37 Year Old Crime: Stolen Paintings Recently Discovered Yet To Be Returned to Confederation College

On the left is an image of 1970s artwork by Norval Morrisseau, 

stolen from Confederation College in 1981. On the right is a 

similarly styled Morrisseau painting from 1965

     “Four valuable paintings on display at Confederation College were stolen Thursday night and college officials are hoping that the community will assist in helping recover them.” So read the article in the Chronicle Journal of February 27, 1981. 

     In 1981 it was two young people that the police were hoping to identify. The two had “left the impression with staff they were working and removing the paintings from one part of the building to another – not unusual procedure in the college,” states an article in the Chronicle Journal of March 5, 1981.

    Two of those paintings were stolen from the wall behind the College’s front desk; paintings titled Demi-God Figure 1 and Demi-God Figure 2. These painting by Norval Morrisseau were donated to the College in the 1970s. At the time they were valued at $3,500.00 each. The other two paintings are Carl Ray works. Purchased by the College in the 1970s they were hung on the second floor. Not appraised at the time, the Ray works were of similar value. Today all four paintings could be worth nearly half a million dollars. 

      37 years later, the two Morrisseau paintings have turned up along with one of the stolen Carl Ray’s. According to sources the person who has them lives in Montreal. Although this private collector did not steal the paintings this collector has hired a lawyer in an attempt to retain the art works. At first however, this collector was looking to sell the paintings. The agent hired to assist was knowledgeable enough to recognize the stolen works. She dutifully called the police. Both the Surete du Quebec and the Thunder Bay Police are investigating. 

     Mike Rozic, the Senior Manager of Public Safety and Risk Management at the College states, “Confederation College is aware of the ongoing investigation into the paintings that were stolen in 1981. We are working with the police and are hopeful that the paintings will be returned after more than 35 years.”

    Before purchasing a painting it’s a good idea to know its provenance, especially works by nationally recognized artists. Private collectors are usually keen to loan pieces of their collection to a public gallery for, let’s say a retrospective; it’s of public benefit and helps to increase the work’s value. Every collector would love for the value of a work they own to increase, in spite of claiming a predominating sentimental value.

    Certainly Confederation College and this city has sentimental value for such works. Had the College been in possession of the Morrisseau’s and Ray’s they would have loaned them out numerous times over 37 years. Our Thunder Bay Art Gallery, with one of the biggest collections of indigenous art in the country would be keenly interested in the return of these paintings to the College and would likely put on a show to celebrate such an event. The TBAG as we know is uniquely located just behind the College. Sharing is not a problem. Staff could walk the paintings over.

     That is if the paintings are returned soon enough. The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is getting a 33 million dollar new home at Prince Arthur’s landing in the North Core. An added feature of the opening ceremonies with ribbon cutting and popping corks might be the prominent display of missing artworks returned.
Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com

The Art of Cheryl Wilson-Smith

     If 21 Pillows was a film feature you could imagine a parade of B-list actors hopping in and out of each other’s beds. But the movie that came to mind when I took a closer look at Cheryl Wilson-Smith’s amazing glasswork splayed across burlap pillows was the animated film by Brad Bird, Ratatouille. 

     In the film the harsh food critic Anton Ego, when first tasting this modest French dish has his taste buds set alight. And then his mind. He recalls a sad day decades ago, turned better by the hot meal his mother made for him. Mr. Ego becomes a child again, momentarily removed from his adult burdens, but his day has changed for the better and he skips away from the restaurant eager to return. 

   Similarly I was sent back in time when I began taking photographs of Cheryl’s work for this article. Careful and patient work went into creating thousands of glass pieces that mimic rocks of various kinds. Cheryl received financial support from the Ontario Arts Council and laborious support from her husband and son. They all spent days and nights in Cheryl’s studio in the basement of a dance hall in Red Lake. Each piece is made of layers of coloured glass and fired together. When you see the work up close you’re likely to be in awe on that front alone. Placed on pillow-shaped sacks that mimic landscapes the glass-rocks look like topographies that you might find all over the world, but in miniature.

     The glass-rocks are not arranged by the artist. That’s your job if you head down to the gallery. So in the photos for this article are the contributions of those who placed and arranged the stones. This democratization of art, the sharing between artist and viewer is a lovely feature of Cheryl’s work. I first thought of the enjoyment and challenge of scrambling up and down, in and around disorganized boulders in different parts of the country. Chippewa’s rock pier came to mind.

My 65 Million year old friend from Mexico.

     Another memory jogged by the show was when I travelled with Mexican friends to a small town in the mountains near Guanajuato. A modern road cut into the side of a mountaintop revealed layers of multi-coloured sediment. Curious, I approached the sediment and to my amazement there were thousands of small fossilized sea creatures embedded into one layer. I pulled out a fossilized cretaceous ammonite shell, the size of my palm.   

     It hit me like a speeding bulldozer. I suddenly realized that the mountain I was standing upon was in the middle of a continent, in a desert! And formed from what was once the sea bed of an ocean! My heart skipped a beat and my mind leaped into a bizarre kind of overdrive. The closest poets get to describing this feeling is by relating it to a religious experience, but it was greater than that because it connected to something incredibly real. I was holding a sea creature that was at least sixty five million years old. In a desert. At the top of a mountain. I had a nature-numinous moment, understanding intuitively how short and humble our lives are in comparison to how vast nature is. God. Art. Politics. Human history. All of it, just a blip.

     So like Anton Ego, I was transported to other times and places, not with food, but a sculptural installation in a gallery. And my day was bettered for it.
Duncan Weller www.duncanweller.com