Heather Benning – Artist Interview

Transcript:

Jennifer McRorie: Heather, could you talk a bit about what has inspired the work you make about this place, and I know we had an exhibit of your work here in 2015, and we had the fabulous Altarpiece, and the Dollhouse film which we have downstairs now, so you kind of pull on a little bit of folklore, and recreate your idea. I remember you telling me a story that you saw this abandoned farmhouse and you created a whole narrative around what happened there.

Heather Benning: Well I think – like – I grew up on a farm. My father’s a farmer, and so is my mother, and my grandmother would do a little bit of painting but she’s a school teacher primarily, and sort of wanted to take up painting. But there was no idea that there was such a thing as being an artist or making a living as an artist in the Prairies, or in general, like that was something that was done in far away big cities. But what I did have growing up is I had really understanding parents, and they were both excellent storytellers. And my grandparents, especially my maternal grandparents, and my Grandma in particular was a fantastic storyteller, and so I grew up with a lot of stories, a lot of history stories, about coming to Canada, and then what Canada was to them, what they brought, and the farming existence, and the amount of labour and work that they had to do in order to have a successful farm. And then when I grew up on the farm my father was pretty lucky – or I was pretty lucky – he gave me the loft of his workshop as like a – I guess it was actually a studio space because I started building stuff in there immediately. Because inside that workshop was all of the remnants of the previous farmer’s life. All his tools, and all his kind of obsolete things that Dad wasn’t using on the farm. And he said like “yeah you can have whatever space you want up there, but you have to clear it out and do what you want”. And so the first sculpture I made was a – I tried to make a moveable person, because it was I guess lonely up there, so I was going to make my own friends, damnit. That’s how I’m going to take care of this. So I made this pretty crude looking sculpture. And because he looked so terrible, like his face – I tried to put wax on his face, so his face would look more like skin, but then the wax sort of melted the styrofoam I was using, so he had this sort of alcoholic’s pock-marked face, so then I nicknamed him Mr. Jiggers. And then there was an old whisky bottle up there, so he had that with him, and he just sat in his rocking chair and hung out with me. So that was some of kind of my earlier childhood memories, and I clearly kept making things. And then luckily my Mom found a Canadian Art magazine, and I’m not sure where, must have been Saskatoon on a shopping trip or something, because there’s nothing like that sold in the town I grew up in. And I remember I was fifteen years old and I opened it up and I was like “Oh my god, people are making a living, and they’re printing the pictures”. And so that started the idea that I was going to be an artist. But it all happened on the farm, like that whole feeling, all the daydreaming time. We weren’t allowed to be bored, and if we were bored we were given a bucket to go pick weeds. So you were kicked out of the house, you played outside with your siblings, and sort of looked at the clouds and daydreamed. So that was it. And then the building situation, I think, I was given that loft at first, and then that wasn’t enough, and then Dad had a couple abandoned grain bins, wooden grain bins that were not used anymore. He would let me stage those places. So I guess I was always kind of building some sort of something with buildings. And then yeah, when I came upon the Dollhouse, many years later, I was driving by, and it was just this house, like it was still perfectly straight, it was per construction, so it was in really good shape. I drove past and then I backed up, kind of made a note of where it was, and then I went on to do my supply trip because I was teaching at the time. And when I returned, I peeked through the windows, and it was perfect. It was a Dollhouse. It’s like I saw it done. I saw it already in my head that, yeah, this is it, I can make this. I had worked for a restoration company a few years back, so I had the skills to do the rudimentary version of what I did. I mean, I didn’t totally restore the house to – you know, I was never going to heat it, so… So then I found out who owned the land, I asked them if I could have the use of the house for the duration of the project, and they laughed at first, and then they donated it to me. And then I did The Dollhouse. And then it stood for about 8 years, and then I burnt it down. So it was kind of the full story – and what I was doing with that project, I wanted to kind of talk about the – we have this nostalgia for the way it was, and the good old days. And the good old days are just a myth of what we say to ourselves to try to feel better about how bad it is now. But it wasn’t that good then either, there’s a reason why these houses were abandoned. And there’s a reason why people left the area. They could no longer make a living in that area, so they couldn’t stay. It’s not necessarily all positive. And the agri-business plays a heavy role in all of this. When you’re talking about gardening and food producing, it’s gone kind of astray. It’s nice to see that people are now becoming more interested again. In making our own food again. I don’t know. But the prairies have always been something – it’s what I know. I’ve left many times, and I keep returning. I had to say when I returned back from Scotland after I finished my master’s. I stayed in Scotland for a few years longer and worked, and then I decided to return home, thinking that I was just going to do a pit stop. Be in Saskatchewan for maybe a year, and then move on. And yeah, that was ten years ago, so now I think it’s pretty… I’ve got family, and stories and storytelling are a big part of what I do, and I think there’s a lot to explore still, within it all. And it’s a place where I feel safe to create. When I was in Scotland, I didn’t feel like I could make the type of work I wanted to make, because I didn’t think it would translate well there, to the people of Scotland. And I had an opportunity to do a project in an abandoned mining town, coal mining town, but I felt like if I was to make something there, it would have looked like a lie, because I don’t have that history, I don’t have that knowledge. And I didn’t want to be that imported artist going and telling this coal mining community what loss is about, for losing a mine. I don’t know that, I don’t know what their personal stories are, and I didn’t want to challenge that either. So yeah I guess this is where I am, and probably will stay.