The art scene’s own treasure map
Calgary has a map of its underground art, and it comes from the same idea behind the Calgary Atlas Project’s other maps. Local historians choose the sites, a local artist draws them up, and you get a history you can hold in your hands.
The alternative-art edition is Calgary’s Art Underground: Place | Time | Art | A Guide. The drawing collective Drunken Paw (Leslie Sweder, Mark Dicey and Janet Turner) did the artwork, and Diana Sherlock wrote the text.
Plenty left to dig up
We think it’s the start of a story worth telling properly, about which spaces still stand, who ran them and what they showed. Until then, the Nickle Galleries page on the Atlas Project and the Calgary Atlas Project at the University of Calgary are the places to poke around.
Print the map out, pick a stop and make it your next gallery crawl. Calgary punk has a map of its own too. If you want the film version of the same idea, the Atlas Project’s stories you missed has you covered.
Quick answers
Calgary’s Art Underground is the alternative art edition of the Calgary Atlas Project’s maps. Local historians choose the sites, a local artist draws them up, and you get a history you can hold in your hands, a guide to the city’s underground art.
The drawing collective Drunken Paw, made up of Leslie Sweder, Mark Dicey and Janet Turner, did the artwork, and Diana Sherlock wrote the text. The map comes from the Calgary Atlas Project at the University of Calgary.
The Nickle Galleries page on the Atlas Project and the Calgary Atlas Project at the University of Calgary are the places to poke around. Print the map out, pick a stop and make it your next gallery crawl in Calgary.
Sources: Nickle Galleries, Calgary Institute for the Humanities.
If this one hooked you, we think Calgary Underground Film Festival and CIFF and What Each One Is Known For and The Building That Rebuilt a Blues Hotel are a good next read.
