As Virginia Slim used to say... "We've come a long way Baby!"... and that is an understatement!!
The Alberta Society of Artists have maintained an important role in the history and development of the visual arts in this province. From its meager beginnings... the germ of an idea, the figment of the imagination, born in the collective minds of a small parcel of friends in Calgary, Alberta, the ASA became a reality.
Today we are sixty-seven years "young"--and still growing... we are not about to be pensioned off... in fact we are anxiously focused on the starting gate--ready to meet the new millennium in full palette!
Artists have always led an isolated existence. It's the very nature of the beast. From a work ethic point of view this is an advantage. Communication, however, is just as important between artists as it is a catalyst combining artist and viewer. Artists outside of our teaching facilities, particularly, need that social and artistic contact. Quite simply, that is why the ASA has survived, through lo these many years! Artists are strongly individual. Each has his or her own distinct, and often disparate ideas. At times these ideas culminate in a clash of wills... or egos. Any organization suffers when the few pragmatists impose their will on the whole, regardless of the overall results. All Societies go through periods of turbulence, social change, exploitation, aesthetic highs, lows and at times what one might term depleted exhaustion! But the ASA has weathered these many dramatic, and at times traumatic, transitions.
In the early days, Alberta was considered a wasteland for culture and the arts.... Indeed fine arts were looked upon as very "unnecessary incidentals."
It wasn't until a group of Edmonton art teachers formed the Edmonton Art Association that things began to perk in Alberta. By 1924, this city established the Edmonton Art Museum, under the capable direction of R. W. Hedley. It was enthusiastically supported by an association of amateur artists under the auspices of the "Edmonton Art Club." The museum provided the cornerstone for Provincial artistic awareness. By the way, Mr. Hedley was the first Albertan to be made a fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy.
The Calgary Sketch Club was formed in 1922, and four years later a local artist, Harry Hunt, assembled a few friends together to study with Norwegian, Lars Haukaness. He was the sole teacher to the infant art program set up at the Tech... eventually renamed SAIT, then as we know it--the Alberta College of Art and Design. This institution became the pivotal point of early ASA activity.
A. C. Leighton replaced Haukaness at the Tech and generated the enthusiasm and organizational skills to form our own Provincial Art society. Reg Harvey, supervisor of the Calgary public school system, and Wes Irwin, art teacher, joined Leighton in his quest and invited the Calgary Art Club contingent, including Hunt's splinter group, to join forces. Never could there have been two more diverse groups, according to their respective artistic philosophies. A. C. Leighton had been trained in the specific British Tradition of technical excellence... ANY deviation from the "norm" was treason! Leighton was determined to establish this culture for the great "unwashed frontier mentality" of our province. He could see precious few artists who could fulfill his recommended qualifications and greatly distrusted any proponents of "modernism." The Group of Seven, for instance, were definitely not high on his most distinguished painters list. In essence, Leighton considered the new born ASA as an extension of his art department at Tech an demanded that all members (some of whom were graduates of the Ontario College of Art) complete a series of exercises and assignments for his personal assessment! This did not go down well!