Winnipegger’s crib a creative cache

There’s a small, treasure-filled art gallery on the second floor of the Sherbie.

Directly above the West Broadway vendor and noisy bar now known as the Kyoto Kat Club, amid a primly kept wardrobe and dirty coffee mugs, Josh Peterson’s bachelor suite is bursting with coveted Manitoba art.

“The Simon Hughes piece was an unbelievable gift from a friend for helping her take care of her mom going through palliative care with cancer,” says Peterson.

The Winnipeg artist’s iconic illustrations of ice floes can be found on the cover of the Weakerthans’ Reunion Tour album, as well as on Peterson’s walls.

“I like Simon a lot and like the work that he does. I think that was one of the starting points.”

The gravelly voiced 44-year-old grew up in River Heights and attended Kelvin High School before graduating from Grant Park.

Rakish and athletic, Peterson seems like he might have been a good fit with Kelvin’s cliquey south-end crowd, but he moves like a social chameleon.

“All the blocks of Aberdeen from Main Street to the river — that was my grandfather’s steel foundry. There’s still manhole covers with our name on it,” he says.

“They tried to put me in private school. I never got the Ravenscourt jacket.”

At that time, graffiti and street art were popping off in Winnipeg, and practically every downtown hole-in-the-wall was finding new life as a clandestine spot for music or art. Peterson says he started sneaking into DIY shows before he was old enough to legally drive.

“I was going to shows at the Albert when I was 14, 15 years old, when Plug In (Gallery) was still on McDermot. It was a very welcoming and open community,” he says.

In the early 2010s, Peterson co-ran an unlicensed after-hours venue in the Exchange District, which sometimes attracted big-name performers such as M.I.A.

Ultimately, the basement venue under the Fyxx also served as an art gallery. Peterson says this introduced him to many of the city’s emerging and established artists.

This includes members of the Two Six Crew, whose idiosyncratic mix of graffiti, painting, music and street-art was met with somewhat limited opportunities by the artworld establishment but eager audiences in Winnipeg’s DIY scene.

Beside Peterson’s dining room table are vivid remnants of that buzzing era, with works by Two Six members such as Cyrus Smith, as well as works by Paul Zacharias and others.

“This critical mass thing just sort of happened and the Exchange was really active with art. We were (in our first space) for maybe nine or 10 months. It didn’t have a licence. So we survived there long enough. It was fun,” he says.

Ultimately, Peterson and his partner moved their gallery into another space on Ross Avenue, where they featured art by Guy Maddin, Jake Kostiuk and Ian August, among others.

One exhibit included striking propaganda images by the former Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society — which aimed to persuade Canadians that the U.S.S.R. was a progressive state — some of which can still be found in Peterson’s apartment.

“Some of the communist works were absconded from a left-wing social hall by a current sitting Crown prosecutor, who will remain nameless,” he says.

Peterson describes working, a little before erecting his Ross gallery, as a security guard at an award show for an upcoming hip-hop artist named Wab Kinew.

“He asked if I’d be part of the security detail, which was basically just having a bit of an entourage because he was a rapper at the time,” says Peterson, about Kinew, now Manitoba’s premier.

“He’s hilarious. He’s got a great sense of humor, (and) he’s smart.”

A period as a realtor let Peterson break out the suits and linens he wears so dapperly, though these days he mostly makes his living working in film and television art departments.

When he’s not working or doing the crossword in the bar below, he might be found holding court somewhere in the city core, firing off jokes and stories to anyone within earshot.

“I’m good from the gutter to the penthouse,” he says. “Not to be arrogant, but that’s how my father once stated it.”

conrad.sweatman@winnipegfreepress.com