Village Squire, 1980-06, Page 21NEW ART GALLERY
Robert Nephew, a Goderich photo-
grapher, is turning his love of art into a
vocation, with the opening of an art gallery
in an old home on Montreal Street.
Mr. Nephew, who said he's always been
interested in collecting art, will feature
paintings, prints and decorator
photographs in the gallery, located in his
studio at 65 Montreal Street, Goderich.
The gallery will open to the public on
June 23.
A special guest at the opening will be
Jim Clary, a Michigan artist noted for his
paintings of Great Lakes ships, and his
interest in ship lore.
Mr. Clary digs through rolls of micro-
film ., old newspaper clippings and marine
museums in his search to research some of
the sailing ships or more modern freighters
which are the subject of his art.
In the case of his painting of the Edmund
Fitzgerald, which mysteriously sank in
Lake Superior in 1975, Mr. Clary used the
records of the U.S. Coast Guard and the
National Weather Service to help him
reconstruct the tragedy.
When Mr. Clary has completed a
painting, he then does a series of limited
edition prints of the work.
In doing this, he joined a select group of
marine specialists who preserve the old and
interesting art of ship portraiture. In
addition to the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald
Mr. Clary had done portraits of the
beautiful; cruise ship S.S. South America,
the U.S.S. Michigan, a paddlewheel
bark -rigged steamer and a number of the
sailing vessels that once plied the lakes.
Mr. Nephew said in addition to Mr.
Clary's work, he will also be gradually
adding the work of other artists to the
gallery, which will likely be open Tuesdays
to Saturdays, in conjunction with the
photography business.
THE TRAPPINGS OF KINGS
Weapons, court helmets, banners and
crowns - the accessories of England's kings
and queens will be displayed this summer
at Gallery Stratford.
The show, which opens June 2, is called
fittingly, The Trappings of Kings, and
includes the stylistic horses from the recent
production of Richard 11 and many of the
costumes worn through the years in the
1=_stival's historical dramas.
While that show might lure Festival
vistors to the gallery, another exhibition
will likely also catch their eye. It's called
Portfolio 80, and will display contemporary
stained glass works by 15 leading artists.
Gallery Stratford is itself the work of
some Victorian -era craftsmen, who built an
unusually lovely pump house for Strat-
ford's water supply. The building is now
over a century old, and even the tall brick
chimney that carried away steam from the
boilers is still intact.
The pumphouse, now the home of
Gallery Stratford, can be reached from the
grounds around the theatre by a
footbridge, or by driving along Romeo
Street, recognizable by the large furniture
factory on the corner.
The building,opened in the 1880's, and
made of red and yellow brick with
Gothic -arched windows, was once one of
the city's status symbols. Today the
gallery, set in a three -acre park with a pond
and fountain, continues as a status symbol.
The pump house was transformed into a
gallery by the Stratford itrt Association as
a Centennial project, and is now open
year-round.
In addition to a permanent collection of
work by both Canadian and international
artists, it also hosts a number of special
exhibitions throughout the year.
SAVING THE STATION
Heritage St. Marys is hoping to sign a
lease with CN to save the town's historic
Junction Station.
The history group were recently notified
that CN will consider a five-year renewable
lease with the organization if the station is
used "only for historical purposes."
The building is already scheduled to be
plagued by the Canadian Historic Sites and
Monuments Board in 1981.
The decision by CN to lease the building
is a turnaround from previous policy since
both the history group and private in-
dividuals have tried to buy or lease the
building in the past.
At one time, in addition to the station,
there was a limestone roundhouse of
Gothic architecture on the site, as well as
maintenance sheds, cattle pens, and a
large wooden water tank.
The station has been boarded up since
1966, and has been the target of vandals
over the years, Some of the doors have
been forced in, the floor is in disrepair and
the roof needs repairing.
Harvey Dust, a Heritage St. Marys
member, said the Ontario Heritage
Foundation has agreed to donate $2,000
towards restoring the station.
Members of the St. Marys Stonetown
Model Railroad Association have proposed
using the station's main room as the
location for a model train setup.
The proposal is to build a replica of the
Junction Station and surrounding
community as it appeared in its heyday,
complete with working model. traits.
Perth archivist Jim Anderson told the
history group if the station is to be used, it
must be brought up to modern standards.
A MENNONITE MUSEUM
The Meetingplace, a public information
centre beside the St. Jacobs post office,
has become a sophisticated multi -media
museum which provides visitors with a
glimpse into the Mennonite lifestyle.
Besides a film auditorium, the Meeting -
place includes replicas of a Swiss cave,
where early Mennonite fugitives met to
practise their religion away from prying
eyes, a typical Old Order Mennonite farm
kitchen and the interior of a meeting
house.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating
attractions of the Meetingplace is a short
film, Mennonites in Ontario, which tells of
the peoples' move north from Pennsylvania
to Upper Canada in the 1850's. Almost
7,000 people in Waterloo County still speak
the distinctive Pennsylvanian German.
The film also shows the often
thoughtless reaction of tourists to the Old
Order Mennonites, who have always been
a private people. In the film, a
photographer waylays a Mennonite father
and daughters, snaps closeups of them and
then walks away without a word, as if they
were waxswork figures rather than people
with a right to privacy.
Another woman tourist who would likely
never dream of invading a stranger's car,
trespasses onto a meeting house yard and
climbs into one of the waiting buggies.
The Mennonites have always been
excluded from society, as the film shows,
and the tendency of Old Order Mennonites
to keep to themselves and their
old-fashioned ways is a reflection of this.
The religious order began in Germany
and the Low Countries in the 1520's, an
offshoot of the Protestant Reformation.
They were named after one of their early
leaders, Mennon Simons. The orders
insistence on adult baptism led to their
being hunted down mercilessly for more
than 100 years. They fled to Poland, Russia
and Switzerland and eventually migrated
to the New World in the thousands,
seeking a respite from persecution.
Although the Old Order Mennonites still
dress in traditional costumes, and use the
horse and buggy for transportation, other
branches of the order have adopted more
'modern ways, entering the arts and
sciences and going into industry, as well as
setting up disaster relief organizations like
the Mennonite Relief Fund.
The film's producers, John Ruth and
Burton Buller, found today the traditional
horse -and -buggy Mennonites are a minor-
ity within the Mennonite church.
VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1980 PG. 19