to decorate its
office in London, if you can get that word around, that should create some
confidence within the buying public. Hey
if that artist is bought by the government, why don’t we buy one?
So,
yeah those were the good years. But
those were the years when the government was involved.
Now when you start having financial problems, you start cutting back on
social services. Then some one said
- hey you’re cutting back on social services and you're still doing something
for the arts?
So they took the arts right
out of the picture and we just use lottery dollars now.
Nobody can say we’re using tax dollars for the arts.
Lower profile.
It wasn’t the devil out
there doing something, it was just a bad twist at the time and that was their
solution to the situation. The arts
are still getting the same amount of dollars.
They’re just not getting the direct aid they used to get.
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The one figure I’ve always
found interesting, you can take the number of dollars you spend within the
visual arts, track them through and show that just about all of those dollars
spin right back into the community. And
for every dollar we spend there is this and this and this benefit.
And you go wow that’s impressive.
In
spite of being able to prove that over and over and over again, nobody bites the
bullet. They just say, to play with
the arts is too controversial for the public.
We’ll do something, let’s not say too much about it and let’s just
leave it there.