Artist remembered for large-scale public projects
‘He was a real Swiss-army-knife kind of guy’
Phillip Switzer wasn’t easily riled. Nor was he a severe disciplinarian to his four children: Colette, Ed, David and Bert. In fact, his wife Alice says, he hardly ever lost his temper. But there were limits. David recalls coming home drunk once in his early teens.
“I was telling fanciful stories of how the grade niners or Grade 10s got me into trouble. I was scrambling to get myself out of trouble,” he says.
Switzer lost his temper and took a swing. David ducked. Switzer got injured, and had to get a cast.
“My sister, very artistically, wrote on it: ‘Merry Christmas. This is what you get for beating your kids,’” David says.
Switzer had multiple myeloma and died April 28 of kidney failure at the age of 86.
Switzer was Jewish, and even though they didn’t celebrate Christmas, he loved to make Christmas cards and send them to their friends, Alice says.
“Of course there was a photograph of (the cast), and that was on the Christmas card,” she says. “He had a great sense of humour.”
Switzer didn’t take himself too seriously, but he was serious about his art. His life’s work went way deeper than a politically incorrect holiday greeting.
Many people leave a legacy behind after they die, but Switzer’s is different. You can see his legacy all over the city and beyond. You can reach out and touch it.
The sixth of seven children, Switzer was born in Calgary, the youngest son of Polish immigrants.
His little sister went to high school with Alice, and one day invited her over for tea.
“We became a group, the three of us,” Alice says. And as a group, they decided to attend art college in Calgary.
From then on, it’s difficult to talk about Switzer without talking about Alice, his life partner in every sense of the word. When she was sick of Calgary and wanted to move to Vancouver, Switzer convinced her to try Toronto instead, where he thought the art scene was thriving.
When they’d had enough of Toronto, they moved to Edmonton in 1955. Switzer got a job at CBC, even before the TV station opened its Edmonton satellite in 1961.
There, the set designer, who worked on programs like the Tommy Banks Show, met the other half of his department, Bob Forrow. He would become a lifelong friend.
“He was a go-to guy,” Forrow says.
“He was the guy who — I’d be over there and the telephone would be ringing and somebody had a problem, either a problem with the police or a leaky pipe or whatever, and he was the goto guy.”
Indeed, even when Switzer was already quite ill about eight months ago, Forrow needed his help on a tiling job in his living room.
“He was so very weak, so I said, ‘Come on over and sit in a chair.’ And he’d sit there and advise me how to do it.”
Switzer’s ability and enthusiasm to tackle any problem extended to his art.
“He was a real Swiss-army-knife kind of guy,” David says, looking up at the giant metal creche tableau that adorns the side of Holy Family Church in St. Albert.
“He got known around — if you had something to do in metal, he was the guy to talk to, even though it wasn’t really his medium.
“If he didn’t see a way through it, he would always listen,” David adds. “Though that was rare when he didn’t see a way through it.”
While he was working at CBC, Switzer was active with the Walterdale Theatre, donating his time to design sets, often accompanied by Alice and the kids, too.
After he retired from the CBC in 1991, he and Alice spent years working on their own large-scale art projects, such as the creche. Alice’s specialty was clay, and the couple have large clay murals at Servus Credit Union Place in St. Albert, Boyle Street Community Services and the Women’s Emergency Accommodation Centre.
“Mostly he did the designing,” Alice says. “I did a lot of the research and talked through it … I was his assistant and clay expert,” she says.
“They complemented one another,” Forrow says. “He would do the drawings. She is very sculptural. He was very graphic-oriented.”
Two of their most impressive works, each taking years to create, were donated to the Boyle Street centre and WEAC. The latter is called The Living Circle. It adorns two walls and sits on an adjoining ledge surrounding a staircase that reaches the centre’s highest floor. It tells the story of women getting their lives back on track.
The Switzers lived most of their 37 years in Edmonton in a house in Glenora. Even though the current occupant has changed a lot of the home, Switzer’s handiwork is everywhere: tiling, artwork, renovations.
A standout piece of his remains in the backyard where the Switzers spent a great deal of their summer time: a spiral metal staircase coming down from the second floor.
“It was in the works. We were talking about it. He had it all designed,” Alice says. “And then when my daughter decided to get married, he decided he would get it done in time for her wedding.”
A picture of the father walking his daughter down that spiral aisle was on display at Switzer’s memorial service.
Alice recalls a scene near the end from his room at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
“There was a whole number of people in his room, and everybody was talking and telling jokes,” she says.
“He was sort of lying there, and he popped up and said ‘Gee, I didn’t know it was so fun dying!’”
A sense of humour — all the way to the end.