The earliest example of art, as we are aware, is at least 67,800 years old, and lives on a cave wall on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The image, created by blowing a red pigment over a hand pressed against a rock, isn’t merely a print. Its fingers have been reworked to create something like a claw, imagined rather than a simple replication of the hand that already existed. Other cave art on the same island includes images of humans with bird heads and other animal features, dating to at least 48,000 years ago. 

Humans that far back in time were not merely reacting to their surroundings, they were imagining worlds beyond what was immediately in front of them, stepping out of the survival grind to represent their wonder, and share it with others. This tendency is key to one theory of how we Homo Sapiens survived while our rivals, the Neanderthals, did not. What we lacked in brute strength we made up for with our wit and our imagination, and this made us more resilient to change. 

Nearly 70,000 years later, our world hasn’t stopped changing. The challenges we face today may seem new, but we are still in a race to survive. Just Monday, British Columbia declared a state of emergency as 22,000 people were forced to flee a raging wildfire. In this context, it is more important than ever that we make sure we have artists helping us process our world as it is and imagine what else it could be. 

This past weekend, the Pontiac highlighted all the people in this community who dedicate themselves to making art. In Fort-Coulonge, the Salon du Livre book fair celebrated francophone literature from the Pontiac and beyond, and offered its authors a space to connect with readers. The Festival international du Cinéma des Femmes du Pontiac drew audiences from across the Outaouais to enjoy three days of francophone films made by women, giving space to important perspectives and stories that don’t often make it to Hollywood. 

At Café 349, visual artists celebrated the gallery’s current exhibit, a nod to summer in this specific corner of the world. And across the Ottawa Valley, the revival of the Art Pontiac studio tour saw artists of all sorts invite visitors into their creative spaces, generously sharing not only their work but also how they came to be. 

These people are always here, imagining and creating alternative versions of what exists plainly before them. But it’s important they have spaces to connect with and share their work with others so that we, the others, can participate in this communal reimagining. 

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the loss of many of the ways we used to come together around art. In response, musicians offered online concerts, but these could never replicate the feeling of jumping, together with a room full of people, to a song you all love. People started watching movies together while isolated in different houses, but closing a laptop alone at the end of a movie robs its viewer of that moment of collective release and understanding that comes when the credits roll in a packed movie theatre. 

Film festivals, studio tours and local book fairs take time to build. They depend on funding, access to the needed spaces, and a network of artists willing to participate. Most critically, they depend on there being people willing to do the work of making them happen. As one artist I spoke with this weekend expressed, the organizers themselves don’t need to be artists, but they need to be willing and able to lead. And they need support. Thank you to those doing this work in the Pontiac, rebuilding the social infrastructure that enables all of us to partake in the worlds our artists are imagining.