Obituary of Carolyn Wren

Carolyn was a visual artist, educator, historian, traveller, gourmand, friend and mentor. She claimed that her favourite present ever was a library card she received as a child. That library card led to a lifetime of learning and passing that learning on. She was a voracious reader, with multiple books on the go at one time. In 2017 along with a colleague she decided to read “100 novels that make you proud to be Canadian”, in one year.

As a high school art teacher for 35 years, Carolyn’s art room (with its “Kitchy Kottage”) was a safe harbour for kids whether taking her classes or not. In addition to smoothing out the normal struggles of the teen years, she was a trustworthy, warm, moral, loving, fun, intelligent, fair, dependable and generous adult to turn to for decades of kids who needed real help; a young man coming out of the closet to himself but not everyone else; a young woman devastated by sexual assault; a child of an abusive parent and foster parent; someone succumbing to addiction. The full list is long and known only to her. The “Kottage” was not only a refuge for students, other teachers and principals would come for coffee or lunch and crosswords (or simply to hide).

Often compared to Ms. Frizzle, her zany antics and not occasional dressing up was disarming and introduced the concept that you don’t need to fit in. She taught kids how to find out who they really were and express that to the world through her tripartite of open minded conceptual thinking, beauty, grammatical excellence and actual hard work. Her university level art history classes, gifted art appreciation to 2 generations of St. Catharines non-artists, enriching their careers in things like ophthalmology, architecture, electrical engineering etc. She inspired and mentored many of the next generation of Niagara art educators and practicing artists. Carolyn could have a room full of teenagers howling with laughter as she stood on a chair, cup of tea in hand, or at the edge of tears as she spoke to the mysteries of life and death. Her teaching went beyond the classroom, running an environmental club (before this was a thing), a social justice club that became a model for the school board and the Dead Artists Society. All of these taught young humans that they could change their world for the better with their bare hands, open hearts and sharp minds. Carolyn felt we have a responsibility to actively look for joy in our daily lives. She took this joy and transmogrified it into love and art which she distributed liberally, humourously and mindfully to those around her – students, colleagues, friends, family, bank tellers, chemo nurses and random strangers who were fortunate enough to pass through the magnetic field of her life.

The Niagara Artists Centre attracted Carolyn's energies in the 1990s. In the determined fashion that typified anything she devoted herself to, she helped navigate the organization through lean times as both the Artist-run Centre’s Secretary and President while governments withdrew support for the arts. To fill the gaps, NAC took on running charity bingos. As anyone who has served this penance in support of a charity back then can attest, the air was blue with cigarette smoke. Carolyn would lead a small team of volunteers through the smog with a stream of wit and engaging conversation about art and ideas. Who cared if it was Saturday night, who cared if you were stuck in an addict’s purgatory until midnight? Beyond keeping the place afloat, Carolyn also helped guide NAC artistically: she brought her strong feminist sensibilities to bear, curating shows by women artists and bringing leading women artists from beyond Niagara to show here. She was a frequent exhibitor in NAC’s gallery spaces contributing to many group exhibitions and bringing the stunning exhibition War Map Dress Trinity to the haunted second floor of 2 Bond Street during NAC’s tenure there.

Next she lent her energies to the CRAM Gallery, a loose organization supported by many NAC members. Proudly calling itself ‘The World's Smallest Art Gallery’ – it was, in truth, a second floor storage room – this experiment lasted a decade and surprised even those nearest to the cultural heart of Niagara at how strong its beat was.

First and foremost Carolyn was a visual artist creating sublime works in a multitude of media. Her art practice spanned four decades and was interwoven with her life. Through her early work, she explored the relationship between identity and place, using relief print methods and processes in non-traditional ways. She hand-carved and hand-printed her linoleum and woodblock prints. Her preferred burnishing tool was an antique doorknob, and from carving the text of maps, one of her frequent subjects, she was highly skilled at writing backwards.

Carolyn’s first work conflating landscapes and the human body was War Map Dress Trilogy (2003-04), a series of three dupion silk dresses imprinted with maps of Europe, inspired by the dresses women made post-WWII with silk maps used by the Royal British Air Force. This work was so widely exhibited and adored that Carolyn called it “my Starry Night, my ‘Hallelujah’”. Like her other works taking the form of garments or using pattern pieces, Carolyn made the dresses to fit her body. “Who I am is where I am”, she often said, and her work later focused on the Niagara landscape. In the linoleum print series Territories (2008), she overlaid images of the body adapted from Grey’s Anatomy with maps of Niagara: a spine is the Niagara Escarpment, a set of teeth are the locks of the Welland Canal. In Dwell, created for the 2009 Biennale internationale du lin de Portneuf, a linocut print of Niagara Falls cascades down Carolyn’s dining room table on an oversized linen tablecloth that pools onto the floor into a map of the region.

In 2012, Carolyn began her practice of transcribing iconic texts, exploring themes of lost knowledge and metanarratives. For The Bible Project (2012-14), she transcribed H.W. Janson’s History of Art between the lines of text in an oversized three-volume early nineteenth century Bible; she described these as the two great narratives that most significantly shaped her life. She transcribed Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey across 60 pieces of vellum, each approximately 10 feet long; followed by Virginia Woolf’s iconic feminist essay A Room of One’s Own; Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way; Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death”; and other literary works that became monumental installations through her hand. In a parallel series of smaller drawings titled Lost Knowledge (2016-2024), she transcribed books from personal libraries, repeatedly layering lines of cursive until the text became a dense, illegible, inky scramble—a meditation on the way embodied memories endure even as their details recede.

For Days Without Him (2014-2024), Carolyn stamped a number counting each day of her life following the death of her life partner, artist Tobey C. Anderson, creating a quiet record of her existence without him, in a set of ten small, leather-bound books. In preparation for her 2018 retrospective exhibit, Task at Hand, Carolyn embarked on a new project transcribing the entirety of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay, A Room of One’s Own. Handwritten in cursive on sixty-four 3’ x 5’ panels, the text of over 40,000 words was lovingly embroidered by a group of eighty-six women and three men.

Woolf’s essay, an exploration of a society based on male privilege and female exclusion, was an analysis of the creative freedom of women. She suggested that to be creative, a woman needed a room of her own. Carolyn invited us into her room, her beautiful studio. Many of us were strangers to each other, a demonstration of just how far Carolyn’s reach was. We shared stories, we talked about the personal and the political, and we laughed, boy did we laugh. In Carolyn’s words, “It has always taken a community to make this world happen, and this community of women has come together in my studio…to weave their threads through the tapestry of Woolf’s work. For those of us who were fortunate enough to embroider a word, a line, a panel, it was an unforgettable experience. Carolyn brought us together to celebrate the rebellious act of being creative, to acknowledge the past and to keep pushing forward.

Over 250 people attended the opening reception for Task at Hand, Carolyn’s 2019 exhibition at Rodman Hall Art Centre. The exhibition title captured the discipline, attention, and labour of her approach to artmaking, and referenced her presence, through the marks of her hand, throughout her work. In conversation about her practice on that occasion, Carolyn told us: “It’s about the work. I love the work. That’s what my work is about—the work.”

The last artwork to be exhibited in Carolyn's lifetime was the Pin Drop, finding a home in a storefront in downtown St. Catharines. NAC was honoured to have had the opportunity to help realize Carolyn's “dying wish”, an act of gratitude for all that she'd done for the artists of Niagara. Exhibited for the month of January, this installation of a custom-engineered machine, fabricated to drop straight pins singly hour-after-hour, drew hundreds of visitors. Carolyn took comfort in the sound of it running and the beauty of the growing mound of stainless pins as she watched it online and came to the space as often as she was able. For those who knew her, it was clear she was determined to see the conclusion of this time-based exhibit. She accomplished this, outlasting it by a couple of days and visiting it less than a week before dying. On that last trip to Pin Drop Carolyn expressed her pride that Niagara artists had supported one another, and once again, done something extraordinary together.

Carolyn had the ability to bring people together, whether that is a book club or the embroidery project. She was a great, trusted friend who was always positive and buoyant, and her generosity was unmatched. A captivating storyteller, a true raconteuse, she amused with her experiences and anecdotes. Carolyn appreciated beauty, actively sought out joy and perhaps most importantly tried to be a kinder, gentler person.

During her three-day stay at Hospice Niagara, she became alert after a long period of restless semi consciousness with a clear pronouncement of “I hate Peppermint Patty!” While at first this seemed to be fairly random, we were reminded that Peppermint Patty had a somewhat abusive relationship towards Marcie. Truthfully, Peppermint Patty is a bit of a bully, something that Carolyn could not tolerate and used her courage and skill to actively quash.

Carolyn Wren had a powerful presence that drew people to her. She exuded a zest for life, a deep love of humanity, a devotion to the earth, and a passion for the wonder of art making. Carolyn’s central credo calls out to us all, in her own words: “It doesn’t matter if you get an A++ in school, if you are good and kind then you will do something important. You will go somewhere”. As we collectively grieve the loss of Carolyn Wren in this physical realm, we know her legacy lives on all around us. In her final battle Carolyn left us a lesson for us all.

Never give up, maintain a zest for life and love and care for one another.