Born October 26
Chemainus, BC 1935
Flakey: The Early Artworks of Glenn Lewis
Attended Vancouver School of Art
Vancouver, BC 1954–1958
Young Glenn Lewis in Banff, Alberta
c. 1958
Attended Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1958–1959
Teacher of Art and Social Studies, Garibaldi Junior High
Haney, BC 1959–1961
Studied ceramics with Bernard Leach
St. Ives, Cornwall 1961–1964
early ceramics
1964–1965
Teacher of Ceramics and Art Teaching Methods, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1964–1967
Glenn Lewis is the latest to show his wares and his extensive display affirms an emphatically superior craftsmanship in a context emphasizing a down-to-earth practicality and masculine idiom.
Vancouver, BC 1965
Bau Xi Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1965
“Crafts”, National Gallery of Canada
Ottawa, ON 1966
Statements
1966
Prize for sculpture in “Perspective 67”, Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, ON 1967
Canada Council B Grant
1967
Contributed to Canada Pavilion, Expo 67
Montreal, QC 1967
“Birth and Rebirth of Objects”, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1967
“Joy and Celebration”, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1967
“Perspective 67”, Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, ON 1967
“Vancouver 5”, Isaacs Gallery
Toronto, ON 1967
Tonight in Toronto four excited young Vancouver artists will be presented with awards by Secretary of State Judy LaMarsh for their entries in Perspective ’67.
Vancouver, BC 1967
High and Dry
Installed at the Douglas Gallery in 1968 1967
Wind Velocity NIL
Installed at the Douglas Gallery in 1968 1967
Rip Torn
1967
Into this sparkling ambiance Glenn Lewis has introduced his small white porcelain sculptures. […] They subvert in a half-playful, half-mocking way the practical use of cups, plates and saucers, crumpling and ripping them as though they were paper.
Ottawa, ON 1967
“B.C. 67”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1967
Japanese Neon (video)
1967-1968
Canada Council B Award
1968
Prize for sculpture in “Winnipeg Annual”, Winnipeg Art Gallery
Winnipeg, MB 1968
Prize for sculpture in “Spectrum 68”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1968
Lived and worked at New Era Social Club
Vancouver, BC 1968
“Spectrum 68”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1968
“Winnipeg Annual”, Winnipeg Art Gallery
Winnipeg, MB 1968
“Younger Vancouver Sculptors”, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1968
“Across the Border”, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
Seattle, WA 1968
With these new materials we enter into a looking glass world where nothing is as it seems. And any well polished surface makes the viewer if only fleetingly a physical part of the sculpture.
Vancouver, BC 1968
Traveller’s Companion Series: Fairy Ring
1968
Nothing is Revealed
1968
Works from Douglas Gallery Exhibition
1968
Douglas Gallery environment (video)
1968
They are more than three dimensional shapes and the artists have set up in space objects and podiums with no palpable boundaries. The “real” and the “illusory” march hand in hand.
Vancouver, BC 1968
Movie Theatres
1968
“Stonehenge” or “The Great Salt Shakers”
c. 1968
Lewis and his ex-student Gathie Falk are exploring a combination of media that is highly unusual in the whole field of art and which puts the viewer on edge primarily because of the contrast between slickly finished machine made ‘packaging’ and personally formed ceramic objects. They are creating a “school of local sculpture.”
Vancouver, BC 1968
“Canadian Artists 68”, Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, ON 1968
Flour Piece
Performance at Vancouver Art Gallery 1968
“Younger Vancouver Cross Section 68”, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Victoria, BC 1968
Douglas Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1968
[The Douglas Gallery show] marks his breakthrough as an environmentalist – or rather as the dual creator of miniatures and mind-blowing vistas of silvery space.
Vancouver, BC 1968
In 1967 he began to use plastic boxes as reliquaries and environments for his porcelain sculpture; their factory-made anonymity a startling contrast to their contents.
Toronto, ON 1968
Canadian Pacific
1968-1969
Canada Council B Grant
1969
“Intermedia Exhibition – Electrical Connection”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1969
“Six Man Show”, Douglas Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1969
“Intermedia Sculpture Exhibition”, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Victoria, BC 1969
“Wall Graphs”, Ace Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1969
Lewis’ exhibit never attains the status of an art object, and it implies only the most vague and general position in a process of making objects. A self-conscious tour-de-force, it establishes the aura of the artist, the atmosphere of his presence, with the absolute minimum of proof.
Vancouver, BC 1969
Blue Tape Around City Block
1969
Clouds in Sky Room Freshener
1969
Rice Krispie Piece
Performed at the Festival for Contemporary Arts 1969
Empty Lot (Circular View)
c. 1969
Forest Industry
Roberts Creek, BC 1969
“New Art of Vancouver 1969”, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara
Newport, CA, Santa Barbara, CA 1969
Glenn Lewis with a section of his mural “Artifact”
1969
“The whole idea of significance, the heroic idea of art, is a bummer. Everything is significant, every rock and twig. So much so that it’s hard to know what’s what.”
Vancouver, BC 1969
Why did he choose it? “I’ve always been attracted to graph paper. I have a whole collection of it with all different lines. It’s an indispensable kind of tool in our very systematic society.”
Vancouver, BC 1969
Japanese Pickle
1969
Details, City Block
1969
The July 11 performance […] is free to the public, and is termed by the National Film Board “an eye and mind cleaning process toward the apprehension of a new reality.”
Vancouver, BC 1969
While Lewis is focusing attention on the ceramic objects themselves and the dichotomies between superb craftsmanship and impolite psychic suggestions, he is also structuring and altering the entire environment within the boxes and within the context of the room.
Newport, CA 1969
Performed “Simulation for New York City”, New York University
New York, NY 1970
Performance tour with Yvonne Rainer and Barbara Dilley (Lloyd)
Vancouver, BC – Alfred, NY 1970
Curated Intermedia Exhibition and Nine Evenings of Performances, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1970
“Artifact” sketch
c. 1970
Porcelain Landscapes
c. 1970
Lewis calls it Artifact. The making of art is as important as the product. This idea in itself is a move away from the one of a precious object in a specific area, painting or sculpture or architecture.
Vancouver, BC 1970
Four Intersections (Video)
1970
Artifact
1970
Street Scenes, City Block
1970
Sea Shells in the Forest at Storm Bay with Bedroom
1970
Vancouver Topiary
c. 1970
Windows
c. 1970
Did You Ever Milk a Cow? (with Michael Morris)
1970
Artifact (details)
1970
Four Intersections
1970
A show cow, winner of the Quebec Agricultural Fair gold medal in 1969, shown in the unexpected context of an art gallery, staring at a painting of a 19th century predecessor in a lavish gold frame – this exhibit has proved one of the most controversial in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Survey ’70, subtitled Realisms.
Vancouver, BC 1970
400 Yards of Burned Paper in a Square
Performance at University of Calgary 1970
It could be that some taxpayers’ money may be involved in this episode, and 50 half-hours of wasted time brings to mind there are better things to do on a lovely sunny day in April in Vancouver.
Vancouver, BC 1970
“Intermedia Exhibition & 9 Evenings of Performances”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1970
“Art in the Mind”, Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College
Oberlin, OH 1970
“Realisms”, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Ontario
Montreal, QC, Toronto, ON 1970
Glenn Lewis with his work
1970
[…] The commissioner called in his entire office staff to view the mural. Three of these highly sophisticated and artistically educated people BLUSHED when they saw the work. ‘Oh, oh,’ said the commissioner and the mural was not hung.
Vancouver, BC 1970
“8 Closets”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1970
His Closets shows [sic] what he learned: unerring placement of elements; tenderness for what is weathered, damaged even; and a refinement in which that faint preciosity which for me has sometimes marred his work has been burned away.
Vancouver, BC 1970
The film is slowed down to 16 frames per second silent speed, so that he penetrates the forest gently, reverently. Sometimes he is like a swimmer underwater, disappearing in pools of greenery or moving half-hidden behind a dappled screen of ferns.
Vancouver, BC 1970
[The closets are] about six months old. They’re not my current work. In some ways they’re incidental to it. They’re my artistic accumulations, a way of documenting what I’ve done, like a collage in a sense. The inside part – the object – is the end-product of all the boxes I had been doing before.
Vancouver, BC 1970
Taping the Critics (with Michael Morris)
1970
“B.C. Almanack”, National Film Board
Ottawa, ON 1970
Artifact
1970
Alfred Film Screening
c. 1970-1971
Visiting Professor in Ceramics, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University
Alfred, NY 1970–1971
Board of Trustees, Intermedia
Vancouver, BC 1970–1973
“Image Bank Postcard Show”, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1971
Sound for Forest Industry
c. 1971
Greenwood Hill, New York
1971
A Performance (Donut Holes)
1971
Ichiban Dashi Recipe
c. 1971
Tables laden with apples and bananas invite you to help yourself, while Glenn Lewis in a comic knitted Mickey Mouse mask and a big white apron officiates at a propane gas stove, filling the gallery with the most tantalizing odor as he makes doughnuts. (He opened his last show at the Ace Gallery with a Sunday brunch).
Vancouver, BC 1971
Projects Co-ordinator, Intermedia Society
Vancouver, BC 1971–1972
Sessional Faculty, Ceramics, Sculpture and Drawing, Fine Arts Department, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1971–1974
Performance tour with Image Bank, Gerry Gilbert, Gathie Falk, Gary Lee Nova
Halifax, NS, Toronto, ON, New York, NY 1972
“N.Y. Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver Food Meeting”, Food Restaurant
New York, NY 1972
Mick’s Clay
c. 1972
New Era Social Club at the Vancouver Art Gallery
c. 1972
Contingent Blue Tape, Irrational Construction
1972
Kingsway Taping
1972
New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver
Performance at Crystal Pool, Vancouver 1972
R. Mutt
1972
“Art Probe”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1972
Performed in “German T.V. Dinner” by Dr. W. von Bonin, Western Front
Vancouver, BC 1973
Performed in “Black and White Tennis” by Evelyn Roth, “Pacific Vibrations”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1973
“Traces”, Burnaby Art Gallery
Burnaby, BC 1973
“Canada Trajectoires 73”, Musee moderne de la ville de Paris
Paris 1973
Board of Directors, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1973–1976
Performed and Organized “B.C. Open Art Race” for “Access Series”, CBC TV
Vancouver, BC 1974
“Surfacing on the Subliminal”, Western Front
Vancouver, BC 1974
“Artists of the Stamps”, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery
Burnaby, BC 1974
“Project 74”, Kölnischer Kunstverein
Köln 1974
Image Bank postcard show, and/or Gallery
Seattle, WA 1974
“Open Encounter on Video”, Institute of Contemporary Art
London 1974
Great Wall of 1984
1974
Hitler at Wreck Beach
1974
Chinese Rice Garden
1974
Emceed “Hollywood Decca Dance and Art’s Birthday”, Elks Building
Los Angeles, CA 1974
I think future explorers—green or not—will learn as much, perhaps more, from them about this strange, benighted and beautiful twentieth century as all the time capsules buried in cornerstones of federal buildings across Canada.
Toronto, ON 1974
The exhibition at the University of B.C. Fine Arts Gallery […] demonstrates the degree to which the dematerialization of the art object has taken place on the West Coast.
Vancouver, BC 1974
Hitler
1974
Performed in “Video BAG Show”, Burnaby Art Gallery
Burnaby, BC 1974
The astounding thing about Lewis’ mural […] is that it does not, as one might fear, present a hodge-podge of trivia. Physically it is colorful and arresting, while intellectually it provides food for endless speculation. That bale of hay, that crinkled screenprint, those plastic bananas…
Vancouver, BC 1974
Departing from the agreed “ground zero” Gilbert, Lewis, Taki Bluesinger, and de Courcy Spent about 10 hours documenting their respective routes. The resulting mural is presented like a map […]
Vancouver, BC 1974
The Great Wall of 1984
National Research Library, Ottawa 1974
Though the contributions, on average, scarcely reach a higher level of consciousness than most art of the ephemeral, the total amounts to somewhat more than the sum of the parts.
Toronto, ON 1974
Administrator, Video Program, Western Front Society
Vancouver, BC 1974–1976
Performed in “Amy Vanderbilt Valentine Debutant Ball”, Western Front
Vancouver, BC 1975
Read from “Mondo Artie” scripts, A Space
Toronto, ON 1975
“Chairs”, Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, ON 1975
“Current Energies – British Columbia 75”, Saidye Bronfman Centre
Montreal, QC 1975
“B.C. Sculptors”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1975
“New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver Reunion”, A Space Gallery
Toronto, ON 1975
New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver (collages)
1975
“A Pictorial History of the World”, Kemper Gallery, Kansas City Art Institute
Kansas City, MO 1975
Performed in “Habitart or How to Live With Your Just Desserts”, Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver, BC 1976
“Bated Breath”, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 1976
“Celebration of the Body”, Agnes Etherington Art Centre
Kingston, ON 1976
“Canadada Postcards”, University of Manitoba Gallery
Winnipeg, MB 1976
“International Postcard Show”, Arizona State University Art Department Gallery
Tempe, AZ 1976
“The Last Correspondence Show”, California State University Art Department
Sacramento, CA 1976
“West Coast Waves”, Winnipeg Art Gallery
Winnipeg, MB 1976
Glenn Lewis of the Western Front Lodge in the hall of closets, formerly the Knights of Pythias lodge
1980
Traditional Kim Chi Performance
Presentation House Gallery 2010
Traditional Kim Chi
Presentation House Gallery 2010
Room Divided
2010
Traditional Kim Chi (Video)
Presentation House Gallery 2010
400 Yards of Paper in a Square
2011
Flakey is an interactive catalogue that features key works by the seminal Vancouver artist
Glenn Lewis as well as specially commissioned essays and selected archival materials.
This site commemorates the exhibition "Flakey: The Early Works of Glenn Lewis"
held at The Polygon Gallery (formerly Presentation House Gallery) from September 11 to November 14, 2010.
The Polygon Gallery gratefully acknowledges the permissions granted to reproduce the copyright material on this site.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material.
The Polygon Gallery would like to thank the British Columbia Arts Council and their Innovations Grant for supporting this project.
The Polygon Gallery
101 Carrie Cates Court
North Vancouver, BC, V7M 3J4
www.thepolygon.ca
Site by Post Projects
