Art at the Edge

Therese Frere

"As Newfoundland took shape as a populated land, upwards of a thousand outports grew in helter-skelter fashion, their inhabitants constrained only by the necessity of access to fishing grounds and to a bit of waterfront space. These carved communities, so in tune with the bumps and dips of the rocky land, are still easy enough to find in Newfoundland outports but with changing economies and expectations, are steadily being supplanted by new, more modern community plans. Therese Frere will rely on the memory to comprehend the situations as they were. Mrs. Frere's pastels give aid to our memories and our mind's eye to recall those sterling characteristics of the Fogo Island and Change Islands outports that we should not allow to become mere nostalgia."

Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge

Pam Hall

The Art of Knowledge.

From boat-building to berries, from knitting socks to mending nets, Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge vividly presents many of the rich, place-based knowings and doings of more than one hundred knowledge-holders from rural Newfoundland. With a singular artistic vision, renowned artist Pam Hall assisted by a host of local collaborators engages in a stunning act of cultural celebration and preservation of rural knowledge. To find Newfoundland, Hall travels to the source - a place where tradition, knowledge, life, and art intertwine. These images and texts come together to reveal and revalue the locals in a time when global monoculture seems overwhelming.

Winter in Tilting

Robert Mellin

Winter in Tilting: Slide Hauling in a Newfoundland Outport by Robert Mellin is about "slide hauling," a type of seasonal winter work using horses, which was common until the late 1980s in Tilting, Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Maintaining the slide paths was a communal activity: oral history describing the slide hauling process, watercolours of memorable places along the paths revealing place, maps and photographs from the author's 1988 trip on the winter slide path with his Newfoundland dog Sophie and with Andrew and Neil McGrath and their horse Brandy extend the metaphor of Newfoundland traditions as slow art.

Raised Beaches and Dropped Stones