IN STUDIO WITH
TORRIE GROENING Peppa Martin’s visit to Torrie Groening’s Vancouver studio reveals the ethos of an avid collector and artist; high intention, high production, and an elegant manifestation of a good idea. BY PEPPA MARTIN
TORRIE GROENING’S STUDIO was built in 1910 by architect Frederick Mellish, and originally housed the Norwegian Lutheran Church. Mellish was a well-known architect from Ontario who moved to Vancouver in 1908 and went on to build a number of homes, churches, and warehouses. Subsequently occupied by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Cry in the Wilderness Church, and lastly, the Basel Hakka Lutheran Church, the building was decommissioned as a church in 2008 and became a private residence. Torrie’s family’s ongoing work on the building has included a new set of altar windows that echo the Gothic archway of the interior stage and exterior brickwork sourced from local neighbourhood tear-downs.
I met Torrie at her studio on a postcard-worthy day, saturated in sunshine. I rang the buzzer at the tall wooden gate and was swiftly greeted by the artist along with her sociable pug, Stella. Warm, engaging, and with pale rose-pink hair reminiscent of vintage chintz, Torrie toured me around the studio, pausing at projects in various states of progress. At 1700 square feet, the studio sprawls under an uncommonly high ceiling and is encircled with tall, broad windows that drench the room with natural light. Worktables are oriented around the 36 • PhotoED
room. An array of paints, pastels, coloured pencils, pigments, and brushes occupy drawers and containers. Tripods with lights and a medium format camera gather around the constructed set of a developing photo series. Cubbies overflow with small ornamental glass vessels in a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colours. A giant inkjet printer looms large in one corner, easy chairs surrounded by shelves of art books create a lounge area under a massive monitor, and surfaces are strewn with test prints. “I work in two linked methods: I draw, paint, or make prints of objects — these pieces exist independently and later may appear in new-collaged compositions and be used as props in photobased work,” she explains. One quickly discovers Torrie’s métier: collections. “I started collecting bits of nature when I was a kid — rocks and things on the beach,” she says. Torrie now photographs her found and collected objects and, by employing a process of cut and paste, creates large-scale collage artworks. “The creative part is building the sets, researching, finding objects, composing, and assembling,” she muses. “I work on the still life images like stage sets: the objects, the actors, and myself, the director.
