The Group of Seven Guitars
Art history is replete with works in one medium inspired by those in another. Think of Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, or William Carlos Williams’ Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, both poems derived f rom the painting of that name. The Art Gallery of Ontario has a beautiful portrait of the Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, based on the poem by Tennyson. And Claude Debussy’s La Mer is said to have been inspired by The Great Wave off Kana- gawa, a woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai.
A particularly Canadian version of this came together in 2014, when the McMichael Gallery commissioned seven Canadian l uthiers ( guitar makers) to craft an instrument based on one of the famed Group of Seven painters. The results range from the prosaic to the whimsical: Linda Manzer, who also conceived the project, built a second neck on her instrument to showcase Lawren Harris’s painting of Mount Lefroy, while George Gray’s guitar includes an inlay made of rock from the Canadian Shield.
The project doesn’ t transfer seamless ly into yet a third medium, but the 80- minute film does have the benefit of allowing us to hear each instrument played by a variety of Canadian musicians including Jesse Cook, Toney Springer and Suzie Vinnick. It would be nicer to have a closer look at the finished guitars; for that, you may have to make a trip to the gallery that houses them. ½ The Group of Seven Guitars opens Feb. 2 at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs cinema in Toronto. The guitars will be on display at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg, Ont., until March 18.