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2. Brenda
Pelkey
Maxine Coleman’s Quiet Refuge, September 1989
cibachrome print
50.0 x 105.0 cm
1990 AUG
Saskatchewan Arts Board Permanent Collection
1991-009
About The Artist
Born in Kingston, Ontario in 1950, Brenda
Pelkey currently resides in Saskatoon. She received
her education in art at Sir Sandford Fleming College of Applied
Arts and Technology and Trent University in Peterborough,
Ontario.
Pelkey’s work has largely comprised
of large colour photographs of the yards of ordinary people.
These eccentric gardens and constructions are found in the
quiet streets of Saskatoon – small havens of quirky individualism
and free-expression. This weird and wonderful documentation
of whirligigs, ceramic woodland creatures, plastic planters,
scale models of churches, and electric trains ultimately questions
the rigid categories of “artist” and “ordinary
person”, as well as “real art” and “kitsch”
or “bad art”. She recognizes in these amateur
“sculptured” gardens the desire to create –
to mould raw material, to use space, to give memories and
dreams shape and weight. She sees in these personal
spaces the urge to transform the world through imagination.
Pelkey treats these backyards with respect, even tenderness,
recognizing that the impulse behind them is like the motivations
of her own art.
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