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Alex Bierk “Window” (gouache on paper); this was a gift to myself (for being awesome) that I bought at Open Studio last year. You should buy yourself a gift for being awesome too.

Have you ever spent some time in a hospital? Did you like it? Imagine living in a hospital permanently, with its bland tapioca food, plastic trays, utilitarian furniture, white walls and uniformed staff. Majority of your life is divided into segments during which you sleep, undergo maintenance procedures¹, eat and shit. You also work there and your job is entering data into Excel sheets, or convincing someone they need a widget, or installing a part inside another part inside a machine that serves a function.

This is a job you get to complain about with others during Happy Hour on Fridays when you meet in a beige pub in a plaza where you have beers and eat wings, and congratulate Donna on her pregnancy/ promotion/ retirement. You have a good dental plan and you talk about that, you talk about your teeth, and you also talk about appliances.

After the pub, you go back to the hospital where you share a bed with a person you met at The Bits & Bytes Bash or Soporific Solutions Convention some time ago, and you engage in missionary before setting your alarm clock to 9 am. The next day, you go out for a jog or brunch if you’re childless, but if you have children, you take them to the mall where you shop for curtains. The children are quiet; they’ve been prescribed Xanax since birth, they want nothing and they say nothing.

On Sunday, you prepare jokes about not having had enough coffee or having to be back at work on Monday to post on Facebook. Before going to bed, you turn on the tv that streams 49958 seasons of Love Island where clones of blondes and bros talk about “connections,” and “catching vibes.” Occasionally, this is interrupted by a report on one of many wars happening outside of the gray walls of the hospital. When Monday rolls around, you are back at your desk. You do everything all over again. One day you die. 

This is what I think a world without art would be like. And it seems most people in Canada (Toronto especially) would be completely okay with that, considering how apathetic they are towards the arts. Maybe this makes me a snob (fine) but when I think about how much potential we have here, how many talented people – willing to work for little to no money – and organizations that cannot do their work because of lack of funding, I feel rage. What is it about the arts that is so embarrassing and unimportant here that at best they’re an afterthought and at worst they’re thought of as completely unnecessary and frivolous? Why do we only have two major granting bodies (in Ontario where I live) that help support artistic practice? (In publishing, everyone applies for the same two or three grants; we are animals during drought drinking from the same disappearing puddle.)

I think of my own personal bias when I introduce myself to new people and declare that I’m a “professional artist,” but instantly feel the need to explain that this means I actually support myself by doing other non-artsy things like teaching or freelance. That’s because I believe many people in Toronto on hearing “artist”conjure an image of a tap-dancing mime; it’s not a job like selling widgets or inserting parts into parts, and it’s definitely not as serious as mutual funds.  

But even if we think about art and artists in positive ways, why should art be considered a luxury? (And if it is a luxury, why don’t we deserve this luxury?) Art shouldn't be a luxury or something that happens in places like Rome or Prague. Art is a necessity. Without art we all live in a hospital with white walls until we die. Look what happened during the pandemic – we ALL turned to art, whether consuming it, or making it! It was a relatively brief moment in time when people finally understood what art and artists are really for – which is to nourish our spirit and, ultimately, connect with each other in times of darkness. We didn’t know if we were going to perish but we created, painted, drew, wrote, watched.

And yet, we’re about to lose a major art institution in Toronto and most people won’t even blink an eye – mostly because they have no idea (how would they, considering there’s barely any arts coverage in this country?). Open Studio faces permanent closure within months if they don’t raise $75,000 by June of this year. Have you been to Open Studio? Probably not but it’s a beautiful space – think creaking wooden floors, tall ceilings, clean walls decorated in gorgeous, original artwork – and it’s located right downtown at 401 Richmond and it’s one of the remaining galleries where you can get original art for ridiculously affordable prices (yes, you can support by actually buying art). You should go. Go, visit before it closes, at least to see its gorgeous printmaking space that is one of a kind in the country and that is now closing for good. Go see it and take a picture. You can show it to your grandchildren later when they ask what happened to all the art in Toronto. (By the way, this news comes on the heels of financial woes for Hot Docs, Luminato Festival, Fringe Festival, Just for Laughs, and an upcoming strike at the Art Gallery of Ontario – I mean, bravo, Toronto!)

Maybe it’s not too late, I don’t know. Maybe this is a big test for all of us as we still have a chance to salvage one arts institution that should make this city proud. I know I don’t have a lot of readers here yet, but if you’re reading and you do care, please spread the news, please go to Open Studio yourself (the artwork for this post was bought there in December), please do something so that we don’t get all swallowed up by condos and ennui in this dumb, full-of-potential city. 

P.S. Here’s one idea – what if you work or know someone who works somewhere where they have money (like a law firm) but boring walls, and who might need some artwork or who would be interested in becoming a patron, or a donor? Could you let them know about Open Studio? Years ago, a friend purchased a condo in Toronto and the biggest draw about it was that it came with a work of art – there was a gallery that was going under who partnered with the condo developers. I mean it was what it was, but artists got paid, art got sold and the gallery stayed afloat…

1. This covers gym, socializing and surgeries