Leslie Reid, an Ottawa based artist and educator, has been influenced by her family’s military background transitioning from political science to art. Her work explores sensory and emotional responses to environments, shaped significantly by a pivotal experience at a decommissioned lighthouse in Newfoundland. It’s a really good story.
This led her to themes of isolation and family tragedy, often incorporating historical and contemporary imagery to document changes in the northern environment.
During our conversation I read to her an excerpt from her artist statement that helped me understand her art practice:
We also discussed navigating cultural sensitivities. Leslie shared her reservations about working in the North and the importance of respecting Indigenous narratives. She also recounted her interactions with Inuit voices and the challenge of presenting their stories authentically without appropriation.
Leslie also had some advice for aspiring artists - given that she is a long time teacher of art at the University of Ottawa - to focus on their personal responses to culture rather than conforming to trends, highlighting the importance of internal reflection and the role of climate in shaping their artistic journey.
Overall, Reid stresses the importance of sensory experiences in motivating climate action and values feedback on her work. For example :
After we concluded our conversation Leslie mentioned ‘that all artists must acknowledge climate change in their work’ which I recorded as a coda and have used as the opening quote of this episode. I agree and hope it creates a debate about how climate context shapes all of our responses and relationships - climate in the largest sense of climate - therefore making it an essential element of meaningful art.
Leslie’s recommended readings include:
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Sections of the episode (generated by AI and reviewed by Claude Schryer)
Introduction
In this opening chapter, Claude welcomes Leslie Reid to the podcast, setting the stage for an engaging conversation about her artistic journey and connection to the Ottawa community.
Leslie’s Artistic Journey
Leslie shares her background, detailing her transition from political science to art, and how her experiences in England shaped her artistic vision and connection to the landscapes that inspire her work.
The Influence of Landscape
On her return to Canada she rediscovered Calumet Island, home of her maternal grandmother and site of years of summer long family camping on the shores of the Ottawa RIver while her father flew with photo squadrons in the North. This rediscovery led to her first large light and space works. Exploring the emotional depth of her art, Leslie discusses how these personal memories and landscapes intertwine, leading her to create works filled with historical and emotional resonance.
Environmental Themes in Art
Leslie reflects on the gradual infusion of environmental concerns into her artwork, driven by personal experiences and a growing awareness of climate change and its implications.
Reconnecting with the North
Leslie recounts her journey to retrace her father’s flights in the Arctic, using art to document the environmental changes she observed and the stories tied to those landscapes.
Art as a Medium for Awareness
In this chapter, Leslie discusses the role of art in raising awareness about climate change, emphasizing its contemplative nature and ability to evoke emotional responses rather than immediate action.
Experiences with Indigenous Communities
Leslie shares her transformative experiences with Indigenous communities in the Arctic, highlighting the importance of storytelling and connection to the land in understanding climate issues.
Voices of the Arctic
In this reflective chapter, Leslie discusses her efforts to capture contemporary Inuit voices and experiences, emphasizing their resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change.
The Challenge of Hope
Leslie discusses the daunting reality of climate change and the limitations of art in conveying urgency. She reflects on the difficulty of adapting to a growing global population and the underlying desires that drive consumption and environmental impact.
Cultural Resilience in the Face of Change
Exploring the adaptability of Indigenous communities, Leslie shares insights on how the Inuit culture responds to climate challenges. She emphasizes the importance of their lived experiences and the stories that need to be shared to highlight their resilience.
Art as a Medium of Connection
Leslie articulates how art serves as a bridge to connect with the past and the ethereal, allowing individuals to engage with climate issues on a sensory level. She believes that genuine artistic expression can evoke internal desires to act on climate change.
The Importance of Northern Perspectives
The conversation shifts to the significance of understanding the Arctic and its cultures, as Leslie reflects on her experiences in the North. She advocates for greater awareness and dialogue about the impact of climate change on these communities and their ways of life.
Navigating Cultural Sensitivity
Leslie shares her reservations about working in the North and the importance of respecting Indigenous narratives. She recounts her interactions with Inuit voices and the need to present their stories authentically without appropriation.
Advice for Aspiring Artists
Offering wisdom from her years of teaching, Leslie encourages young artists to focus on their personal responses to culture rather than conforming to trends. She highlights the importance of internal reflection and the role of climate in shaping their artistic journey.
Finding Community in Art
Leslie discusses the challenges young artists face in feeling isolated and the necessity of finding community. She emphasizes the importance of connection and collaboration in fostering creativity and addressing pressing issues like climate change.
Engaging with Current Literature
Leslie shares her reading habits, focusing on Arctic research and political commentary, and highlights the relevance of historical literature in understanding contemporary issues. She reflects on how these readings inform her artistic perspective and awareness of climate.
The Role of Artists in Climate Awareness
In a poignant closing reflection, Leslie asserts that all artists must acknowledge climate change in their work. She argues that the climate context shapes our responses and relationships, making it an essential element of meaningful art.
Transcription of e203 leslie reid - climate as art
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
Claude Schryer
Welcome, Leslie Reid, to conscient.
Leslie Reid
Thank you. Thank you very much, Claude, for inviting me.
Claude Schryer
Well, you know, my now defunct art and ecology potluck. I decided not to do it because it was a lot of logistic trouble But I'm happy to meet artists who live in Ottawa, like me, on Algonquin-Anishinaabe territory, and to get to know people through the work. So I've seen some of your work in art galleries and I've read about your work. And so I'm really excited to have a conversation about, overall, your career as an artist, but in particular those pieces in the north, northern Canada that are addressing issues like climate change, but also colonization and so on and so forth. And I want to start just with a little self-introduction. If you can just tell me a little bit about your background so people know where you're coming from.
Leslie Reid
Well, I actually come from Ottawa, but because of the military. My father was a World War two fighter pilot who stayed in to keep flying, and he died quite young, so the family was quite fractured at a certain point. And my mother ended up back in Ottawa. I was at art school in England at the time, and when I finished, I needed a job, like so many young artists who think it's all going to be easy, and found part time work in Ottawa, which is the only place I looked because I wanted to be here to help my mother, who had descended into alcoholism. So. And then I was offered a better job. And here I am, retired from that better job at the University of Ottawa.
And it was an exciting place to be because the department was basically not even a department yet, and I had a lot of scope to help grow it into the really quite strong force it is today for young artists and theorists and historians and what have you.
Claude Schryer
And, you know, a lot of the. Guests, previous guests, Barbara Cuerden and Dawn Dale and others, because you either taught them or collaborated with them. So that's. You're an icon here in Ottawa.
Leslie Reid
I just feel a little bit old.
Claude Schryer
Well, old and wise and still very active. You biked over here and I wanted to just read a bit of the artist statement that you have on your website because it's a good way to jump into your world. Is that okay?
Leslie Reid
Of course.
Claude Schryer
My work has long engaged both in our sensory and emotional responses to particular environments. The works in painting and also in print, photography and video explore the physical and perceptual sensations of our experience of a sight and the signs of our lives lived there, working with liminal states of light and space through the ambiguities and uncertainties experienced in this visual field. I seek a thought provoking and resonant emotional response to the act of seeing and ultimately, to being so.
Claude Schryer
I really like that.
Leslie Reid
Thank you.
Claude Schryer
So tell me more about your approach to art making.
Leslie Reid
Well, you know, when you have to pin it down for an artist statement, nobody when I was at art school had to actually write a statement. We had to write history papers, but that was something entirely different. We had to do the work and then think, what is this work about? So when I sat down to write something for, I guess it was from my website, which I haven't. I only started twelve years ago. I had to think about what I was doing and what had driven me in that direction in the first place. I'd started out in political science at Queen's and realized halfway through that I didn't want to become a policy wonka.
I loved what I was seeing in fairly indifferent art history classes, which was a minor for me, and decided to finish my degree and then go to art school. So it was a great leap into something that I'd never thought I could make a career in. But I knew I wanted to leave Canada and experience a larger community. It was the best thing I did. I loved my time in England at art school, but I think it was having that experience and being out in the landscape. I went on long hikes in the English countryside when you could get there on a little train. A very different experience now than it was then, and reacted a lot to English skies, English weather, and that presence overhead.
And then when I returned to Canada, one of the first places I went to with friends was a place called Calumet island. They didn't know that I had practically grown up on Calumet island. It was the birthplace of my maternal grandmother, and we'd spent the first five years of my life camping there every summer while my father was flying in the Arctic. So I knew there was an arctic connection in here. But what I noticed at the time was how the sky was a huge, huge fault, unlike the English bell jar of a sky. And within that sky, I started feeling the presence of my grandmother's family and my mother's summer's there, and then my summer's there as a young child. And I started seeing landscape as being part of the people who might now be ghosts who had inhabited it, whose lives were very much a part of this skyscape, as I was painting at the time.
So I was. The works were completely minimal and abstracted, but they were filled with these emotions and real perceptions of lives that had been lived there. And that's how that statement came about. It was an extraordinary, both perceptual, but a very, very full emotional experience for me, just to see that sky, that light, that river. And I've looked for it ever since. It became very apparent when I left teaching at the age of 60. And my first residence, not being a teacher, not squeezing it in, I squeezed in for other residencies.
But between a family and teaching, they were always squeezed in. This was one that was very open. And it was at a lighthouse in Newfoundland. It's owned by Ned Pratt now. It was Mary Pratt at the time, and we had shown together at the National Gallery, which was lovely. So I was at the edge of a cliff, 450ft up, at a lighthouse that had been decommissioned. And she and her husband at the time had bought one of the bungalows there, which had been the light keeper's house.
But there was no one for miles around. And I drove there in a the borrowed truck and ended up in the fog. And I was in the fog for three days. I had no idea where the sea was. I couldn't see the edge of that cliff. And I decided to do, when I got back to Waterwood, to do works that responded to that sense of being isolated, in danger and enveloped at the same time. What I discovered after my few days in the fog decided to stride off across the headlands to the next outport, which took me all day there and back.
And I discovered that the family had drowned. And when I went back, I felt the presence of those, the drowned light keeper and his brother and his son, his 16-year-old son. And they started to inform how I responded to Cape Pine was the name of the place. And I chose to go back a second year to do a video that was really directed by the presence of that family and their ghosts. If you look at the paintings, you won't see any ghosts in it. But for me, the fact that this is a lived in place, just as the Alderwa river was with my grandmother, brings a lived in presence to my work, which I still seek as I travel in the north.
Claude Schryer
And, of course, you observe the unfolding ecological crisis as you observe the environment. How was environmental concerns, climate change and others infused in your work?
Leslie Reid
Well, it wasn't at the very beginning. It was more a kind of presence I was seeking in these, otherwise, what seemed to be emptied fields. But one of the presence in my life had been my father and his early death, and he had talked a lot about the arctic. When I was a young child, he brought back a polar bear skin and I used to nap on it. The little anecdote I love about that is I can remember putting my finger in the hole in the head of and twirling it around as you would as a child pretending to nap and being told it was the bullet hole in going north. 40 years later, 50 years later, I'm told, no, we don't shoot them in the head. That was probably the eye socket.
And your father was just probably teasing you. And I thought, you know what? That fits.
Claude Schryer
It's a good story, though.
Leslie Reid
It's a good story. And I still haven't seen. Well, maybe it was a bulletin. Oh, maybe. Anyway, I lost track of that polar bear's skin. My brother had inherited all these things from my mother, and I now have it. He died just during COVID just the beginning. And his wife presented me with this box that said polar bear skin on it. I thought it had long been moth eaten and thrown out because of all our moves, but there it was. So I still have the polar bear skin. And you know what? There isn't a bullet hole in the head.
Claude Schryer
So that connection between the north, the stories of your father's experience, and your own experience as an artist sort of led you to want to go further and further, I guess.
Leslie Reid
Well, it was actually climate change that drew me to those early northern memories. And I had been really quite fascinated by what was happening and what we might be able to do. It was reinforced by my husband, whom I met in the early eighties, who had started an energy conservation company. And hopefully it was going to grow. And then there were a lot of government attempts at this kind of energy auditing and conservation. And they pulled the plug on the whole program. And that was the end of his company.
So it was, you know, a very deep dive into what you could do back then 40 years ago, and not much was happening, but it was possible. And that's when I started reading. And I think it was James Hansen who wrote in the eighties, and of course, Rachel Carlson long before that. So the people were there, the information was there, and suddenly nothing was being done. So, you know, my husband's answer was, continue his engineering work, but to grow an organic garden. And we've been organic gardeners ever since. We had chickens a lot until avian bird flu stopped that and you couldn't get the chicks anymore.
So there's been a consciousness of this all along and an ability, a desire to be able to do something, at least in our own lives. And so I'd been aware of the changes that were starting to happen, and I decided to apply for the Canadian Forces artists program residency. I thought that they had ended it after the second World War, when Molly Lambobach was part of it. But no, it had started again fairly recently, found out from a friend who had done it on a ship and contacted them. I was told I had to apply for a project that had to do with the military. And I thought, I know exactly what I want to do, and that is to retrace those early flights in the north and the Arctic that my father had flown for five years. And the images are available at the National Air Photo Library, which, mercifully, Harper was defeated before they could actually destroy that science library, because all the technicians there were afraid for their livelihoods at the time.
I was going in and I found some of the original flight lines, but it wasn't to retrace my father's steps. It was to see what he had been flying over or all his squadron and photographed and what was there now. So this was a chance to see from the air what was changing in the north and the Arctic. It couldn't have worked out better. Honestly, Claude, when I think here, I was saying, well, I would like to go to these places. I know my father had been white horse, yellow knife, resolute frobisher, as it was at the time now, and thought, well, they'll never be able to do this. They actually managed to take me over some of the same flight lines that I had the photographs of from the Napl.
And, yes, there were a lot of changes. So it was a. A chance that I would be able to see these changes myself and photograph them and then do a series of works from what was there now with the information that what had been there in the past, I got involved with the glaciologists and geographers at the University of Ottawa, who were a great help to me. And it's with them I went to the Kluane ice fields this last two summers ago. So they were very supportive in anything geographical I needed to know. And the glaciologist who's been most helpful there, Luke Copland, was able to give me a lot of information, point me in many directions, also take me there. But the glaciers that he's been tracking have retreated massively over time.
So I've flown over one of them in Kaskowals, both in 2013 and now in 2022, and it's changing all the time. So it was, in a way, just good fortune that I was able to do these flights with the military and see it for myself and do the paintings and the photo work from it. And then this kind of serendipitous part of it, which was to fly over the same routes that had been the flight lines of the 1948 to 52. They were many years ago. And it was, in a way, it made concrete, something that you can only read about otherwise. But they let me hang out of the helicopters to take my own vertical shots. I was stunned.
They only pulled me back once, so I was able to take images. And the ones I was looking at, the mapping ones, are vertical. The camera was in a hole cut in the belly of the DC three. And that's how they did their vertical shots. I did the vertical shots by hanging out the door, but I got pretty close. And so it generated a whole wave of works that were dealing with an environment that we. That we think is there forever. The north.
It's something that we don't expect to be changing. And it's been changing for decades and.
Claude Schryer
Exponentially getting hotter, three times hotter than other places in the world. And I'm glad you've done that kind of art science work because the scientists need you as well as somebody to interpret and poeticize or whatever the artist does. In fact, that's my next question, is, what is the role of art? I've been talking about it for like, I don't know, four years now.
Claude Schryer
I'm getting pretty tired of it because.
Claude Schryer
I've heard so many fascinating answers. But from your point of view, what.
Claude Schryer
Does the value added of art say in the north or in the kind.
Claude Schryer
Of work that you're doing? How does it enrich or how does it help us act on these complex issues?
Leslie Reid
You know, I don't think it's an immediate spur to action. I think it's much more contemplative. Maybe it might force somebody to ask themselves a few questions about what their assumptions are about climate and particular climate in the north. And I. And there's no end to that. To that. Trying to touch people in their emotional center, which is what my work has always tried to do.
There's always a narrative behind the work, but it's not didactic in any way. It's to arouse thinking, feeling, mostly through feeling. Which is why I described the sense of those ghosts in these fairly liminal places that I've painted. But the other thing that struck me and remained really significant for me is with going into the Arctic with the military. So I was considered one of them. They give you an honorary rank. I think I was a captain.
Good for you. I think I outranked my father when he was flying there as a flying officer. But anyway, I'd have to check that. But anyway, I was in inuit communities as well. It started with the chance to visit the ranger camp outside of Whitehorse. This was during their, what's called operations, Nanook, which are sovereignty operations that the government has across the north every year. I don't know if they still do it, but at the time it was every August, and this was the military part of it that I joined up, which is why they could take me in helicopters, because that's what they were there to do, to be helpful, speak to the communities on the ground.
So I was part of that community and I asked to go to the Rangers camp, which was very moving to be with them. These are all Indigenous. They were First nations from north of Whitehorse. And it was a revelation for me. I knew very little about the Rangers. I knew their presence as the force of Canada in the north, that they're reservists, they're not regular military, and there is no regular military in the north. The closest base is in Yellowknife.
And they were incredibly open about their own experiences. One of them, who is quite well known amongst the ranger group, Joe O'Brien is his name. And he spoke to me as a residential school survivor. And while I knew about the residential schools, I'd never talked to anyone about them. And he had come out, I think, as an alcoholic, but had decided that he would try and do better and serve the Canada that had rescued him by joining the rangers and doing youth work with. I think he was from Carcross. And I bought a moosehead drum from him because that's how he raised money, too.
But it was such a moving story. And my escort and driver, which I had, because this was an official government thing, who were military, said they would never have heard the story if it weren't for me, the artist in the group, that Joe would never have told the military that story. And I was very moved by that response as well. That. And made me more open on the rest of the trip. When we went next to resolute and I filmed the throat singers who were entertaining the troops. That's part of the community days there.
And one of them was a young ranger named Eluria Amarolik, who was. They were both from resolute, they were entertaining the troops. And I filmed the whole thing. It's on my website, a film called Heartbeat. And I talked to them quite a bit afterwards and realized that I was seeing basically the real tip of an iceberg that wasn't referenced at all except by them. And I continued on the trip with the military. It was quite extraordinary and hoped to go back.
In the meantime, I did a big exhibition at the military museum's founders gallery in Calgary, which was the result of the work I did after that military trip. And there was a series of paintings called mapping a Cold War, which were from my vertical images, but they're also part of the series of presences of ghosts in the air. So that it's not really about mapping, it's about loss. And the works are very washed out in terms of color. There's no recognized geomorphology there. I'm not sure what your daughter would see. The mapping is there, the streams and the washed out glacial silt.
So I knew what I was working with, but I turned it into these presences that can speak to loss as well as a history of mapping.
Claude Schryer
Well, the idea of presence is important in life because if we're not present, where are we? You know, as a former Zen practitioner and now I do Qigong, it's all about presence. We were talking before we recorded about civilization collapse. And that's a difficult topic for people to approach because, you know, how do we know for sure that it's, you know, the 6th extinction is in place? Many scientific facts are pointing to indicators of collapse, certain systems that are starting to fail, ecological systems, but eventually social systems. And I understand people don't want to talk about that because sometimes you feel like you can't do much about it. But at this point in life we're a little bit older, you and I, and I feel we have a responsibility not to sound the alarm bell because it was sounded a long time ago.
It's like people know, but to kind of guide us in these times because it's not the first time that the earth has gone, that humanity has gone through difficult times. These times are particularly complex because of all these layered challenges, let's call them. How do you feel about civilization collapse? Is that something that you think about, struggle with, talk about?
Leslie Reid
Do I have time to go back a bit? Because one of the things I think that affects me a lot and guides me are the videos. I went back, I was invited to be an artist on the northwest passage leg of the Canada c three. Right, the 150th. Yes.
Claude Schryer
I was at the council when we funded some of it.
Leslie Reid
It was miraculous. And I had the best trip thanks to the Canada council jury, who said, yes, put her on leg nine. And one of the things I wanted to do was record the voices, the stories of two women I'd met with the military four years earlier. And one was Luriak, who was the throat singer in her red reservist ranger uniform, and the other was an elder in the community named Zipporah Kaluk. And the other throat singer was her daughter. So that's how I met Zipporah. And they had both agreed that I could.
Could record their stories, but I had to have an opportunity, and my opportunity was the c three stopping resolute. So I did recordings of Uluruk talking about why she joined the Rangers and talk about how we continue. She joined the Rangers, in her words, to thank her grandparents for surviving the high Arctic relocation, which is, I think, the Inuit experience of climate disaster. They were forced into it in 1953, and then Zipporah, who in the same year was moved from Pond Inlet to resolute as a nine year old. And she showed me pictures of what their. Her birth camp was like in Mittematolik or Aulitsvik, just outside of Pondinet. And she'd become quite an active businesswoman in resolute.
So these became the voices in my head as I continued working with the Arctic and it became an Arctic, not peopled with ghosts from way back, but with people working now in the climate that they have always been forced to grapple with and a climate that's changing. Robert Keltuck, who I did the show at dark Ice with, said, you know, I don't really believe in climate change. It's constant adaptation. And our climate has always changed, always adapting. And I think, yes, in the north, they will constantly adapt, as they have had to do for millennia for the rest of the planet. I'm not so sure this goes back to your immediate question. I don't see much hope.
I think we can, as artists, point out certain aspects of things that are changing, as, in a way I tried to do with my paintings of glaciers from overhead. Will most people see that?
A few will ask. Many will just see a painting. And as you know, you can't guide how people respond to work unless you want to kind of hit them over the head with. With this or do it as part of a consortium group of people all working with the same underlying conviction. I think one of the problems of saying we can keep adapting is partly we are now 8 billion people, and I'm not sure we can adapt to help 8 billion people, which will grow over the next few years to 10 billion people. And that's not going to change. No matter how many people choose not to have children, which one of my sons has chosen, it's not going to make much of a difference.
And part of the thing that I look at is the. The forces that are out there. For instance, to switch from gasoline powered cars to electric cars doesn't actually change the underlying impulse that we want more. And we want the freedom to move around and to move around on this finite planet, whatever is propelling us. And unless we are able to change that impulse of desire which feeds growth, we can't do it. And I'm not sure we're able to. People point out, well, we've had previous periods of ice ages and what have you, but nothing as global as we have now in terms of whole systems.
And by that I mean industrialized systems being impacted by it and by this change in climate systems. And I feel I'm doing my little bit. The reference is always there in my work. It's certainly there in my connections to these women in the Arctic who will constantly be adapting, because that's what Inuit do. But how it will affect the climate, I think the climate will certainly have the last say, even for the most adaptable and ingenious people I've ever encountered.
Claude Schryer
Well, some of our friends who write about collapse, friends or colleagues talk about some parts of the planet, will likely survive the upcoming upheavals because there'll be, unfortunately, places in the planet that are no longer habitable. That's already the case. Right? So how will that mass migration work? How will right wing governments react? All these things that are already starting, how will they be amplified? But how can they also be transformed into governance systems, cooperative systems that we, humanity is quite intelligent, you know, it has in the past, lived in sustainable ways.
It just has going through a growth period that's so insanely fast and greedy and sick and whatever will we survive ourselves? We don't know. But I love when you talk about ghosts, because, you know, that's so interesting to think that we can connect with other presences, let's call them presences from the past and maybe the future and all the spiritual connections that we feel but can't really express. And art helps us, I find, connect with those spaces, those places, those ethereal, unknown, untouchable. And so what I've seen of your work is in that realm. You know, the fog you talked about, I find fascinating, because then you, you can enter a space of possibility and seeming impossibility. Does that make sense?
Leslie Reid
Yeah. Well, your last phrase. Yes. It is that there is a presence there that you may or may not feel, but it hopefully is engendering something in you as the person experiencing that space, seeing it probably for the first time, and wondering why it's there, in my case, hanging on the wall. What is it trying to do? It's trying to envelop you in its own presence. And that presence, for me, has been lived in, and that was part of my really strong response to the north.
This is a lived in presence. Even though people think of it as vast and unwelcoming, far from it. It is absolutely peopled every last bit of it. And thats something ive tried to bring out in a very non didactic way to say, just what can you sense here? Its not even a question of feelings. Its. How are your senses involved with this?
Because its my senses that have taken me to the work, to the place, to those ghosts, and not wanting to commune with them, not wanting to bring them to the present, necessarily, just to let that lived presence be where it is. It is in our own sensations. And until we have sensations within ourselves about climate and what it means, we can't do anything about it. We have to have something that triggers an internal desire to do better, to rescue, even on a very small scale. What I'm saying really reaches out to very few people who might come across my work. I was really pleased that when I showed the videos as part of dark ice, people really responded to these stories from the past and could, in a sense, go there through the stories, and hopefully that took them into the space of the paintings and photo based work in that show. So sometimes I think hearing the story is important as well.
It certainly was for me in allowing myself to work with the Arctic, because really, it's not my space. I was just feeling it as, as a southerner.
Claude Schryer
Well, sometimes we question, is it my story to tell? But I think you made a journey there and brought back impressions. And, you know, one of the earlier guests on my podcast is Mary Edwards, who's an american soundscape composer who went to Norway to the same place, Svasnbald, Svalbard, Svalbald, and did one of those arctic expeditions. And she brought back similarly sound based sensations. Right. These are the things that I respectfully experienced and I bring back humbly to the world, you know, for interpretation. And not everyone can, can go to the north like I've been to Kaluit and Glulik.
But that's a privilege. It's a great privilege to be able to have spent time in the north, but we certainly should be talking more about the impact of climate change to our fellow citizens and peoples and non, you know, more than human presence beings in the north. So I'm glad that we're focusing a bit on the north now because it's an area that I haven't talked enough about in this podcast, because in Canada, the vast majority of our landmass is in the north, you know, and then there's so much going on there that is positive in the arts. I mean, Zach Knuck, the filmmaker, has been talking about inuit life for decades, you know, and there's such a wealth of knowledge of how to live in, let's call them difficult conditions, but just in those wonderful places, what can we retain, what can we learn without being sentimental about it is like, how have people lived in the past? How can we, and do we need to live in the future to be able to coexist and to be. And I'm not optimistic, but I'm not giving, not throwing the towel in either in terms of what could happen.
Leslie Reid
Yeah, you know, I don't think I actually do believe most Canadians are not interested in the Arctic. I can remember when I stood on the shore of the Northwest passage and resolute for the first time, thinking all Canadians should be born with a round trip ticket to the Arctic just so they can see what being a northern country really means. It's not going to happen, of course, but I think almost everyone who goes there has that response that you are seeing something that you cannot possibly conceive of sitting in a comfortable house in downtown Ottawa or even being out in the country backpacking. It is a different place with a culture that has lived with that space and all that it involves for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they are very proud of doing that. And all the interventions that colonialism has made in the north have been very destructive, but have not dampened that belief in themselves. And that's one thing that just moves me so much, that they have this resilience and this belief in themselves that is bred in survival.
You know, here our survival is mostly emotional survival and certainly very little to do with physical survival, but there it's actually physical as well, and it has its problems, obviously, but they deal with them in their particular cultural way. So to see that erode because of climate change is, to me, devastating. And there's very little we can do. It's heating up warmer svalbard, which you mentioned a moment ago, which I did the trip on the tall ship Antigua with other artists and writers in 2018, and since then, so much of what was there as receding glaciers has receded even further. And one of the pieces I did was a 30 foot glacier front that is fronted on water now, and that used to be the front where the water is, and it's now receded even further. So I'm not sure I want to go back and see how much further. What I do want to go back to is to hear inuit voices talking about how they live in their culture.
And I'll do one more video. When I've done them, I don't have questions. I just ask for them to tell whatever is important about their story, and they're not edited.
Claude Schryer
I look forward to that because those stories are very powerful and we need that kind of culture.
Leslie Reid
Yeah, and I think these podcasts are part of that story, so I'm glad you've invited me to do it. I do have a lot of reservation working in the north, and I'm doing a show in February with Barry Pottle, who's an urban Inuk photographer. I don't know if you know his work. I first met him when he was an aboriginal or indigenous. Indigenous, I think it was called aboriginal at the time, awareness officer for global in whatever the ministry was called at the time, Indigenous and northern affairs and whatever. They keep changing the title. Anyway, I showed him the heartbeat video because I was so worried that it would be seen as appropriation, and I was so relieved when Barry said, no, everyone needs to see this.
So I thought, okay, it was like being told that I was not intruding. And the last thing I feel I want to do is intrude. And so it is touchy to. To be sensitive to it and do work that can respond to my responses to it, that does not infringe on their own response to their land and their culture. Selva was a little bit easier. There's no indigenous culture there. There's russian and american coal mines, basically, and whalers.
That's the traces are of hunters and trappers, cabins and coal mines. When are them still functioning?
Claude Schryer
Well, we're almost done our conversation, because it can't go on forever. A couple more questions. One is, you've taught many years, many students in visual art and media and so on. What advice do you have for young artists wanting to make a go of a career at this point?
Oh my gosh. I mean, it might be an unfair question to ask, but just any younger artist listening now, you've taught many of them or some of them. What might you say to them at this point?
Leslie Reid
Okay, well, I'll probably sound like an old grump, but. And I still do some of the, as I mentioned earlier, some committees for the MFA and what have you. If I had advice, it would be to not worry about where art theory is supposed to have led you, but think about what your own responses to your culture are right now. And I think that's what a lot of indigenous and black artists are now doing. I think maybe white artists can do the same thing and see, okay, where is this taking me? It's what I had to do in facing the north, facing a culture that I knew so little about, just that old polar bear skin. And it taught me an enormous amount about myself.
And I think that's what I would ask of young artists. Don't feel you have to respond to the latest ism or whatever, but see what are your internal responses to it? What are you sensing is the presence in all of this around you? And hopefully that would take them to think of climate, because that is the overriding presence that you and I are talking about and thinking about and feeling. And young people have to do that in spite of the lures of TikTok and all the rest. And it's a very heady online world out there for them. But what does that make them think about?
What are you feeling about that? What presences are in your life that lead you to want to say something about it in your work? And they're led through a lot of theoretical writings. I'm not sure that that is actually helpful in doing the self confrontation that you need to see what you're looking at and what you're responding to, which is what I've been talking about myself for the last half hour.
Claude Schryer
I think that's good advice. And opportunities need to be there for them to engage. And we should be opening our doors and our. Whatever resources for people to be able to connect coming out of COVID and whatever comes next. That in person connection is really important for. That's why I had started those potlucks. And there will be other gatherings here in Ottawa.
Luc Lalande, who I interviewed, is doing things at the Rideau hub, community hub. So there's lots of dynamic activity going on that artists would benefit from to both express themselves and to hear that they're not alone. You know, this is what I find difficult. You're not alone, concerned about these issues, and you think the art is powerful. You're not alone.
Leslie Reid
Yeah, I guess that's what we can only hope for, because the young artist, confronted with the work in front of them, feels very alone. And I think it's hard when you're just starting out to form a kind of collective around ideas. I think that's going to happen more and more. And part of it is that move towards diversity and finding yourself in a diverse group. So there is hope for all of them. It's not easy. The culture is so success driven, and that success is how much money can you pull out of anything?
And that is the kind of neoliberal pull on everything right now, including the arts.
Claude Schryer
So let's redefine success. Let's go back to communal ways. Let's live our local lives as richly and as humbly as we can. These are the things I'm hearing a lot in the last few interviews I've been doing. It's like a leitmotif that comes back.
Leslie Reid
I would say, from my own experience, and this is where I'll sound like an old grump. The collective is not necessarily what you might need. If that's the way you feel inclined to express yourself, yes, go for it. But I think the individual can also make their own way in a very diversified field. I think of this older woman who is working through her past, which was both grief and science engineering, and doing it in a very independent way, that there's a large enough art community to accept that independent voice. And I hope that doesn't end. I hope we don't have to.
That we can only feel we can only make it ourselves through a collective. Because there are many people who go into art, because there's something very personal drawing them there. And whether it connects to a collective or not, I don't think that needs to be a particular point.
Claude Schryer
I hear what you're saying, and I've heard that individualism is problematic. But it's the type of individualism where you're not connected to things, but you don't have to be, as you say, you don't have to be part of a collective. But the collectives, they unfold. There are times when you want to join groups of artists. Sometimes you want to be alone in a residence. I understand what you're saying. I'm a bit of a collective needing person.
That's my personality. I need to be surrounded by collective energy. And I've met people who are very. I wouldn't call them isolationists. I'd say they're just independent. They are needing that solitude and that quiet time to then do the best work they can, and then they integrate with society and they contribute in their own way. It makes sense.
Leslie Reid
I mean, whichever you are, and I'm much more of the introverted kind, the work you're doing is still public domain. It still is. You're doing it and hoping there's a reception of that work. So you're never actually in isolation. You can't be, because the work will not be.
Claude Schryer
So the last question, the question I always ask people is, what are you reading or seeing or listening to these days that you would recommend anything on your bedside table or something you just read or you're about to read that.
Leslie Reid
You think is fun other than the Democratic National Convention?
Claude Schryer
Well, that happens to be this week, and it has some promise.
Leslie Reid
I watched a little bit of it, and I'm very glad of what's happened, and it might save us from Donald Trump, and I wish Pierre Poilievre. But anyway, we won't go into that.
Yeah, I actually. I have read so much on the Arctic. I still read articles on the Arctic. I've read endless books on the Arctic or articles, but, you know, I'm reading back in literature right now just for myself, so it's not. It can be very political.
Virginia Woolf, room with a view. A room of one's own, I should say. You know, and I read that 45, 50 years ago, and it's still relevant today. And you could add climate to feminism to it and think, okay, what can women do? And that's difficult. And it's such a crowded field. There are.
I hate to say this, there's so many podcasts, there are so many videos, there are so many postings, and which are the ones, you know, I've sort of limited myself to a lot of arctic research, reading, particularly the science that comes out. There's a wonderful American US Arctic research blog that publishes regularly. There's always something to follow through in that kind of material. Not all of it, obviously, but also aspects of it that make you think, oh, yeah, this is going to have a real impact. I'm thinking of their big, singular Arctic icebreaker, the healy, that had a fire on board, and you think, wow, that's the knock on effect of that across different movements in the Arctic. And different research aspects will be huge. Just that one fire and one icebreaker.
And then to read the. I get the independent Barentsburg observer, which is out of northern Norway, right on the border with Russia, and it's published in Russian as well. And they have a lot of articles on the weaponry buildup of the Russians in that area. And it's terrifying. So, yes, I read very broadly as much in science and political events and the Arctic as I do in art. In fact, I probably read about art the least now.
Claude Schryer
Well, one of my guests recently said she likes to read. They like to read pundits. And I have to say that a good political pundit is something that I enjoy. It's not literature as such, but it is very relevant and often a bit poetic, because people are interpreting the world and they sometimes go on rants and sometimes they're just confused. Right. And to admit that you don't know and that you're confused or you're trying to make sense of something like Donald Trump, that makes no sense, right. Is part of the world in which we live.
And then artists come in there and they stir things up a bit more. They just add another layer of, what about this?
How could this be? And that's why I love art.
Leslie Reid
I would add from my own experience, so I could hit the mic that how to describe. I depend on somebody coming to the work. I don't try and reel them into the work. And if people take that step forward to the work, they will get something back from it, I hope. Generally speaking, people seem to get something from the work. So it's a kind of, in a funny way, a form of punditry.
Claude Schryer
Well, we'll leave it at that. Pundits and artists and scientists and arctic whatever. Thank you, Leslie Reid, for this conversation.
Leslie Reid
Well, thank you very much, Claude. It's been a really interesting journey.
Claude Schryer
Okay, so, Leslie, we were.
Claude Schryer
We had finished this conversation and then we continued chatting, of course, and you just said something brilliant that I wanted you to try to repeat.
Leslie Reid
And I will try. It's an attempt. And it was just about what artists can do in terms of climate change. And I said, all artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art.
Claude Schryer
And that's going to piss some people off.
Leslie Reid
I think it will. But it's our climate infuses all our responses to everything, to relationships, to our culture, to our history. You can't ignore the climate that it's happening in, and that's why it has to be somehow in the art that you are involved with.
Claude Schryer
Thanks for that.