The Y. M. Whelan Touch
"This is the part I hate to have given up. This is the fun part," said our host, David Taylor as he, Ron, and I watched the works go round and round, with itching hands.
"I used to love it when the crates came in," Bloore agreed, speaking of his days at the Mackenzie Gallery. "It was like Christmas!" He stepped back as Yvonne swept by him again.
"I'm tired enough from driving to just want to watch. Anyway I'm by far the junior hanger in this group," I muttered.
Whelan was wheelin' around those walls for over four hours that Tuesday afternoon. And by God wasn't it worth it? It was a challenging mix but she had foreseen that. We brought 30 pieces and only 16 would make the cut. The center of the exhibition was the reuniting of the three Stags. One brought in courtesy of Illi Tamplin at the Art Gallery of Peterborough. One from the studio, framed for this occasion. And the Red one from the private collection of Yvonne M. Whelan. The fourth Stag, a blue one in the collection of Carlton University, would have been too much.
David knew Yvonne as having worked her way up to being Director of The Moore Gallery, Ron's Toronto dealer. Ron had seen shows she'd hung and knew her eye. I knew of her years as a professional interior designer. But mainly, we knew, she is a painter. She was hanging the show as only an artist can, and we just stayed out of the way.
These pages are the first on the site to highlight a single exhibition. It was a show that went without a hitch, in no small part due to the forethought and organizational skills of Mr. Taylor who first had the idea of letting the woman in the middle curate. (That's him at the top introducing Bloore, and that's Ron, myself, and Yvonne at the Moore Gallery to the right, and of course Ms. Whelan alone below.) I offer these pages as a tribute to what Yvonne pulled off that Tuesday; so it won't be just another small show in a small room of a small gallery for five small weeks.
