SHELLS OF THEIR FORMER SELVES
An illustrator with an eye for detail and history turns his attention to the Lost Buildings of Calgary. The results are not so much ghostly as spirited.
An illustrator with an eye for detail and history turns his attention to the Lost Buildings of Calgary. The results are not so much ghostly as spirited.
Raymond Biesinger grew up in Edmonton and has lived in Montreal for 10 years. More than anything, this accounts for the sequence in which he has produced his Lost Buildings series. Eighteen Lost Buildings of Montreal (18 Bâtiments Perdus de Montréal) came first, followed by Edmonton (21 lost buildings), Toronto (18) and Calgary (19).
Local boosters tempted to take offence should be aware that Biesinger turned his attention to Calgary before Ottawa and his current focus, Vancouver. It’s also worth noting that the self-taught illustrator says he has fond memories of time spent in our fair city on tour with his band, The Famines. “We came out there in March,” he says, recalling a gig a few years ago. “I was dressed for March in Montreal not Alberta. I got so sick I basically had to be wheeled onstage. I slept for about 40 hours over two days when it was all over.”
Sleep is in somewhat shorter supply these days as Biesinger juggles professional commissions with his passion project. “I’m working a whole lot of overtime these days, but I feel like I’m in my 20s again,” says the 39-year-old. His Lost Building posters are $40 at his website, fifteen.ca; Kit Interior Objects also carries his Calgary-centric work.
Biesinger begins his Lost Buildings poster with research—both in online archives and by talking to amateur historians in each city. He is looking for buildings of historical, architectural and social importance and says he has a soft spot in his heart “for buildings from the ’50s and ’60s that were unusual or weird—that tried to look space-age or futuristic.”
In Calgary, the Summit Hotel (1965-1989; by the end, it was a Sheraton) fit the bill. “It was old enough to be considered ugly but not old enough to be considered beautiful,” Biesinger says. It’s an observation that rings true (then as now) and reveals that Biesinger has picked up some insights worthy of an architectural historian in the course of his Lost Buildings work—and an earlier series depicting the built environment of Canadian cities on significant dates in their histories. (Calgary’s is Feb. 13, 1988, opening day of the Winter Olympics.)
But while he says he feels a connection to the engineers and architects of a bygone era, Biesinger approaches the posters as an artist rather than a historian. In cases where the photographic record proves wanting, he is forced to improvise, and, in general, he is “prone to playing the artist card,” combining elements found on different sides of the building, say, or slightly exaggerating a structure’s height or width to fit the grid of his poster.
The end result, if not scrupulously attentive to detail, does share an historian’s impulse. “Creating what no longer exists is exciting,” Biesinger says. And as for steeping himself in loss, Biesinger says he is impervious to the potentially discouraging subject matter. “I realize I’m a melancholic human being, so this seems par for the course.”