Girls gone wild … in cottage country. Watch Lindsay Montgomery bring a teenage memory to life

Earlier this spring, Toronto-based artist Lindsay Montgomery opened In the Belly, a solo exhibition at Chiguer Art Contemporain in Montreal. In the show, which runs through June 7, the Toronto-based artist presents a cast of beastly ceramic characters.

There are furry cyclops; pint-sized red devils; tea-loving goblins and an abundance of wild-haired crones — including one with a dangerous taste for Labatt 50. But according to the artist, the centrepiece is a glazed earthenware sculpture entitled Pink Moon.

Like everything in the show, the piece is fantastical and intriguing. Four girls with pallid skin appear to rise from the glistening jaws of a wolf. One prowls on all fours, crawling in a field of anthropomorphic trilliums. Another pulls herself, howling, from the wolf's teeth as her body is licked by flames. And if you look close enough, perhaps you'll recognize the artist herself in the tableau. 

Says Montgomery: "There's a lot of self-portraiture in these pieces." This one, she explains, is a scene straight out of her teen years — rendered with a bit of artistic license, one hopes.

On the latest episode of In Process — CBC Arts' studio visit web series — we join Montgomery at her Toronto home. There, we watch the creation of Pink Moon, from the glazing through to its emergence from the kiln.

Watch the full episode.

As the artist explained during our visit, the piece is part of an ongoing series called Despairware. "I would say my work is mostly based in objects that are interested in a clashing of the past and the present, and everything has this sort of nod to wild femininity and female rage," says Montgomery. The Despairware works contain a mix of historical esthetic references: nods to the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, for example, and things like English Staffordshire figurines and illustrations from ancient books of demonology. 

That's all familiar source material for Montgomery, who frequently explores contemporary feminist stories and issues — from pandemic anxieties to the rise of Trump — by riffing on the imagery of the past. But Despairware marks a turning point. As the artist enters her own "middle ages," she's started to look to her personal history for inspiration.

A lot of the work appearing in Montgomery's new exhibition was inspired by her childhood in Washago, Ont. The village is "kind of the gateway to cottage country in central Ontario," she says, and the art considers the complicated realities of a small-town upbringing. She captures the spectre of issues including alcoholism and poverty. But there's also a sense of freedom and joy in these creations — and a special reverence for the wilderness. 

"Growing up in that kind of rural area, the woods were really the only place to escape to," says Montgomery, and Pink Moon captures that feeling, specifically the memory of running through the forest with the best friends of her girlhood.

Connecting to the wilderness wherever I am is something that always brings me back to feeling like myself and feeling inspired to make art.- lLindsay Montgomery, artist

"When you're an adolescent, you're really searching for freedom," says Montgomery, who's grateful to have lived in a place where "wild nature" was always at her doorstep. "I think [it] put me in touch with this kind of feral side of myself from a really young age, and it's something that I've held onto throughout my adult life, even though I've lived in the city for a long time."

"Connecting to the wilderness wherever I am is something that always brings me back to feeling like myself and feeling inspired to make art," she says.

On the CBC Arts series In Process, we visit Canadian artists who are working toward the completion of a new project. The series captures creativity in action, as the artwork — and the ideas that inform it — take shape in front of the camera.

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