Cast
mould
FEATURE
F
in a different
Ruth Abernethy, creator of Guelph’s John McCrae statue,
has become one of Canada’s most accomplished sculptors
By Cherri Greeno
When Canadian artist
Ruth Abernethy sits down
to create her renowned
sculptures, she has one goal
in mind — to make her
figures come alive and be
unforgettable.
“My task is to sculpt a
familiar set of features,
but I also try to create a
moment with each character
that rings true and is
memorable,” she says during
an interview inside her
spacious country home near
Wellesley. “Legacy portraits
are a tribute to the accomplishments of a historic
figure, rather than being simply a graveside commemoration.”
For years, Abernethy has been bringing past
icons to life with her sculptures, including
classical pianist Glenn Gould, former prime
minister William Lyon
Mackenzie King, musician
and composer Oscar
Peterson, Canadian actor Al
Waxman and Canada’s first
prime minister Sir John A.
Macdonald.
“I like history, and I learn
new things with each project
I do,” she says. “Compiling
the details about people and
places is the backdrop to
making our national history
accessible to the public.”
This past June in Guelph,
Abernethy unveiled
“Remember Flanders,” a
bronze portrait of Lt.-Col.
John McCrae, who wrote the famous poem In
Flanders Fields during the First World War.
The figure depicts McCrae sitting on a broken
tree branch, his officer’s cap resting on his medic’s
kit in front of him with poppies scattered around
his feet.
Left: Former MP and Second World War veteran William Winegard addresses the crowd at a June ceremony
unveiling ‘Remember Flanders,’ a bronze sculpture depicting Lt.-Col. John McCrae, at the Guelph Civic Museum.
Above: Ruth Abernethy, with her McCrae sculpture in the background.
Photography • Dean Palmer
Photography • Courtesy of Ruth Abernethy
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Abernethy has captured McCrae as he
pauses and looks up from the notebook
where he has written the poignant poem.
An identical sculpture was also unveiled on
Green Island at the junction of the Ottawa
and Rideau rivers in Ottawa.
“It’s not often that the Canadian military is
honoured through something as transcendent as a poem,” she says. “This provides
a contemplative moment illustrating the
fundamental dilemma of military service.”
Like every sculpture she does, Abernethy
says she wanted this piece to give visitors
a chance to “encounter our history” and
realize its importance.
“History, in this country, is truly underserved,” she says. “It’s easy to see how
the sequential history of agreements and
decisions is tedious, but when you look at
the larger-than-life characters who shaped
this country there is nothing boring about
it. The people of this country are a spectacular lot.”
Abernethy has spent the past 20 years
bringing history to life through her work,
earning a reputation as one of the country’s
most prominent sculptors. But gaining this
reputation “feels more like evolution than
planning,” she says.
As a child, she grew up on a small farm
outside of Lindsay, Ont., splitting her time
between chore duties and playing music
with her family’s band — The Abernethy
Family — made up of her parents, two
sisters and brother.
“When we were very young, our mom and
dad would tuck us into bed upstairs, then
head downstairs for their own practice time
on violin and accordion,” she says. “We had
a lot of fun growing up.”
She was hired for professional theatre at
age 17, working backstage to build sets and
make props.
“There was spectacular talent everywhere,”
she recalls. “I loved the work but was never
stage-struck. I never felt that my role was to
be played onstage.”
After summer stock theatre in Lindsay,
she attended a theatre course in British
Columbia and then did several productions
at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. She
then moved to Winnipeg and eventually
72 guelphlife September | October 2015
became head of props at the Manitoba
Theatre Centre.
In 1981 she came back to Ontario
where she spent many years working in
Canada’s regional theatres, including the
Shaw Festival in Niagara and the Stratford
Festival.
“It didn’t occur to me that theatre would
be my entire career,” she says. “But I didn’t
see a means of moving my skills beyond the
prop shop. After 20 years, and the decision
to have a family, I’d set aside possibilities of
going elsewhere for contract work.
“Despite the great building I’d done in
Stratford, I never felt that my festival props
would be the sum total of what I could do.”
And it wasn’t.
“
It’s easy to see how the
sequential history of agreements
and decisions is tedious, but
when you look at the
larger-than-life characters who
shaped this country there is
nothing boring about it.
Ruth Abernethy
In 1997, while working in the props
department at the Stratford Festival, ideas
coalesced around a project that redirected
her talents to bronze, she says.
At the time, the festival was in the midst
of a fundraising venture and a sculpture
was requested to depict the humble, tented
beginnings of the now famous theatre.
Stratford’s design coordinator Douglas
Paraschuk knew of Abernethy’s figurative
carvings in the prop shop and asked her to
tackle a sculpture.
Over the next six weeks she crafted a
sculpture that depicted two men raising a
tent, while a small girl, sitting with her dog,
watched from the background. The goal of
the piece was to portray both the physical
and emotional effort of building the festival.
“It’s theatrical and I still love the energy of
it,” she says of her first bronze sculpture.
The piece proved so popular that
Abernethy soon received invitations to
create other work.
Just weeks after the Stratford installation,
she was asked to sculpt a figure portrait of
classical pianist Glenn Gould that now sits
on a bench outside the CBC in Toronto.
Other jobs that followed included figure
portraits of Al Waxman at the Kensington
Market, golf pro Arnold Palmer, equestrian
Ian Miller and theatre director John Hirsch
in Winnipeg. She was also commissioned to
create a “charming” set of characters from
the “Franklin the Turtle” children’s book
series for Centre Island in Toronto.
In 2003, the principal of KitchenerWaterloo Collegiate approached Abernethy
to create a sculpture of the school’s most
famous student — former Canadian prime
minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Her
image is that of a young King sitting on the
school’s front lawn.
To create her sculptures she first plots
a three-dimensional form on paper,
then carves it into styrene — a material
commonly used in the production of
plastics and resins — and surfaces the
shapes with a thin layer of wax. The
original piece is burned away in the lost
wax casting process, an “ancient method” of
moulding complex shapes.
“When made of wax, the item can be
coated with layers of ceramic slurry and
sand to build up a mould on the outside,”
she explains. “When the surrounding
ceramic shell is fired, the wax shape inside
is melted and burned away, hence lost
wax.”
This process leaves a hollow bronze statue
after all the individual pieces have been
carefully assembled. The timelines vary
with each piece, but Abernethy says most
take at least two years to complete.
A
bernethy spent years studying both
the professional and personal life
of Sir John A. Macdonald, our first prime
minister, before unveiling two different
and unique statues. The first is entitled
“Holding Court,” which was unveiled
in Picton, Ont. This statue shows young
Macdonald making his first appearance in
court in 1834.
The other statue, entitled “A
Canadian Conversation,” found its
home at the end of June at Wilfrid
Laurier University. The statue has
Macdonald inviting visitors to sit
down on two period dining chairs.
The chairs create a photo opportunity where people can sit down
for a “meaningful conversation,”
Abernethy says.
“Talk of nation-building happens
over the dinner table and the design
symbolizes Macdonald’s success in
engaging various colonial groups to
resolve ideas for their new nation,”
she says.
Abernethy also spent considerable
time creating a figure portrait of
Oscar Peterson, an international
jazz virtuoso and Canadian cultural
icon.
“Input from Oscar’s wife, Kelly, was
fundamental to catching the truth of
his character in bronze,” Abernethy
says.
Her sculpture shows Peterson — who died
in 2007 at 82 — with a broad smile sitting
near his favourite piano, as though he has
just finished a performance.
The portrait is 6.6 per cent larger than
actual size, to portray Peterson as a largerthan-life icon. Guests at the site are treated
to the sound of Peterson’s piano playing
through overhead speakers.
“The installation is a constant invitation
for people to join Oscar on the piano
bench,” she says. “The site is visited constantly and guests delight in his company.
They explore the stylized piano and they
snap pictures.”
Queen Elizabeth unveiled the sculpture
in 2010 outside the National Arts Centre in
Ottawa.
Perhaps one of her most emotional pieces
was the 2014 tribute portrait of Jeffrey
Baldwin, the five-year-old Toronto boy who
died of starvation in 2002 at the hands of
his grandparents. They were later convicted
of second-degree murder.
“The child’s death summoned remarkable
public emotion,” she says. “It was a tragic
story,” she says, acknowledging it was
Photography • Courtesy of Ruth Abernethy
the first time she’d sculpted a portrait of
someone she knew so little about.
The sculpture, which stands on a public
bench in Greenwood Park in Toronto,
stands 107 centimetres (42 inches) tall and
portrays the little boy in a Superman suit
and slippers.
“Adults and children have the opportunity
to be charmed by this child and, perhaps,
consider the value and the importance of their
own parenting,” she says.
“I expect children in the east Toronto
neighbourhood will stand on the bench
with little Jeffrey and see him eye to eye.
One day they’ll maybe visit as adults and
see Jeffrey through the eyes of their own
children.”
As she looks toward the future, Abernethy
says her goal is unchanged. She still wants
people to realize that “we always have the
option to make a creative choice. I’d like to
encourage people to believe in their own
capacity to re-imagine things around them.”
Abernethy says she loves watching how
communities invent traditions, such as the
Santa Claus Parade.
Artist Ruth Abernethy uses a thin layer of wax on
styrene to shape her sculptures — in this case, the
face of Canadian conductor Mario Bernardi. The
figure, cut into pieces, is then sent to Georgetown
where it is cast in bronze.
“It’s the essence of how people invent
things collectively,” she says. “They run
with an idea, they work together and they
engage. It holds communities together.
“In the end, as a sculptor and project
manager, you love what you do and it’s best
done when you put your heart in it.”
At the request of a client, Abernethy is in
the process of completing a book entitled
“Narrative in Life and Bronze.” It features
her bronze sculptures but also documents
two decades of creativity in the studio as
well as the building of a home and the
raising of her two sons — Glen Smyth, 23,
and Alex Smyth, 21 — with her husband,
Mark.
“Real life has always unfolded in more
interesting ways than I could ever have
planned or imagined,” she says. “My task
is to be open to possibilities and enjoy
wherever they might go.”
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