ArtPontiac prepares to wrap up the 2022 season and president Cheryl Beillard reflects on her first year at the helm of the long-standing association. We caught up with her and she was able to offer her perspectives on a year that saw a great deal of change and adaptation as well as community and success. The following is an interview with the artPontiac’s president Cheryl Beillard and the piece is presented in a Q & A style.

Glen Hartle (GH) – Can I congratulate you on a successful season?

Cheryl Beillard (CB) – Yes. And thank you. It was a very successful year, given that we had the right combination of people and ideas to engage our artist members and a few new key volunteers, without which we couldn’t have gotten the work done.

GH – I’d love to hear more of your successes as it seems that . . .

artPontiac was everywhere this past season: there were exhibitions, pop-up markets, travelling shows, and courses .

CB – We did a lot! First of all, we nearly doubled our membership! There’s room for improvement but at the end of the season, we had a record high of 132 members, with over 100 artists among them.

The purpose of the association is to promote art and our member artists in the region and we really want to find ways to make their involvement worthwhile. We made physical changes, in terms of new carpeting and painting of the front entrance and stairwell and we also had a full slate of exhibitions in our gallery this year, with a few innovations that were very well received.

The school program included some new instructors and by adding the shop, we’ve made art and the work of our artists and craftspeople more accessible.

In addition to seeing a particular body of work, with a theme, visitors can also get a sense of the very wide range of talent and skills we have in the community and our broader membership, often at very affordable prices.

For the artists, we have been able to provide a venue to sell their work, work of all kinds, with no commission, something pretty unique in the art world. In that, we were very successful, with significant sales that went directly to the artists themselves.

GH- That must have made for very happy artists and all in your first year as president. Fantastic! You must have a small army helping you achieve all of this.

CB – Well, not quite – but close! At last year’s AGM there was a large turnover on the board.

It was not quite a clean slate, thankfully, and we had early guidance and steadfast support from Claire Taillefer, our past president, who agreed to serve as vice president this year.

Thankfully, she knew the procedures, and much of the history and had many contacts in the community and in local government. She also was behind the preparation of our successful grant submission to the MRC which enabled us to take on some exciting new projects.

We did, however, face significant challenges related to turnover on the board. Health, family and other issues were responsible for the loss of several of our original board appointees but with the return of Marcel Renaud, to serve first as communications director and then treasurer, we have been able to maintain our momentum and deliver on all commitments to date related to this year’s program.

Our challenges were largely based on the fact that this was a transition year in that most of the artists who were among the original drivers of the association had withdrawn, after years of dedication and commitment.

We were a small core group of volunteers who took over an association whose membership had dwindled over covid and we recognized that it needed some sort of transformation to attract new artists and reengage those who, for a variety of reasons, had drifted away in recent years.

GH –So, a board, volunteers, artists – these are all elements of the community?

CB – My goodness – community is everything. We tried to reach out in a number of new ways, to engage more people directly and involve younger people when possible.

We had good support, at the political level, from federal Member of Parliament Sophie Chatel, provincial Deputy André Fortin, municipal Warden Jane Toller and local Portage-du-Fort Mayor Lynne Cameron as well as at the cultural/community level from the Pontiac Community Development Corporation.

We had perhaps the strongest turnout ever, I’m told, for our opening gala and we also had good participation from local families at our workshop to support our feature exhibition, Call of the Turtle.

But perhaps most importantly we had a lot of visitors from the Pontiac, as well as from the larger region, and tourists, to our new shop at the Stone School, many of whom came back several times and brought friends and family with them.

We will be looking at new ways to involve the community in our courses and other activities next year.

GH – Ok. I can totally see why you consider the season a success. I’m guessing, at the same time, however, that there must have been a few road bumps along the way. Can I pry under the canvas a bit and ask for those?

CB – Only if you leave names out. I think the biggest thing is that we have an awareness that we are on the right track and that, while we achieved an amazing amount this year, we need more involvement and input from the community and artists to keep it going, and growing.

I doubt that we can keep the pace up for another year without more help. For those of us directly involved, it was more like a full-time job.

Our hope is to keep the same energy going but with more people to take on specific tasks that will spread the load. It has definitely been a fun experience for me but there is a question of being able to breathe.

I don’t want it to stop being fun, for any of us. One of the first things I did on becoming president was to contact current, and just as important, past, members to seek their views on what worked for them, and what didn’t.

Some key messages came through, the most common one being the need to embrace all forms of art and to put more effort into encouraging our new and emerging artists. I think the success of the shop, which presented the work of some 40 artists, by the end of the season, is an indication that we managed to do that in a small way. We need to do more, with more input from the artists directly.

I personally learned what a strong and vibrant community exists in the Pontiac and also what amount of work has been done by those who created the association some thirty years ago.

I continue to learn about specific initiatives, things that worked, but also what didn’t, and we can build on that, with our new and returning members, in the post-covid environment.

GH – That’s a very real response – and I appreciate the vulnerability. So now what’s ahead? 2022 is over and?

CB – Well, the year isn’t quite over and we still have two big initiatives to go. In the next month, we will be engaging artists with studios and businesses that have or are prepared to take add the work of our artists to their venues, with the MRC, to create a map and signage we can use to promote the Stone School Gallery and Shop as the hub of art in the Pontiac and bring more visitors and students to the studios of our participating members, by appointment only.

We will be sending out a notice shortly to invite artists to submit designs for the artwork for the map. We are also preparing to open the Stone School shop for a Winter Arts and Craft Market on the last weekend of November and the first two in December.

We’ll be announcing details shortly, but this will be an interesting event for us, in what is a very busy time of year for artists and artisans. I would like to invite all artists to consider contributing to what is essentially a pilot project and for all the new initiatives we are planning for next year. It’s all about the artists, at all levels, and their work. Without them, we have nothing to promote.

GH – I like the humanity in that: “without them, we have nothing to promote” On that note, do you have a last message for our readers – knowing that you are speaking directly with the community?

CB – In short? Thank you! Let’s do it again in 2023. Oh and if you’re interested in joining us as a board member, artist, volunteer or supporting us in general, contact us at https://artpontiac.com.

GH – Thank you Cheryl and congratulations again on an amazing year for artPontiac.

artPontiac Vice President Claire Taillefer (right) with artist member Anne McKennirey at the grand opening of the hop at the Stone School Gallery in Portage-du-fort.

artPontiac President Cheryl Beillard (left) with artist Geraldine Classen at the opening of the “Nature of the Pontiac” exhibition at the Stone School Gallery in Portage-du-fort.

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