CREATIVITY - BATTLE RIVER ARTS!
Battle River Region is a treasure trove of creativity and artistic expression is many, many forms.
Visual Artists have produce visual interpretations of our “place” for millennia.
First came the interpretations featured in early “nature works” and on hide with colours from ochre and herb.
Alex Janvier https://www.alexjanvier.com/ pioneer member of Canada’s Indian Group of Seven, likes to recall his forays through Battle River Valley, a place where the light and colour provided immense inspiration to him as an emerging artist. Now in his elder years, the memories are fresh as he speaks about those experiences and his interpretations of the region are obvious in the work on permanent display at his gallery on the banks of Cold Lake.
As Settlers arrived, they too were taken by the beauty of this special area. As time allowed, they took to interpreting it in paintings, embroidery, quilting, prairie architecture (simple but marvelous when we think of how structures were made by hand, carved from the trees and local mud plasters available in the region.
Aesthetic sensibility and sensitivity of the early settlers is bountifully apparent in the early churches scattered around the region: Roman Catholic (e.g., St. Norbert Roman Catholic Church, Provost; St. Thomas Church, Duhamel), Roman Catholic and Ukranian Catholic, Lutheran (German, Norwegian and Swedish), Swedish Baptist (Battle River Baptist at Battle Lake; Fridhem - “Peaceful Home” between Edberg and Ferintosh).
Project in waiting: Compile names and places of early church architecture. Document their location on the Battle River Maps prepared by Cartographer Larry Laliberte, University of Alberta.
Subsistence Tools also attest to creativity in Battle River Region.
Project in the early stages: Continue the collection of antique tools, document their use and find ways to preserve them an informational and educational artifacts.
Visual Arts
As a young man, Alex Janvier, Indian Group of Seven, travelled through Battle River areas during the 60s - leading art classes in many communities. It was during that time that he developed his affinity for the special colours and light qualities of this region. No ordinary artist, he could and can mix his colours from raw pigments to create the exact tones and hues he wants to use. Many of his students continue art in the communities of Battle River. Today, a number of art groups and shops can be found across the region. Still needed, though, is a serious art gallery for professional and amateur artists.
Cuisine
Where to begin examining and reporting on the rich cooking traditions of our region!? From Ukrainian peroghe to Norwegian lefse to German specialty sausages and Indigenous bannock (adapted from early Scottish explorers), it’s all here and delicious . . . spanning from the traditional farming food that kept Settlers alive to high-end cooking styles such as that of leading Metis chef, Shane Chartrand, and Gourmet food producer, Joanne Zinter. Joanne (with deep regional roots) is a pioneer in the development and production of specialty food products, having started her business some 30 years ago.
Dance
Music
Informed by the music traditions of the cultural groups comprising the Battle River region, music - of all forms - abounds. You will find a rich heritage of Scandinavian choral and instrumental music ranging from the fiddle and accordian of folk music styles, to Mennonite and Hutterite vocal music having resonance from times of imprisonment centuries ago. Professional musicians hail from Castor to Westerose, Taking the central area by storm at Camrose, is the popular new SingAble Group under the direction of Dr. Ardelle Ries, Associate Professor of Music at Augustana Campus, University of Alberta.
Literary Arts
Battle River Writing Centre began early in 2012. At that time, a group of aspiring writers realized that, taken together as a region, the well-published authors of our region were as numerous, prolific and noted as for any other part of Canada. Bolstered by this realization, as well as by the encouragement of noted Western Canada Author, Rudy Wiebe, they felt it was time to address place-based writing seriously. They began with one workshop which led to many others, and a monthly Writing Room which has met every third Friday of every month since January 2012.
In 2016, they published Beauty Everyday: Stories from Life as it Happens, a collection of place-based stories from across Battle River Region. See Purchase page to order.
In 2019, they published Poems from Life as it Happens, an anthology which was dedicated to the people of the region and Alberta, and Her Honour, Lois E. Mitchell, Lt. Governor of Alberta.
Destination Prairie, Cathie Bartlett’s first novel in a trilogy of three was published by Bayeux Press, Calgary. See Purchase page to order.
2020 sees yet more literary work emerging from Battle River Writing Centre.
Arts that Flow as Stories from Our Landscape: Alberta is due for publication yet in 2020.
Arts that Flow as Stories from Our Landscape: Battle River is well underway.
