We’re Going to Need a Bigger Canvas
Property Developer and Victoria’s Visual Arts Spaces Forge an Unlikely Alliance
woRds + iMages by siMon oGden
Before his introduction to BC developer Reliance Properties, Logan Ford had no reason to trust landlords. He arrived in Victoria from Calgary in 2007 as an HVAC tradesman by vocation and an oil/acrylic painter by avocation, just in time for the 2008 recession to dry up most of the available construction work. “I ended up framing houses for twelve bucks an hour,” says Ford. “I was miserable, hating my boss, and one day I just quit. I didn’t know what to do, but I was always making art.”
The week he left his job he sold a painting for $500, “which paid my rent, so I thought, okay, well, I’ll just keep this going as long as I can.” Victoria has long been a city rich in visual artists and poor in spaces for making and exhibiting art.
Logan Ford—together with partner Ian George—rented 600 square feet in an old building in Burnside Gorge, and in 2013 the Rockslide Studio & Gallery was born. Within three years they had expanded to 4000 square feet, providing affordable studio space to a community of twenty-five artists.
To navigate this paucity of affordable Victoria studio space, Ford—together with partner Ian George—rented 600 square feet in an old building in Burnside Gorge, and in 2013 the Rockslide Studio & Gallery was born. Within three years they had expanded to 4000 square feet, providing affordable studio space to a community of twenty-five artists. At the end of their initial five-year lease, the landlord doubled the rent in a successful effort at evicting Rockslide from the property.
Ford and George were offered a deal on a rundown property on Herald Street, on the condition they would restore the building at their own expense. They accepted on the assurance of an eight-year residency, and after months of major surgery—including hazardous-material removal, a new roof, and a fully muralled exterior—the landlord promptly sold the building to a Vancouver developer, who immediately demolished it. Rockslide was homeless once again.
They moved into a small industrial building in Rock Bay next, but their community was growing and they were in need of more space, not less. Ford’s persistence led to a meeting with Reliance, who had purchased the four-storey art deco heritage building on Blanshard at Burdett in 2019 with an eye toward turning it into a hotel topped by an eighteen-storey condo tower. Ford brokered what he terms “a great deal” for Rockslide to move in with a short-term lease, and took over the first and second floors.
“Within a few months the word got out that we had affordable studio space, and there was so much demand right away that we took the rest of the building, and now we have a huge wait list,” says Ford. With a temporary lease until January 2024, the building, once the home of the BC Power Commission (a precursor of BC Hydro), boasts sun-filled studios for eighty-five artists, four galleries, and five unique arts and culture organizations in addition to Rockslide: the Ministry of Casual Living, Supply Victoria, the Victoria Tool Library, Haus of Owl, and Sweetpea Gallery. Built as a WWII-era hospital that was rendered unnecessary by the end of the war, the generously wide hallways (for stretcher access) and high ceilings provide for excellent gallery displays. It’s a dream space for working artists, albeit a potentially temporary one.
“Reliance offered us a two-year lease while they develop the site plans, but now that we’ve built this great arts hub, they’re realizing its worth.” Ford has given tours of the space to seven out of eight members of the city council, as well as Mayor Marianne Alto. “I think they see the value in it, the community members see the value in it, so maybe we can make something work,” Ford says confidently. “We’ll see if we can create some synergy between us and Reliance and the city in the coming months—we’re going to be allies no matter what.”
“We’ll see if we can create some synergy between us and Reliance and the city in the coming months—we’re going to be allies no matter what.”
Part of this evolution for Ford is the incorporation of the collective into a non-profit, christened VIVAS (the Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society), to qualify for grant funding and continue growing the business while remaining true to its mandate: providing affordable workspaces and advocating for the needs of Victoria artists.
Rockslide isn’t the only Victorian art space that Reliance is striving to support. They are actively involved with the relocation of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV), which has long needed more space than their current home in the Spencer Mansion—an 1889 Victorian home tucked up in leafy Rockland—even with the seven modernist galleries added after it was donated to the AGGV in 1951.
Nancy Noble, the gallery’s new director and CEO, cites the mansion’s aging infrastructure (“as with so many museums in this country”) as the impetus for the move, along with a lack of space—specifically wall height to feature tall-scale contemporary pieces and digital media. The AGGV also has the “largest publicly held art collection in BC, at 23,000 objects. That’s way more than the Vancouver Art Gallery.” Getting more of that out of storage and in front of the public is high on the gallery’s wish list.
“We need to be unafraid to say that we’re ambitious for this city to be something else, and a bigger and more successful art gallery can be a part of that.”
They’d also like to be closer to the action. “Downtown would give us democratization, and so much more opportunity to grow our audiences,” Noble says. “This is a beautiful building, but it has a very colonial kind of feel, and for many people that can be off-putting. Downtowns are for everyone.” The AGGV has a letter of agreement with Reliance to become an integral part of the city’s Victoria 3.0: Recovery, Reinvention, Resilience plan, which includes the creation of an Arts and Innovation District in the area north of Chinatown, around Capital Iron. The city and Reliance are still working toward an agreement, but Noble says the “city is fully behind the move.”
One answer to the age-old question of how to grow the arts industry in Victoria seems to be finding ways to partner with larger companies that are developing the city already, instead of remaining insular. “There is a kind of reticence to being too bold here, and I think we need to be bold,” says Noble. “We need to be unafraid to say that we’re ambitious for this city to be something else, and a bigger and more successful art gallery can be a part of that.”
