Students take in the Pangnirtunug Fjord in Nunavut on a 2016 Students on Ice expedition. Photo by Lee Narraway / SOI Foundation.
When Geoff Phillips, an artist from Maple Creek in southwest Saskatchewan, boards the former Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Prince for a unique voyage marking Canada’s 150th birthday, he plans to set one of his canvases out on deck and start working.
Phillips is an experienced plein air painter and often straps canvases to his back as he mountain bikes from his home to nearby scenic spots in the Cypress Hills, where he is artist-in-residence at Canada’s only interprovincial park.
But Phillips will encounter very different landscapes when he participates in a Canada 150 project that’s taking a rotating roster of artists, scientists and other passengers on a 150-day voyage of discovery from Toronto to Victoria through the Northwest Passage.
The voyage, which began June 1 and ends Oct. 28, includes about 60 passengers at any one time. It is organized by an educational charity, Students on Ice, and is funded by the federal government and other donors.
Polar Prince / Canada C3
Each of the 15 artists picked by a jury spends a week or two on board the ship, renamed the Canada C3 (to refer to our three coasts), stopping at various communities along the way. Phillips, one of five artists from Western Canada and the North, will be on the second last of the voyage’s 15 legs, travelling along the British Columbia coast from Bella Bella on the mainland to Campbell River on the east coast of Vancouver Island.
Phillips will board just as Whitehorse artist Deanna Bailey disembarks. “Nature and landscape paintings will be my focus, utilizing modelling clay as paint,” says Bailey. “I look forward to creating contemporary sculptural paintings of the land forms, trees, rocks and water. I will take many reference photographs and look forward to creating a body of work from the voyage.”
Rachel Rozanski, of Vancouver, creates art in various media about the natural world. She will be onboard in the High Arctic, travelling from Cambridge Bay to Kugluktuk, hamlets in Nunavut, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 3.
“Since the trip is so short, I will be collecting as much as I can during that time – video, photographs, sketches and research,” says Rozanski. “I want to leave it open so that my work can be steered in whatever direction the trip takes it.” For her, one of the most exciting aspects of the trip is the chance to talk with scientists, particularly researchers at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay.
Benjamin Kikkert, a glass artist from Vancouver, will replace Rozanski at Kugluktuk and carry on to Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories. He wants a firsthand look at scenery that will inspire his new 3D works in glass.
Also picked for the trip is Yellowknife photographer Nigit’stil Norbert, who did not respond to emails for comment. Artists from other areas of Canada include painter and photographer Leslie Reid, of Ottawa, and ceramicist Paula Murray, of Chelsea, Que.
