Biographical
Notes
Marlene Creates (pronounced
"Kreets") is an environmental
artist whose hybrid processes
include memory mapping,
photography, video, poetry,
installation, scientific and
vernacular knowledge, and
site-specific multidisciplinary
collaborative guided walks in the
six acres (2.4 hectares) of
old-growth boreal forest where she
lives, at the edge of the 920-acre
(372 hectares) Blast Hole Pond
Conservation Area, which she
helped establish in the town of
Portugal Cove on the island of
Newfoundland / Ktaqmkuk, Canada.
Born in Montreal in 1952, she
studied visual arts at Queen’s
University in Kingston, Ontario
(Bachelor of Art Education,
Honours, 1974), and then lived and
worked in Ottawa for twelve years.
In 1985 she moved to
Newfoundland—the home of her
maternal ancestors, who were
settlers on Fogo Island and in
Lewisporte.
For over 40 years her work has
been an exploration of the
relationship between human
experience, memory, language and
the land, and the impact they have
on each other. In the late 1970s
she started creating temporary
landworks which she photographed
(as in the series Paper,
Stones
and Water, 1979–1985).
This led to several years of
working with what she called
‘memory maps,’ which were drawn
for her by other people (as in the
series The Distance Between
Two Points is Measured in
Memories, 1986–1988, and
Places
of Presence: Newfoundland kin
and ancestral land, Newfoundland
1989–1991).
Hearing elderly people’s stories
as they drew memory maps for her,
and sensing a relationship between
language and the land, she spent a
decade photographing found public
signs in the landscape. She has
also been commissioned to create
signs and markers that incorporate
other people’s stories about
specific places.
Since 2002 her work has focused
on the six acres of boreal forest
where she lives in a ‘relational
aesthetic’ to the land. This
oeuvre includes Water
Flowing
to the Sea Captured at the Speed
of Light, Blast Hole Pond River,
Newfoundland 2002–2003,
and several ongoing projects:
—The Boreal Poetry
Garden (2005–) which uses
words in situ, many
inspired by Newfoundland
vernacular. This work takes the
form of photo-landworks, an
interactive web-based Virtual
Walk of The Boreal Poetry Garden,
documentary video-poems, and
site-specific, multidisciplinary
events, which are crossings
between the arts and sciences as a
way to look at both the ecological
and the experiential foundations
of place;
—Larch,
Spruce, Fir, Birch, Hand, Blast
Hole Pond Road, Newfoundland (2007–)
which concerns the
inter-relationship of individual
native trees, their context in the
collective of the forest system,
and the human perceiver;
—What Came to Light at
Blast Hole Pond River
(2015–), based on photographs
taken by a trail camera that is
triggered by the movement of
wildlife at ground level, and the
concurrent movement of celestial
bodies overhead. Heaven and Earth,
if you like.
Since the mid-1970s her work has
been presented in over 350 solo
and group exhibitions and
screenings across Canada and in
Austria, China, Denmark, England,
France, Germany, India, Ireland,
Korea, Scotland, and the United
States. Since 2005 she has held
over 40 site-specific,
multidisciplinary public events in
The Boreal Poetry Garden, which
have been attended by over 900
people.
She has been a guest lecturer at
over 200 institutions and
conferences across Canada and
abroad, including Chile, Italy,
the United Kingdom, and the United
States, among them the National
Gallery of Canada, the Glasgow
School of Art, the University of
Oxford, the University of
Plymouth, the University of
Hartford, the Edinburgh College of
Art, and the Universities of
Turin, Venice, and Siena. She was
an invited panelist at the Fifth
National Women in Photography
conference, held in Boston in
1997; the keynote presenter at the
symposium Art,
Rural Life and Environmental
Concern at the Bristol
School of Art, Media and Design at
the University of the West of
England in 2008; a plenary speaker
at the conference Space
+ Memory = Place of the
Association for Literature,
Environment, and Culture in Canada
(ALECC) at the University of
British Columbia Okanagan in
Kelowna in 2012; and a keynote
speaker at the conference Trees
In/And/Around
Literature in the Anthropocene at
the University of Turin, Italy,
(via Skype) in 2019.
She has been the curator of
several exhibitions, has worked in
artist-run centres (SAW Gallery in
Ottawa and Eastern Edge Gallery in
St. John's) and has taught visual
arts at Algonquin College
(1975–82), the University of
Ottawa (1982–85), and the Nova
Scotia College of Art & Design
(1998). She was a director of the
Photography Program at the Banff
Centre (1991) and an invited
academic visitor for the Art,
Space + Nature MFA program at the
Edinburgh College of Art (fall
term, 2015). She has also led
multidisciplinary environmental
and place-based art projects with
about 3,000 school children in
Newfoundland.
Her volunteer and community work
includes positions with the Board
of Eastern Edge Gallery, the Arts
and Letters Committee of the
Government of Newfoundland and
Labrador, the National Council of
the Royal Canadian Academy of
Arts, the Board of VANL-CARFAC
working for artists’ rights, and
co-founding both the Advisory
Committee on the Environment (ACE)
and the arts association, Partners
for the Arts, for the Town of
Portugal Cove–St. Philip's.
Her work is in numerous public
collections across Canada,
including The Rooms Provincial Art
Gallery in St. John’s, the Canada
Council Art Bank, and the National
Gallery of Canada.
Marlene Creates received a 2019
Governor General's Award in Visual
and Media Arts for "Lifetime
Artistic Achievement". In 2021 she
was invested into The Order of
Newfoundland and Labrador, "the
highest honour that the Province
can bestow" and recognizes
"individuals who have demonstrated
excellence and achievement in any
field of endeavour benefiting, in
an outstanding manner,
Newfoundland and Labrador and its
residents."
She has also received the
following honours and awards:
–The inaugural Artist of the
Year award, a Best of
Portugal Cove-St. Philip's
Community Award, 2021.
– The Mary MacDonald
Award for Excellence in
Visual Arts (EVAs) from
VANL-CARFAC, which "thanks an
individual or organization whose
efforts have helped to sustain and
build the visual arts sector,"
2019.
– Grand Jury Award
at the Yosemite International Film
Festival, 2014.
– BMW Exhibition Prize,
which acknowledges "an outstanding
Open or Featured exhibition" in
the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography
Festival in Toronto, 2013.
– CARFAC National Visual
Arts Advocate Award "for
an outstanding contribution to
visual arts advocacy," 2009.
– The Long
Haul
Award
for Excellence in Visual Arts
(EVAs) from VANL-CARFAC, which
"recognizes a substantial
contribution to the visual culture
of Newfoundland and Labrador by a
senior artist," 2009.
– Artist of the Year
Award from the
Newfoundland and Labrador Arts
Council, the first visual artist
to receive this award, 1996.
Marlene Creates was elected to
the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
in 2001.
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