“Living in an artist co-op, depending on the co-op you’re in, can be really great, innovative, and interesting. Or, it can be really horrible because the people are all…” My father hesitates to find the appropriate words, “Artistically freaked out. […] You’re going to find passion, so you’re either going to have amazing innovation or pots flying at your head.”
In August of 1993, my parents and I moved from a house on Perth Avenue, in the heart of the High Park neighbourhood, to the industrial district of South Etobicoke. In the month the Lakeshore Village Artists Co-op first opened, we moved into one of its three bedroom, open concept (meaning no doors, save for the bathroom), studio apartments. I was nearly three years old. We have moved twice since, within the co-op, to slightly more private apartments.
The Lakeshore Village Artists Co-op comprises four buildings that line the south side of Birmingham Street. It was the first artist co-op to have legal live/work studios, allowing artists to work and sell out of their homes. Though seemingly generic from the exterior, each building houses four floors of studio apartments that are equipped to make the environment work-suitable, such as extra exhaust fans for odours and extra plumbing for slop sinks. The co-op has two workshops and a gallery that can be booked for art exhibits or to hold birthday parties that will blow your friends’ minds.
“One of the studios downstairs was designed so that in the event of an explosion the walls will blow out, leaving the structure standing,” my mother explains to me. “That will prevent the rest of the building from being blown up.”
Larry Miller has lived here for nearly six years. A photographer since the age of nineteen, he sifts through words and memories, trying to articulate his experience in the co-op: “I think living here in this community has given me an opportunity to sequester myself in day-to-day life, with people of a similar geist.”
Shirley Kleber, another pioneer resident of the co-op, has lived here for almost fifteen years. “I was living in the neighbourhood and I heard this place was going to be an artist co-op. So I snuck in to take a look around,” she chuckles. “I was surprised that there were that many artists in the area and that they were going to subsidize us. I thought, ‘For an artist? Really?’”
Aside from the layout of the apartments, what makes LVAC particularly appealing is that a high percentage of the units are subsidized, accommodating the many artists who have unreliable and meagre financial resources. Because of this feature, hopeful applicants to the co-op must undergo an interview process and display that they are indeed working artists, before they’re allowed to move in.
Roxanne Joseph, who practices in both the literary and performing arts, has lived here for the past eleven years with her daughter, Maia. She currently serves on the Admittance Committee. “They look at your résumé, reference letters, education, and whether you’re an active artist now,” she explains, while showing me the applicant questionnaire sheet. The evaluation process examines all facets of the applicant’s career, such as peer recognition, or whether they make most of their income from their work.
My mother, Pat Lewis, got her start in puppetry in 1978, apprenticing with Frog Prince Theatre. She builds and creates her own puppet shows, primarily performing and teaching in schools and libraries. In 1987, my father, Bob Howard, joined her. “Pat introduced herself, said she was a puppeteer. I didn’t think it was weird but I thought it was a joke. I thought, ‘No one’s a puppeteer — yeah, right.’ Then I actually went to see one of her shows, and at the time kids were kind of different, because you didn’t have the Internet back then. You’d get kids all the way up to age twelve. So I was at a library, it was a full crowd, she did The Frog Who Wasn’t with a bag stage, and I was totally amazed at how good it was.”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve slept a room away from an overwhelming heap of puppet-hoarded madness. Try as they might, the ceiling-high shelves, packed with supplies and curios, have never been able to contain their contents to my mother’s work room. Puppets and puppet materials have always found their way into the rest of our apartment, claiming more space than we do.
When Shirley Kleber first applied to the co-op, she recalls that they refused to look at her portfolio, in order to judge her artistic experience objectively. “I liked that, too, because you may improve while living here. Having the workshop is excellent. My plaster piece,” she points to a long, life-size plaster woman hanging horizontally from her ceiling, “you can’t do that in an ordinary place. Now, I’m doing wax or small stuff so that I can work in my apartment, but I used that workshop a lot.”
Roxanne Joseph describes with certainty the direct influence living in the co-op has had on her artistry. “There’s more of a support system. For instance, I was working on a play and wanted to hear what the first draft sounded like. So I called up two neighbours, both of whom are actors, and got them to read it. Where else would you get that? It’s so cool, so convenient, actually. There’s a wealth of live resources.”
The tight-knit community that forms amongst the artists can often serve as a breeding ground for great creative innovation. For a number of years my mother and a fellow neighbour put together a family-friendly, non-alcoholic New Year’s Eve gathering in true, bohemian, hippy, artist fashion. As she recounts the story, I imagine a parade of people singing and dancing through the streets, an image that I suspect is not far off the mark. “We made puppets and did a little parade around the area. Then from the factory next door we got one of the big metal bins and cut fancy shapes out of the side of it and put a fire in it, so we had a fire to bring in the New Year.”
As my father describes it, creativity is never without its quirks — or flying pots. When I was twelve, my neighbour was a birthday clown and would frequent the hallways in her full makeup and costume, a feature that enhanced the excitement of leaving the apartment. An artist truly dedicated to her craft, my neighbour would never break character (squeaky voice included) if caught in her clown attire. Being yelled at by a clown to keep it down is a little startling, to say the least.
“There are a few people who’ve said, ‘Oh you guys, you’re just living off the avails of us honest people,’” Larry says, rolling his eyes. A prejudice familiar to many people living in the co-op, the mindset that Larry describes has dispirited more than one artist struggling to make a living.
Though still a performing puppeteer, my father recently made the decision to go back to school and shift away from the arts. “You see people in here who are really talented. There are a few people who have paintings in the National Gallery of Canada, yet they live in an artist co-op and they have to in order to survive. There are a few who have shows in New York all the time.”
He explains that it was ultimately the shift away from supporting local arts and culture in Canada that lead to his change of direction. “In the ‘80s Canada was different. There was a lot of funding. […] It was an amazing time for the arts, not a struggle at all. You could get tours all the time.”
If I’ve learned one thing living with artists it’s that, should I wake up one morning realizing my vocation is corporate tax law, I should consider myself a very lucky person.
Maia, Roxanne’s fourteen-year-old daughter, has lived here since she was two. “I really want to be an artist, but living in the artist realm is hard,” she explains to me with practicality and reason. “So I think I want to be an industrial design engineer. I’d also like to write, but as an engineer. I’d also want to dance on the side as an artistic outlet, and if my writing took off I would move to Australia and run with that.”
I find it reassuring to discover that Maia has shared a similarly confusing upbringing. Though skeptical of the romanticized image of the starving artist, there are some quirks that always seem to nip that cynicism in the bud. “We always have a lot of parties, but with the same people,” she contemplates. “It’s funny because they’re already crazy, but when they drink they’re even crazier. But then, if you’re not crazy, what are you?”
Indeed, apartment parties where you, the juvenile youngster, are the least drunk of the bunch; discovering an array of free cheeses and wine offered at a gallery opening downstairs; and coming home at four in the afternoon after a long, nagging day of school to find your mother still in her pyjamas, fiddling with a fuzzy mouse puppet, all make it difficult to completely reject the idea of a career in the fine arts.
“I see how hard it is to live as an artist,” Maia concludes, “and I’m not sure if I necessarily want to live like that. But it certainly is an interesting lifestyle.”
Roxanne recounts the time she came across movers carrying four tables out of one of the industrial spaces on the bottom floor of her building. After tactfully inquiring about where these items were headed, she soon discovered that they, along with an assortment of treasures, were being laid to rest by the waste bin outside the building. “There were coats [and] cowboy hats. We gave a lot of it away, there was so much,” she relays to me with a wide grin. After three hours, a small party of five had joined her, with one person climbing into the bin to sift through the goods inside.
“And that’s what artists do, right? We reclaim stuff. I guess we have no second thoughts when it comes to stuff like that.”
