Swinghammer back at Niagara Artists Centre for In the Soil

Downtown St. Catharines arts festival runs today to Sunday

THIS WEEKEND’S In the Soil arts festival in St. Catharines will also be a homecoming for Niagara Falls-raised artist Kurt Swinghammer.

The prolific singer, writer and musician will bring his latest collection of paintings to the Niagara Artists Centre (354 St. Paul St.), starting with an opening reception today at 8 p.m.

Titled “Melt,” the show is inspired by Group of Seven founder Lawren Harris’s series of iceberg paintings. They’re scenes which struck Swinghammer not just for their “clarity,” but for what is being lost.

“The idea of painting icebergs

comes from thinking about global warming every day and looking for an image that represents our precarious situation,” he said when contacted Wednesday.

“This series of landscape paintings reflect the reality of climate change as opposed to depicting an actual place. When Lawren Harris did his magnificent ice floes and arctic mountains a hundred years ago, he didn’t have to address the issues facing us today.”

The arctic paintings marked the end of Harris’s celebrated landscape period in 1935 before devoting himself solely to abstract work, which Swinghammer said was “remarkably courageous” at the time.

“He turned his back on ‘success,’ which is something that artists rarely have to negotiate, but it’s important to find examples of those who do.

“Being an heir to the Massey-Harris fortune made it a little easier to make his uncompromised artistic choices.”

The show will be accompanied by Swinghammer’s video installation “Turpentine Rewind,” an homage to Tom Thomson.

Starting in the early ’80s, Swinghammer has released 13 albums and appeared on more than 100 others. Among the artists he has played with are Ani DiFranco, Serena Ryder and Sarah Slean.

As an artist, he collaborated with Stompin’ Tom Connors in the mid-’90s for the children’s book “My Stompin’ Grounds.” He started exhibiting his work in Niagara Falls when he was 15, and was involved with the Niagara Artists Centre before moving to Toronto.

“Digging through NAC’s archive, you can see that Kurt had a huge impact in a brief period of time here,” said NAC director Stephen Remus.

The 10th annual In the Soil arts festival runs Friday to Sunday in downtown St. Catharines.

KURT SWINGHAMMER SPECIAL TO THE NIAGARA FALLS REVIEW Kurt Swinghamme returns to the region for a new exhibition of work at the Niagara Artists Centre.

NIAGARA ARTISTS CENTRE A suite of paintings titled Melt will be on display as part of the Meanwhile in Hudson's Bay exhibit by artist Kurt Swinghammer.