SITE SPECIFIC – Northern Front Studio in Whitehorse, January 2020

It was 1985 and the Alberta economy was crashing.  One day, the Beefeater Steakhouse burnt to the ground.  Once a self-conscious symbol of new affluence, status and pride, its ruins resembled those of a dying beast.

During the eighties, I made a large series of multi-media drawings portraying the construction and deconstruction of Calgary over this turbulent time.  Larger works were exhibited in a show called “Urban Landscapes” at the Muttart Gallery.  The rest of the drawings were stored away.  They were stored away for so long, in fact, that I forgot about them.  Just as Calgary forgot that there is a bust side to boom.  Linda Leon

Old is new again.  Site Specific was shown at the Northern Front Studio in January of 2020.

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WILD IN THE CITY – Yukon Artists at Work Gallery in Whitehorse, February 2020

Animals live amongst people everywhere.  Domestic animals are our companions.  We are also surrounded by wildlife that we fail to notice until they inconvenience us by getting into our garbage.  Or startle us when we trip over them.  Or frighten us.

I’ve lived most of my life in large cities.   Urban centres contain another, parallel, world inhabited by animals.  Sometimes we put them in zoos to contain them.  Or confine them in our homes.  Humans have always tried to control what might be too wild otherwise.  Wild is a threat.  I think that that is why we gathered in cities in the first place.  And maybe to keep the other, the wild part of our selves, contained too. Linda Leon

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STAMPEDE – Shown in 2003 in downtown Calgary in an empty storefront window opposite the LRT. This tryptich commemorates the time when Calgary Stampede horses were driven into downtown Calgary, for the rodeo. This practice has been banned for quite awhile now.

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