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THE OPENING is all about introducing the fascinating, quirky and wonderful people working in and around the visual arts in Vancouver. Each week, we'll feature an artist, collective, curator or administrator to delve deep into who and what makes art happen! |
Want to learn about artist-run centres and their history in Vancouver? How about the where and why of that classic Lower Mainland home design, the Vancouver Special? Or perhaps your interest lays more in the ins and outs of fabricating and publishing your own book? The man with the answers is Keith Higgins, Executive Director of Unit/Pitt (formerly Helen Pitt Gallery), President and Founder of PAARC (Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres), and co-founder of Publication Studio Vancouver.
Exhibition poster for 'Jim Carrico: What Could Be More Boring Than Art?' at UNIT/PITT September 12 to September 24, 1983 (Photo courtesy UNIT/PITT)
Originally from Calgary, Higgins arrived in Vancouver in the early 1980’s. Having already published his own poetry magazine and performed in a punk band, he was conscious of the possibilities of do-it-yourself on a small scale. DIY is the basis of an artist-run centre, and Vancouver was just cementing it large ARC culture. Already in existence when he arrived in the city were Western Front, Women in Focus, Video-in (VIVO), and the Contemporary Art Gallery (at that time an ARC). The Helen Pitt Gallery, previously a student-run space operating through the Vancouver School of Art, had broken out on it’s own when VSA became Emily Carr College of Art and moved from downtown to it’s current location on Granville Island. Lacking funding, the Pitt merged with a recently formulated collective known as Unit 306 (who lacked a space) to form UNIT/PITT in 1981 (For a more in-depth history of the Pitt, see this excellent Allison Collins piece on Arc Post).
For Higgins, their programming was something of a revelation for him. They put on huge events, ran a magazine, and initiated a city-wide survey of art of that moment, something that really hadn’t been done before. While he had created on a smaller scale, “to see something happening on that scale made me realize there was a possibility to start an organization that does something.” But a fundamental part of creating an organization, he realized, was mapping out the organization’s position. That’s exactly what he and Cate Rimmer (currently the Curator at Charles H Scott Gallery) strove to lay out from the beginning when they founded Artspeak in 1986. Artspeak emerged out of the Kooteney School of Writing, which led to a mandate about art, language and criticality (Again, for a more in-depth history of the creation of Artspeak, see this Allison Collins piece on Arc Post).
Chris von Szombathy 'Esophagus Now' at UNIT/PITT June 10 to July 9, 2011 (Photo courtesy UNIT/PITT)
Almost 25 years later, Higgins is still deeply involved in the artist-run community in Vancouver. While he feels every layer - from an enormous museum to a tiny student gallery - of a thriving arts community is important, he is most passionate about the artist-run. It provides “a space for experimentation that seems to offer lots of possibilities for people to come in and do things. If we’re not going to take a chance on somebody who seems like a bit of an outsider but has cool ideas, or who is never going to function at a scale bigger than this, then what’s the purpose of having this kind of institution?” It’s for this reason that he feels it is so important for spaces to define their mandate clearly so they can serve their chosen community as best as possible.
Publication Studio Vancouver at UNIT/PITT (Photo: Anne Cottingham)
Higgins’s most recent project began kind of accidentally. Publication Studio from Portland, Oregan was invited to Vancouver for a joint residency between Read Books and Artspeak in June 2010. Founded by Matthew Stadler and Patricia No, Publication Studio has outposts in California, Toronto, and a collection of equipment that travels in the eastern United States. Before their arrival here, Stadler and No asked if anyone had the same binding and cutting equipment that they used in Portland so they wouldn’t have to haul their gear across the border. Higgins had been considering book publishing himself, and decided to go ahead and make the equipment investment. When Stadler and No suggested that Higgins and his wife Kathy Slade (Founding Editor of the Emily Carr University Press and Director of READ Books at the Charles H Scott Gallery) start Publication Studio Vancouver, they immediately agreed.
A selection of books published by Publication Studio Vancouver (Photos courtesy Publication Studio)
They began with Jamie Hilder’s ‘Affadavit,’ then Higgins’ own ‘How to Look at a Vancouver Special’ (an on-going documentation project of Vancouver Specials that is on the backburner lately, though he intends to continue when he has time). Immediately he realized that the Studio could be used at UNIT/PITT, and they have since been publishing catalogues with exhibiting artists. Higgins prefers books that stand alone; though he sees scholarly value in exhibition catalogues, he feels they have no value without the exhibition itself and are no replacement. The Publication Studio format is “great for artist books” he notes, and it’s easy to see why. Everything is low-fi so as to reduce costs – covers are made out of file folders, printing is in black and white, and it’s all bound together solidly but simply. Old books can be re-bound and re-covered as easily as new books can be built from scratch. No idea is too small – from Susanna Browne’s ‘Country War Songs,’ a collection of country songs written by stars of country music since 9/11, to the Everyday Library series, featuring re-prints of open source books.
Higgins is clearly passionate about the possibilities of Publication Studio, but more than that, just the possibilities of DIY, saying that “some of the most significant cultural developments start out in places where there are only twelve people and it builds from there.” Considering his own successful contributions to Vancouver’s artist-run community, we can only agree.
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For more information on the above mentioned spaces, please visit their respective websites: Artspeak UNIT/PITT Publication Studio Publication Studio Vancouver will be open and operating at UNIT/PITT on 15 E Pender St, from Wednesday to Saturday until late August. For more information on Higgins' Vancouver Special project, you can find his website at vancouverspecial.com.
