Fine art accommodation

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This article was published 28/07/2023 (802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Four Manitoba artists have found a unique way to check in at the Fairmont.

Winnipeg’s Amanda Onchulenko and Charlie Johnston, along with Wendy Seversen of Anola and Cindy Dyson of Oakbank, are the first to be chosen for the Portage and Main hotel’s artist-in-residence program.

Onchulenko, a painter, and Johnston, a sculptor and muralist, have their works on display in the Fairmont’s lobby, while Dyson’s paintings and Seversen’s glass designs adorn the hotel’s Gold Lounge, a 19th-floor bar that has spectacular views of downtown Winnipeg and The Forks, an exclusive enclave for Fairmont Gold members staying at the hotel.

”I think it’s a positive thing that the Fairmont is looking to local artists and I was really honoured to be selected to be among the first group of artists in there,” Seversen says.

Johnston’s sculpture, On Wonderland Time, which sits in the centre of the hotel’s lobby, is inspired by the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Johnston has moulded clay so his rabbit has an appropriately furry look, but also has added an antique pocket watch in one of the rabbit’s paws, which references the character’s famous line, “I’m late! For a very important date!”

“Part of the intrigue of it for people in that environment, where there’s a lot of hustle and bustle, people coming and going, business, you name it, and it’s about being distracted and taken into that other world, like how the White Rabbit was Alice’s usher into that world of imagination,” Johnston says.

“I love texture, so I put everything I could to articulate every piece of surface area with texture and detail and vibrancy.”

Johnston could have given the rabbit any old pocket watch, but he went the extra mile — or in this case an extra 4,000 or so. He went online and bought an antique timepiece from London that dates back to the era when Carroll penned the famous children’s adventure in 1865,

“It has its own history embedded into that object,” says Johnston, whose most notable mural is a seven-storey work completed in 2020 that covers a side of Union Centre at Broadway and Smith Street and commemorates the history of Manitoba’s labour movement.

Onchulenko’s abstract landscapes, which are inspired from her cottage near Winnipeg Beach, are also in prominent locations. Three of them, Un-Settlers, Levelling Up and Luminosity, greet guests when they walk in the hotel’s front door, another one, Big Pink, is right beside the check-in desk and a fifth one, Wisdom, is near the lobby’s main escalator.

“My studio space is tiny, so to see them all up, each painting had its own space and was framed and had its lipstick on, it was good to see it in a different context,” Onchulenko says. “In a large space like that, it gives them an opportunity to have their own moment, their own story.”

Up in the Gold Lounge are Seversen’s works made from window glass, specifically, panes she’s recycled from houses and construction sites near her home.

Every window tells a story, whether they are panes from old buildings or ones she’s repurposed from discarded aluminum or vinyl sliding windows. The artistic results, which she says are difficult to control unlike art glass, create surprising colours and designs once melted in Seversen’s kiln.

Two pieces, a disk-shaped work titled Sky Above Lake Below Caddy Lake Lens, and a wavy piece titled A Bend in the River, have a blue-ish tinge, while others are green-hued or clearer.

All reflect the sunlight pouring in from the 19th-floor windows of the Gold Lounge like prisms, adding a different dimension to the swanky watering hole.

“It’s just beautiful to see the light coming through my pieces but also seeing that vista of the true, exceptional beauty of that part of the city is stunning,” she says.

There are economic advantages. Art glass can be expensive, while renovators she knows give her old windows, knowing she’ll make use of them instead of dumping the non-recyclable items into landfills.

“When you’re not paying a huge amount for your materials, it frees up your ability to take risks,” Seversen says.

Dyson offers six oil cityscapes, including scenes from the St. Norbert Market, St-Leon Gardens in St. Boniface and the West Broadway neighbourhood for the Gold Lounge, as well as one titled Rorie Street, for the narrow Exchange District thoroughfare just east of the hotel.

“It’s a nice summer vibe with all the stuff going on,” Dyson says.

The Fairmont Winnipeg program is similar to one created at the Chateau Frontenac, the hotel chain’s famous hotel in Quebec City.

It will showcase Manitoba artists and change with the seasons, says Ian Taylor, the Winnipeg hotel’s general manager.

The program is a partnership with Pulse Gallery, which displays works by Manitoba artists exclusively at The Forks’ Johnston Terminal.

The Fairmont is surrounded by the arts, culture and business. Nearby attractions such as The Forks, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Shaw Park, home of the Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball team, are usually at the top of guests’ lists of places to visit, Taylor says.

“Authentically local is one of the drivers (of the program),” Taylor says. “There is a notable relationship between the Fairmont at Portage and Main and The Forks.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall