No. 94 - Montréal on my mind

I went. I saw. I napped.

Oct 03, 2025

Dearest readers,

I used to live in Montréal. I went to University and did a degree in Fine Art. I wrote A+ papers while drinking beer and made the Dean’s List. I sought out counselling for the first time and lived through some dark immersions into pain-filled waters due to some poisonous dynamics in childhood that I hadn’t yet made sense of. I didn’t sleep around much, but I did have a useless boyfriend from Serbia for a while. I was a bit lost. Aren’t lots of people lost in their twenties? I don’t think I was that special. I wasted a lot of time. Lots and lots of time.

That was the mid-to-late 1980’s. Now it’s whatever-time-it-is and I’m ten thousand years old and I’m back in Montréal for a somewhat extended trip. Three weeks. It’s been so wonderful to have the luxury of nothing-days where I’ve been able to nap and recharge and see no-one. I’m near the end of my trip and I’ve had moments of homesickness, but then I walk outside into Montréal in September and I’m all-in again.

I came to visit my old friend Sheri and to give a collage workshop, and decided to make it a long trip for a couple of reasons. One is that back in May 2020 I’d planned a trip to New York for my 60th birthday—had the flights and accomodations booked—and, well, you can deduce what happened to that plan. I hadn’t touched the funds that I’d set aside for that trip—hence the ability to stay three weeks. I also felt the need to make up for last year’s trip to Montréal, when I came on the heels of having Covid, there was a heat wave, and I did precisely nothing that I’d planned to do because I wasn’t fully recovered and was rightly fucked. Though I didn’t understand that at the time.

THIS TIME

This time I was determined to do all the things I’d planned to do last year, which mostly came down to seeing lots of art.

And lo, I have seen a lot of art.

The Arts of One World at the Musée des Beaux Arts blew my little mind
As did the Alan Glass exhibit, also at the Museum: So. many. amazing. assemblages. (this exhibit unfortunately ended September 28th)
A group exhibit of ceramics at the Nicolas Robert Gallery
Paintings by Mark Stebbins at the Simon Blais Gallery—photos do not do them justice
And finally, Heather Shillinglaw at Art Mûr: mixed media works of sewn fabric, embroidery, paint, and sometimes beading, on leather (full cow-hides)

I saw much more than this, but these were the exhibits that stood out for me.

I also made my usual trip to Drawn and Quarterly, where I bought the newest Miriam Toews book, A Truce That Is Not Peace, plus Sunday Night Movies by Leanne Shapton.

I bought the Leanne Shapton book in the hopes that it’d inspire me to pull out my inks again, as I’ve struggled to find my way creatively since my show Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir three years ago. YES, it’s ONGOING. And the Miriam Toews book… well. It’s not clear to me why she and I aren’t hanging out on the regular, I love her so much.

My friend Laurel came from Toronto to stay with me for my first weekend in Montréal. Here we are in Parc LaFontaine on the Sunday, looking much fresher than we felt.

My friend Kirsten came from Ottawa to hang out for the day. We spent three meals, one coffee shop, several art galleries, and about a thousand vintage clothing stores together. This was the first meal, and the only photo taken to commemorate the day! We both look totally normal.

The collage workshop at The Commons Studio, attended by Katherine, Hanna, Sheri, Jill, and Matthew. Gage is in the background working on his ceramics. It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately didn’t garner enough buzz that I can count on future collage workshops to fund trips to Montréal. Tant pis.

I didn’t take a ton of photos during this trip. I was more just into being there, if you can imagine. I promoted my collage workshop like a whore until it took place, but apart from that I was just wandering around seeing art and seeing friends.

Sheri in her natural habitat: The Commons Studio

ADVICE FOR MINI-ME

When I lived in Montréal as an art student in my twenties, did I go to openings at the galleries, did I make sure to see new shows when they came to the Musée des Beaux Arts? Absolutely not. I was much more focused on hanging out with my friends and drinking beer. But I can’t get too mad at myself for that, because the camaraderie and belonging that I felt with my pals filled a gaping void. I needed to cut loose. Maybe it went on a little too long? Possibly.

Who’s to say?

During this sojourn in Montréal I’ve been thinking about the me who lived here in my twenties, and what I might tell her if I could. I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would change the fact that I needed to do the work with regards to understanding the dysfunction I grew up with, and how it affected me. Certain things can only be learned through experience, and living life. And other things can only be learned by taking yourself in hand and making the fucking effort to learn some things about yourself.

With my cat Rat-King in my Montréal apartment, late 1980’s

But Me-now could perhaps tell Me-then a few things about my approach to art and art making. Looking back I see that studying “fine art” (the problem is inherent in the term) was confusing. The art history I was learning and the more contemporary gobbledy-gook artspeak I was meant to understand weren’t landing. It was perplexing because I didn’t understand why, if I were indeed some kind of artist, I wasn’t interested in most of what was being presented to me in school. The art history didn’t excite for the most part, and I had no intention of learning artspeak, whether to read pointless articles or to use it to my advantage in “the art world”.

What I would tell Me-then would be to pursue what moved me. To disregard what my University degree was telling me was important, unless I agreed. To believe in my own preferences. To trust what I found interesting and important, and follow where that led. To give myself full authority.

Verlyn Klinkenborg writes in Several Short Sentences About Writing: