Christine Wignall is lonely these days.
A handful of clay sculptures are her only company. These miniature people presiding on a shelf in her new art studio don’t say much, but they watch her every move.
Wignall spends most of her studio time with a paintbrush in hand. As it dances along a once-empty canvas, it injects a much-needed burst of colour.
She paints while being tucked away and cramped in the back of a building in the Manchester neighbourhood. Wignall laments the loss of her once vibrant community in Ramsay as she works.
The proposed new Green Line Light Rapid Transit displaced people and communities in its path, including Wignall’s old art studio, despite the current uncertainty around the project.
Among those displaced is a community of around 20 artists who were forced out of the Artpoint building in Ramsay last year by the city. One of those artists is Wignall, whose studio had resided in the building for nearly 30 years.
“To see that the building has been torn down and the Green Line may not even be built is a pretty devastating thing for all of us,” says Wignall. “We really lost our home space.”
Wignall mentions that the loss of the Artpoint building has fractured the community, with the 20 or so artists whose studios were located there ending up all over town. She says that some of them now work from home, some have moved into individual studios and others have given up on practicing art altogether.
Wignall has moved into a small studio inside her son’s work building. She says that showcasing her work is more difficult now for herself and other artists in similar situations.
“Artists being able to show their work is a huge thing,” says Wignall. “But it’s not easy to show your work when you’re working individually and you don’t have a gallery space that you’re associated with. That is definitely one of the problems of not being at Artpoint; nobody sees your work unless they’re specifically invited to your studio.”
To accommodate the Artpoint community, the city has leased a space downtown on 11th Avenue. However, Wignall questions the practicality of the solution. Parking is scarce and someone from inside the building needs to be contacted ahead of time to open the doors, which Wignall says isn’t conducive to visitors.
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City Councillor Gian-Carlo Carra is aware of the hardships artists are facing because of the building demolition. In an interview over the phone he admitted it was “incredibly aggravating” to see the Artpoint building demolished to make way for the Green Line, only to see construction put on hold after the province pulled their funding from the project in September.
Carra encourages artists who have been displaced or are struggling to find space to showcase their work to reach out to cSPACE, a sister organization of Calgary Arts Development that helps artists find temporary lease agreements.
Although the situation has been tough for the Artpoint community, Wignall has created something positive from it. Last spring, while preparing to leave the property, she held a blowout sale of nearly everything in her studio. Wignall put that money into a scholarship for mature students at the Alberta University of the Arts.
Her goal for the scholarship is to help artists study abroad, an experience she shared with her late husband. They both returned to art school in their sixties to get their degrees and studied abroad in Spain for a year.
“My husband and I both believed that travel broadens perspectives and makes better artists,” says Wignall. “We thought that was the best year of our lives.”
The scholarship, initially funded by selling her husband’s art after his passing, totalled $25,000 after Wignall’s sale last spring.
“You can’t cry over spilled milk,“ says Wignall. “The building is gone. So what do you do? You do the best that you can.”