Rhonda Bobinski
funkydoodad@hotmail.com

I started high school in Red Lake in 1986, with a “new” art teacher, Gary Lovett, who had just moved down to Red Lake from Norway House, Manitoba.  We soon became friends and Gary tried to teach me a bit about Art. We soon found out that we’re both stubborn people and neither of us like to admit when we’re wrong!  But of course, I did learn a lot from Gary, and I think the most important thing I learned is that an art teacher needs to show their students that first and foremost they are an artist.  Gary’s passion for his artwork was very evident and I remember countless times Gary came into the classroom talking about the late night he had in his studio.   

There is a lot of symbolism laced throughout this banner which reflects Gary as an artist, as a teacher and as a friend.  I painted the banner in Gary’s abstract style, or as he liked to call his style, “The Group of One”. Gary’s focus was on the Northern terrain and he had a very unique way of representing Northern Ontario.  He was very well known for his northern light paintings. When I graduated from high school my parents bought me one of Gary’s northern lights paintings as a gift.  It now is the first art piece you see when you enter my home.  There are planets floating in the sky to represent Gary’s “snivelers” which is what he liked to call his “favourite” students.  The duck represents a memorable trip I took to Gary’s cabin on Minaki with the Lovett family.  I was teased for years for trying to get Gary to shoot the ducks, when in actuality, they were decoys. Hey, it was 4 in the morning and there was a lot of fog on the lake!  The large fish has twofold meaning: Gary was a fishing guide at Minaki and was an “expert” fisherman.  But Gary also had us do “fish prints” as an art project one year. We caught a sucker fish, dried it out, painted it and printed it.  I’m sure that practice would have the humane society knocking on our door if we were to try that today, but back then, “It was art, man!”  The blueberries are actually there because Gary used to make us listen to a band called “The Traveling Wilbury’s” but always called them “The Traveling Blueberries”. You can see that in the art room window is a silhouette of two figures, that being the teacher and the student. It can represent Gary and I or it can represent any teacher/student relationship for that matter and the creative energy that resonates from the art room.  Friendships that are built there are strong and continual.  In the foreground are zucchinis growing in a garden. Anyone that knows Gary knows that he loved to garden and was always pawning his zucchinis off on people!  Finally, I included a fallen tree because Gary always said that no landscape was complete without a fallen dead tree! 

I wanted to pay homage to Gary Lovett, who left us abruptly last fall in 2006.  He may be gone, but his spirit still continues to inspire us creatively.