Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Apr 15/02) - After turning 40 and spending six months doing some intense soul searching, artist Beth Biggs returned to Iqaluit renewed.

This time she wasn't alone. Her 18-month-old son, Buster, joined her.

News/North: So, you're back.

Beth Biggs: I must say it feels fabulous to be back. When I left I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. Arriving back here, especially at this time of year when it's so beautiful and the light and weather is gorgeous, I'm just so happy to be back in my job (as the senior instructor in the fine arts and crafts program at Nunavut Arctic College).

N/N: Where did you go for the seven months you were away?

B/B: I went to Toronto and did some visiting with friends and family and then I spent a week in Guelph at Lois Betteridge's studio. She's a major silversmith in Canada. It was nice to have a week to saturate myself and get back into doing some of my own artwork. Then I headed to Victoria and spent the winter there with my dad and my little boy, Buster.

N/N: Can you see your son in your father?

B/B: He is actually named after my father's father, Mansell Biggs. He goes by Buster, which is his other grandfather. When he came out, I just looked at him. I had no idea what I wanted to call him. He just looked so much like my grandfather I couldn't believe it.

N/N: How did you keep yourself busy in Victoria?

B/B: Mostly just by being a mother and enjoying time off and doing soul-searching about where I want my life to go and what I want to do. When you have a child, there is a moment in time that makes you reflect on a lot of things and what is important.

N/N: What sort of things did you figure out about yourself?

B/B: I was too much of a workaholic. I really committed myself to my job. I think the time off made me realize it's a good thing to slow down and not always have a plan of what you want to do, but to just enjoy where you are. I'm coming back more relaxed and able to cope with a lot of the stresses of my job and what goes on here in the North. I want to be able to make sure I'm giving back as much as I can.

N/N: How did being a workaholic impact your life?

B/B: It means I got a whole lot done. People would always look at me and say how can you be at this stage of your life and have so many things on your resume and be so successful and a practising artist and an administrator and a teacher. But I realized I can't go on like that. I really enjoyed the pace of my life and I like things happening and movement of a lot of complex things happening all at once. I think of it like jazz -- like at any moment things could fall apart and you try to hold them together. I find that fascinating. But there's a certain time for that and turning 40 was a milestone for me.

N/N: When did you turn 40?

B/B: Last September.

N/N: Did it depress you or did you celebrate it?

B/B: When I was in my 20s, even though I was a real go-getter and teaching at university, I never felt like people took me seriously. I had this idea throughout my 20s and 30s that I couldn't wait until I was 40 because people would treat me like a grown-up. But I didn't have any emotional response to turning 40, other than I felt good about it. It's easy for me at a dinner party to tell people I'm 40. I don't hide it.

N/N: So many people, and particularly women, have problems with turning 40. Why do you think you escaped that?

B/B: Because I feel confident and I equate that to my age and lived experience, rather than feeling like I'm looking old or my body is falling apart. I don't feel those things. There's comfort level for me at this age. I feel grown-up.

N/N: But you're still an extremely busy woman. You're a single mother, you work full-time at the college and you're a practising artist.

B/B: The bulk of it is spent being a mother and working at the college. But I still am a practising artist. I had a major show (just after Buster was born). It was a celebration of Lois Betteridge's work. It was a tribute exhibition. It was a retrospective of her work and she picked five silversmiths from across Canada to make a tribute piece for her. I was one of the five. From that, there have been other things happening.

I had a commission from the same gallery and they also purchased two of my major works. They just started the first collection of jewelry and metalsmithing in Canada. We've been having meetings and discussions about that group doing more exhibitions.

N/N: Why is that the only collection?

B/B: In the last 10 years, there's been a re-evaluation of what's considered to be fine art and craft.

Institutions now are having to be more inclusive of some of the smaller groups who are working. A lot of craft work used to be shown at craft markets and selling at commercial venues. But there really wasn't any place for people who were doing more substantial, conceptual work. You see it happening now.

N/N: How would you describe your own work?

B/B: There's a broad range in my art practice. I do things like make wedding bands for people or special gifts for anniversaries or births of children. I term that to be goldsmithing -- setting gems and working with precious metals. I also make larger pieces, which I refer to as silversmithing. I make vessels and bowls and three-dimensional large pieces out of copper and silver and brass.

Those are extremely labour intensive. Those aren't things you whip off and sell for a couple of hundred dollars. You spend months working at them. Therefore, there's not a huge market for them, but whenever I have had exhibitions the work sells.

That work is much more conceptual. I deal with issues surrounding adornment and women and how women are perceived. I focused for quite a while on issues of religion. I really liked the way jewelry and metalsmithing intersects religious practice.

Religious practice impacts women and how we've been accepted into society. I like to look back to history and see how jewelry functioned and was used and then make work about that. I take a close examination of why we wear these things on our bodies, what do they mean, what do they signify.

N/N: What are you working on right now?

B/B: I'm working on a piece for myself. It's something that started out of having my son, Buster. I wanted to make something that celebrated life. I decided I wanted to make a ciborium, which is the vessel that holds the host (during Communion) that signifies the body of Christ. You eat and are rejuvenated and reborn. I got interested in the fact that they are always used by men in the patriarchal religious practice of Catholicism.

The word ciborium comes from water lily. It's a feminine object. I get excited about how they use this feminine object, a vessel, which you can perceive as a woman, being controlled by a man. I'm making a ciborium and the form of it is going to be very traditional. But yet, the outside is going to be embellished with feminine symbols.

It's a celebration of myself giving birth, but it also takes on a political bent. I hope one day there is a female priest who sees this piece and wants it and uses it and it will become part of that ritual. That way I feel women are claiming something back.

The other point is that a ciborium is incredibly complicated to make. All the pieces are made individually and soldered together. It's an arm wrestle conceptually and physically. I think that technology is getting lost and people don't know how to make these things any more.

Understanding how metal moves and how you control it and how it fights back is all really incredible information. I wanted to reclaim that as well.

N/N: When do you find time to work on this?

B/B: I worked a couple of weeks in February at Lois' studio and I'm going to the Haliburton School of Fine Arts in July. I'll work a couple of weeks then. It's hit and miss, especially with having a young child. I can't work weekends or evenings.

N/N: Not even when he goes off to bed?

B/B: I don't have a studio at home and I find being 40 and being a single parent is a lot different than being 25 or 30. Getting up at 6 a.m., by the time he goes to bed at 8 p.m., I'm spent. I can do the dishes and maybe fold some laundry, but not work. I have to take snippets of time in between the rest of my life.