Local artists are being featured in a show and sale at the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre until August 15th.
In honour of that over the next several weeks, we’ll be looking at the long history of visual arts in the Porcupine Mining Camp.
Director-curator Karen Bachmann says painters and photographers have been here from the start, chronicling the area’s development and doing artwork.
Painters weren’t really noticed for the first four decades. Then, says Bachmann, the Porcupine Art Club forms in the late 1940s.
“They have a little club house, a little log house,” she says. “I think it was sort of near the train station, in the area of town, and that’s where they would meet.”
At their club house, members shared camaraderie and their desire to improve how they painted.
“And at the time, they were also bringing in people from the Group of Seven to actually do workshops,” Bachmann relates. “So they would come and spend a week in the community, so some painting teaching and then provide opportunities for small exhibits.”
Next week: Where the local art was displayed, in the days before the museum and National Exhibition Centre.
