exhibits

Light and whimsical houses

Roxsane Tanner’s watercolours are on exhibit at the Steveston Museum and Post Office (painted here by Tanner) this month.

“Steveston is such a beautiful place,” artist Roxsane Tanner told the Independent. Her first solo show of watercolours features quaint houses of the village, where she has lived and worked for many years. The exhibit opened at the Steveston Museum and Post Office on June 1 and will be on display for the month.

Roxsane Tanner (photo courtesy)

Born in Holland soon after the Second World War, Tanner came to Canada with her family in 1951.

“My father was in the resistance, and my mother was in hiding during the war. They were both Jewish and wouldn’t have survived otherwise,” she said.

Her older sister was born during the German occupation, and her mother had to hide her baby with a local family. “My sister was 3 years old when my mom came for her after the war, to take her back. That was the first time she saw her mother.”

After the family came to Canada, her parents moved a lot. “They were very entrepreneurial,” said Tanner. “We lived in many small towns in Ontario and Quebec. Sometimes, my parents had several businesses open at the same time in the same town: a pet shop, a fabric shop, some others. They always worked hard. When I was 19, my parents and I moved to Vancouver. In the beginning, we lived in a trailer, the same one we drove here from across Canada.”

Tanner inherited her parents’ work ethic and their courage to try new things. “After high school, I wanted to study nursing, but soon after I started classes, I hurt my knees and had to come home – I couldn’t walk.”

After she healed, she became a dental assistant and worked as one for several years. “Until I met my first husband,” she recalled with a smile. “He was a wallpaper hanger. I fell in love with the man, married him, and joined his business. We worked together for several decades.”

Even after her first husband’s untimely death from cancer, she continued their business on her own. Many houses in Richmond and Vancouver feature wallpaper installed by Roxsane Tanner. By now, she has been a wallpaper hanger for more than 50 years. “But I’m slowing down,” she said. “I’m not accepting many new clients, not anymore.”

Now, she is becoming more and more absorbed in various artistic endeavours. Art was always on the periphery of her life. “I always dabbled,” she said. “Then, about 15 years ago, my second husband, Fred, and I visited Italy. He was a high school counselor before he retired; we were chaperoning a group of kids on that trip. I saw some beautiful jewelry local artisans sold on the street. I liked it, but it was too expensive. I thought maybe I could make something like that, and Fred encouraged me. When we returned home, I enrolled in a course on silversmithing and started making my own jewelry. Fred built a silversmithing studio for me in our backyard.”

She took more classes in different techniques, many of them on YouTube. “I can spend hours watching educational videos on YouTube,” she said. “There is always something new. Thousands of talented artists offer classes there. The good thing about YouTube: once you subscribe, you can watch the same lesson several times, until you really get it.”

She sells her jewelry – earrings, bracelets and necklaces – in a local Steveston shop. Occasionally, she offers her own classes in jewelry-making, to children and adults. What started as a hobby from a casual observation in Florence ended up becoming a small business, as many of Tanner’s hobbies tend to do: sewing, for example.

“My mother taught me to sew, knit and crochet,” she said. And, wanting to pass the skills on to others, she started, out of her home, to teach children how to sew. “We buy special kits and make hats and scarves for the homeless,” she said.

But that was not enough for her. Her creativity needed another outlet. About the same time as she embarked on jewelry-making, she also started painting in watercolours. “I took classes, of course, some on YouTube, others at the local Phoenix Art Workshop here in Steveston. At first, I painted landscapes, but I didn’t like it. A few years later, I went to Malta on a trip with the Phoenix Studio – they have amazing houses there, and I was inspired. The next year, we traveled to Mexico. I admired their historical buildings, but we also have amazing houses here, in Steveston. There are many heritage places here. I wanted to paint them.”

When she returned from Mexico, she noticed a blue house in Steveston she liked and took a photo of it. “I painted it from my photo. It was my first, and my friends kept bugging me: you need to show your painting to the owner. So, I went and knocked on his door. I never met him before that day, and he was somewhat gruff at first. He asked me if I would sell it to him, and I agreed. That’s how it started.”

image - Steveston’s Fisherman’s wharf, painted by Roxsane Tanner — Steveston’s Fisherman’s wharf, painted by Roxsane Tanner.

Tanner has built another small business on that foundation. “I paint houses that are for sale. Realtors around Steveston commission my paintings as gifts for the new homeowners. People also come to me and ask me to paint their houses, or their children’s houses, as gifts. Sometimes, I paint from my own photographs. Other times, the clients bring their photos and order a painting from that image.”

Besides personal homes, she paints heritage places around Steveston. The old community centre, a coffee shop, a church turned into a thrift store, the pier, with its picturesque boats, and the tiny post office – the same one where some of her work is now on display.

The exhibition includes Tanner’s original watercolour paintings plus postcards and mugs with her artwork. Some of the paintings sport charming, quirky houses found only in the artist’s imagination. “I go online and search for heritage homes around the world. If I like one, I use it as my inspiration, but I don’t copy the photos. I want my painted houses light and whimsical, like a fairy tale. Maybe a bit crooked, but reflecting the essence of the house, its soul and personality. Even the real houses I paint are not exact copies of the photos. I don’t use a ruler to make the straight lines. I use my watercolours to remind people of the fun and joy their homes bring them.”

You can see more of Tanner’s art at instagram.com/studioplace99.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

A land of contradictions

Sorour Abdollahi’s solo exhibit Intersecting Landscapes is now at Zack Gallery. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Over the years, Iranian-Canadian artist Sorour Abdollahi has participated in several group shows at Zack Gallery, but the current exhibition, Intersecting Landscapes, which opened on Sept. 7, is her first solo show here.

“Sorour is definitely not the first non-Jewish artist with a solo show at the Zack,” said gallery director Hope Forstenzer. For years, the mission of the Zack Gallery, which is in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, has been to showcase Jewish artists and art dedicated to Jewish themes, she said. Non-Jewish artists were not excluded, but they usually appeared in group shows.

“The big difference in the past few years,” said Forstenzer, “has been an expansion of the definition of a Jewish theme to include a wider variety of human universal experiences that reflect on Jewish cultural history and traditions.… Sorour’s work, while not as overtly Jewish as some, addresses the concept of diaspora and its impact on culture and memory. When we made the decision to show her work, it was based on the concept of a cultural nostalgia for home as an inherently Jewish theme. And the response to it, so far, has borne that out – it has had a very strong emotional impact on the community here at the JCC and has already engendered discussion of the Jewish diaspora.”

Abdollahi has been a professional artist all her life. “I’ve always painted, since I was a child,” she told the Independent.

She received her art education in Iran, and her first solo art show happened there in 1987. A successful artist, working in mixed media and acrylics, she regularly exhibited in Iran, participating in multiple group and solo shows in various cities, including Tehran and Isfahan. The only big gap in her exhibiting schedule occurred when she immigrated to Canada. “We came here in 2000,” she said. “We did it for the children.”

Like all immigrants, she struggled with the new language and new culture. “It was several years later, when my children grew older, that I enrolled in Emily Carr [University of Art + Design] part time,” she recalled. “I wanted to become familiar with the local art scene, with the educators and the artists. I wanted to become a part of the local artistic community. And it worked beautifully. My friendships with wonderful Vancouver artists Devora and Sidi Schaffer stem from those days.”

Five years after her immigration, Abdollahi felt immersed enough in the British Columbia art vista to open her own studio and gallery in Yaletown.

“People would pass my gallery on the street, and some would come in,” she said. “They asked questions. I felt that my art connected.”

That connection gave her the courage to join the Eastside Culture Crawl – the biggest visual art festival in Vancouver – 10 years ago.

Abdollahi’s current show at the Zack represents the scope of her art perfectly. It consists of old and new paintings from several different series. A blend of abstract and figurative art, her paintings are airy and bright. Most of them have vague architectural connotations and employ a predominantly blue and green palette reminiscent of spring and rebirth. The abstract forms, sometimes utterly modern, often reveal faint outlines of ruins, shimmering in the mist, in the background.

“I grew up in the land of contradictions, where a traditional way of living juxtaposed a modern, Western lifestyle,” she said. “Those contradictions manifested in the landscape surrounding me, the historical against the contemporary, with layers of change and transformation.”

Immigration to a new country profoundly impacts her imagery.

“In my paintings, I examine the relationship between memories and the external landscape,” she said. “My Iranian background and my Canadian experience have had an enormous influence on my works. They inspired a negotiation between the modern and the ancient, the old and the new, the West and the East. Ancient ruins and Persian architecture play a pivotal role, too. They have enabled me to express the conflict and the negotiation process that often exists between two different cultures or societies. While the ruins speak of a mysterious, pure and mystical past, they also illustrate the corrosive effect of time and modernity, the constant reconfiguration of a country’s landscape, architecture and culture. The dripping paint in many of my pictures also illuminates the process of renewal. The old slides down, while the new grows over it. My paintings attempt to form a bridge between the past and the present.”

Two of the paintings particularly stand out. “The Magical Carpet” is a collage, full of the whimsical patterns, warm hues and bright shapes of a traditional eastern bazaar, with the artist’s customary ruins in the background.

Another painting, “Letters from Beyond”, with its strong punch of red paint, uses fragments of writing that are wholly imaginary. “The language and the letters in that writing don’t belong to any nation,” Abdollahi said. “I created it because I believe that we are all the same people. We should have no borders and no different languages separating us. That’s why I wanted to have a show here, at the Jewish Community Centre. I feel like my art is a link that connects us all.”

Abdollahi’s works can be found in private collections in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Intersecting Landscapes runs until Oct. 12. For more information, visit sorourart.wordpress.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Witness to “longest hatred”

The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre maintains significant holdings of Nazi and antisemitic propaganda that bears witness to centuries of anti-Jewish hatred. Acquired through the generosity of local historians and collectors – Peter N. Moogk, professor emeritus, history, University of British Columbia; Kit Krieger, Joseph Tan, Harrison and Hilary Brown, and others – the propaganda in the VHEC collection promoted antisemitic stereotypes, including Nazi ideology, in Europe and North America from 1770 to the postwar period. Although the content is offensive, these primary sources serve as an important historical record of the “longest hatred.”

The study of propaganda is critical to Holocaust scholarship. Historic antisemitica reveals a cultural tradition in Europe that the Nazis were able to exploit in pursuit of their “Final Solution.” The stereotypes found in Nazi propaganda were hardly new; Nazi propaganda was built upon the same antisemitic rhetoric and tropes that had been repeated over centuries and across countries and continents. Viewed in this context, propaganda provides insight as to why the Nazis’ message met with little resistance from an audience familiar with the language and imagery of anti-Jewish hatred.

The study of propaganda is also important to our understanding of the use of a state’s authority to control targeted segments of its population. This dynamic is explored in the VHEC’s new exhibition, Age of Influence: Youth & Nazi Propaganda. Drawing upon diverse primary sources, Age of Influence examines the Nazis’ efforts to manipulate the experiences, attitudes and aspirations of German children and teens.

photo - Photograph of a girl wearing the uniform of the League of German Girls, circa 1940. Donated by Peter N. Moogk — Photograph of a girl wearing the uniform of the League of German Girls, circa 1940. Donated by Peter N. Moogk. *(photo from VHEC)*

Many of the materials featured in this exhibition will be new to visitors, such as family photographs, Nazi youth magazines and anti-Roma youth fiction. Other artifacts will be instantly recognizable, like the infamous children’s books on display at the VHEC for the first time: The Poisonous Mushroom (Ernst Hiemer, Der Giftpilz, Nuremberg: Stürmerverlag, 1938) and Trust No Fox (Elvira Bauer, Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid [Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath], Nuremberg: Der Stürmer Verlag, 1936). Age of Influence is designed to encourage active engagement with these artifacts and images. Throughout the exhibition, questions prompt visitors to critically analyze materials on display and identify common techniques used to disseminate both positive and negative propaganda.

The exhibition’s storyline begins in the early 20th century, when youth in Germany started defining themselves as a distinct socio-cultural group, attracting the attention of parties across the political spectrum. Popularized by youth-led groups like the Wandervogel, the German youth movement sought independence from adult authority and embraced communal and back-to-nature ideals. Their activities focused on hiking, survival skills and group pursuits in nature. Against this backdrop, the Nazi party emerged and cast itself as the future-facing “movement of youth.” With its Hitler Youth organization, the Nazi party tapped into the German youth movement and set its sights on this demographic to shape the future of a “racially pure” and physically fit national community.

Age of Influence examines how the Hitler Youth became the regime’s most effective tool to indoctrinate children and teens in Nazi ideology. It offered German youth a powerful group identity and appealed to adolescent yearnings such as the desire to belong, the quest for action and adventure, a sense of purpose and independence from parents. With separate organizations for boys and girls, Hitler Youth glorified gender roles. Boys were prepared for military and leadership responsibilities while girls were groomed to become wives, mothers and caregivers for the nation.

image - June 1934 issue of Der Aufbruch, a Hitler Youth magazine. Donated by Joseph Tan — June 1934 issue of Der Aufbruch, a Hitler Youth magazine. Donated by Joseph Tan. *(image from VHEC)*

An array of Nazi youth magazines from 1934 to 1943 are featured in Age of Influence, as well as family photographs, collectible cigarette cards, video clips and Hitler Youth paraphernalia. Visitors can browse the pages of Nazi youth magazines to discover for themselves the eye-catching fonts, unique graphics and captivating images, which were carefully designed to attract young audiences. At its height, the Nazi youth press published 57 different magazine titles for children.

While participation in Hitler Youth was compulsory for most children, Jewish youths were banned from membership. Their experience is given voice in the exhibition by local survivors. In video testimony clips, Serge Vanry, Jannushka Jakoubovitch and Judith Eisinger describe their feelings of fear, shame and rejection as Jewish children confronted with pervasive antisemitic propaganda and excluded from the activities of their non-Jewish peers.

Perhaps the best-known propaganda tactic used by the Nazis was the creation of common enemies. Antisemitism and racism were key educational goals in the Nazi German school system, where students were taught that the health of the German nation was threatened by “inferior” groups like the Jews, Roma and individuals with disabilities. By demonizing and scapegoating these groups, the Nazis created a climate of hostility and indifference toward their treatment. Age of Influence depicts this process with reference to artifacts such as children’s books and instructional posters used in German schools.

Contextualizing Nazi propaganda within a broad historical framework is essential. For this reason, Age of Influence has been mounted in conjunction with In Focus: The Holocaust through the VHEC Collection. In Focus presents a thematic history of the Holocaust, illustrated by artifacts donated to the VHEC by local survivors and collectors. A curated selection of antisemitica in this exhibition conveys the long-held perceptions and representations of Jews through time.

This history is also important as we navigate escalating antisemitism and racism around the globe and in Canada, where reports of antisemitic incidents have reached record levels. The use of digital media has amplified hate, and the ease with which disinformation can be spread on social media platforms perpetuates Holocaust distortion and denial. In this milieu, it is imperative to equip students with the media literacy skills required to critically evaluate information they encounter. Age of Influence will assist educators to promote key curricular objectives such as digital literacy, critical thinking and social responsibility.

For more information on Age of Influence and In Focus, visit vhec.org.

Lise Kirchner has worked with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre since 1999 in the development and delivery of its educational programs. She was part of the exhibition team that developed Age of Influence: Youth & Nazi Propaganda, along with Tessa Coutu, Franziska Schurr and Illene Yu. This article was originally published in the VHEC’s Spring 2023 issue of Zachor.