Todd Gronsdahl's works from this series are based on the Emma Lake Workshop Series. A project that furthered modernist painting and sculpture in North America and linked Saskatchewan and NYC for decades. In the re-imagining of the history, the important artists did not bring there avant-garde cannon to SK, but came to the north to glean what they could from a mythical and wildly progressive artist named Emma Lake.
The history from The Saskatchewan Maritime Museum reads:
"Emma Lake lived and worked in Northern Saskatchewan in the middle decades of the 20th century. Her home and studio was always open to the eager and curious and because of the vigour and abundance of her output, became a Mecca for young upstarts . Lake’s attitude, focus, imagination and intuition lead to many quantum breakthroughs in form and composition. Perhaps due to her geological location or state of sexual politics at the time, she never attained the glory or attention of the artists that gleaned a signature style from those works she most generously shared.”
September 2022-December 2022