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CULTURE CRAWL
CULTURE CRAWL Culture Crawl’s resilience reflected in its history
by Charlie Smith
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For many years, Esther Rausenberg has been a pillar of the Vancouver art community. As one of the founders of the Eastside Culture Crawl, she has helped countless artists show their work to thousands and thousands of residents every year. In 2019, 23,000 visitors went through the Parker Street Studios alone.
This has helped artists forge connections with patrons—as well as lifelong friendships—and earn a living. In the process, the Eastside Culture Crawl has helped turn East Vancouver into a vibrant national centre for visual arts, crafts, and design.
So it might come as a surprise to some that the Eastside Culture Crawl, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, doesn’t receive any federal funding.
“We have had very, very minimal support from government funding bodies— like, we get zero from the Canadian government,” Rausenberg told the Straight in a phone interview. “Zero. Zero.”
She thinks it comes down to a very Eurocentric definition of what the visual arts are all about to qualify for federal funding.
“The way that the visual arts are supported and seen always has to be mediated through the eyes of a curator,” Rausenberg explained. “And so visual artists can’t selfrepresent their own work and can’t curate their own work.”
The Eastside Culture Crawl breaks through that model by offering a way for artists to get their work in the hands of patrons by creating opportunities for buyers to visit their studios. This year, more than 400 artists will be participating in the two major events: a by-appointmentonly preview weekend from November 12 to 14 and an open-studio component from November 18 to 21.
Rausenberg said that although artists cannot obtain government funding through self-representation, this option is available to artists in other areas.
“If I’m a dancer or a choreographer, I can do that,” she declared. “If I am a theatre director, I can do that. If I’m a writer, I can do that.
“I put my own work out there, and if it sticks and somebody is interested in that, I can promote it,” Rausenberg continued.
“I don’t do all of that if I’m a visual artist; it has to go through a gatekeeper like a private gallery or a public gallery.”
She doesn’t think that’s fair to people who make their livelihood in the visual arts.
After getting that off her chest, Rausenberg had many other interesting things to say, including how she became interested in art. She was actually not exposed to it as a child. Her father had escaped Yugoslavia and had no interest in this area.
But a life-changing event came with the visit of a famous artist to Vancouver in the 1970s. Milton Ernest “Robert” Rauschenberg had a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. According to Rausenberg, that elicited the interest of her father, whose name was originally Rauschenberger but had been anglicized to Rausenberg. Her dad decided to go to the VAG to see if he could meet the artist.
Esther Rausenberg helped found the Eastside Culture Crawl. Photo by Adam P.W. Smith.
– Esther Rausenberg
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The two did end up talking, and Rausenberg’s dad returned with one of Rauschenberg’s catalogues.
“That was my first real exposure to contemporary art,” Rausenberg revealed. “I was like, ‘Wow, what is this?’ It was really bizarre.”
That triggered a greater interest in visual art, leading her to study photography at Britannia secondary. Rausenberg went on to take video, film, sound, and contemporary-dance courses at Simon Fraser, eventually finding a job at the Firehall Arts Centre.
In 1980, Rausenberg met her partner, visual artist Richard Tetrault, and the rest is history.
Another of her colourful stories concerns how the crow came to become the mascot of the Eastside Culture Crawl. It was Richard’s idea.
“He’s the crow man,” Rausenberg said with a chuckle. “Richard was painting crows way before the Crawl.”
In the early days, they actually had a cricket as the mascot for one year.
“Then at one point—you know, us being kind of irreverent East Siders—we thought maybe we should do a cockroach, ha, ha, ha,” she said. “We didn’t think it would go over well with the public.”
Back in the early days, Rausenberg conceded that the Eastside Culture Crawl was a bit of a free-for-all, open to whoever opened their doors with whatever they might be selling. Nowadays, the curated catalogue reveals how professional it has become over 25 years.
“I’m so excited about the quality of the work and how far we’ve come in regards to that,” Rausenberg said. “Having said that, I’m very supportive of the fact that we are so embracing of the art form and that we don’t make judgements as we embrace emerging-to-established artists.
“We really do provide opportunities for artists to develop their art practice. I think that’s a really important function of the Crawl.” g
The Eastside Culture Crawl’s preview weekend takes place by appointment only from November 12 to 14; the open studio festival component does not require an appointment and takes place from November 18 to 21.
Culture Crawl TIP SHEET
Karen Lorena Parker
AT THIS YEAR’S Eastside Culture Crawl, artist and former journalist Carlyn Yandle is curating a series of discussions on the process of researching, creating, and making a living by creating art. Beginning on November 9, Talking Art/Histories in the Making: From Research to Artwork takes place over three days on Zoom with artists Julie McIntyre, Monique Motut-Firth, and Mia Weinberg. Here are some other online highlights of this year’s Crawl: c CREATING ART WITH DIGITAL
MEDIA (November 16) The art director of the Parker Art Salon, Karen Lorena
Parker, explains how to create art with digital media, including nonfungible tokens, a.k.a. NFTs. c APES, PUNKS AND 1/1S:
COLLECTING NFTS FOR
BLOCKCHAIN BEGINNERS
(November 17) Multidisciplinary artist Kate McDonald will offer a one-hour workshop covering basic information on one of the hottest new fields of collectibles: nonfungible tokens. Learn how to purchase them, how to send cryptocurrency to a digital wallet, and security precautions to determine authenticity. g