as a fine artist, but also in ceramics production (making ashtrays on demand, for example). He worked for other production studios in Medicine Hat, researched the clay, and searched it out for others. He started his own small studio in Calgary with a couple of art school friends, all the while teaching here and there — Banff and Vancouver — and continuing to paint, sketch, and do his own creative work in ceramics. Lindoe had already begun to develop the spare, modern style in both painting and ceramics that he would continue to evolve throughout his life. He was an artist whose work was a perfect match for his time, and much of his creative work had a stylish, mid-century edge that makes it highly collectible today. He could be temperamental, a trait that Christopher attests to today, and one that dogged him through his life. He abandoned the idea of selling his work, several times, most notably through much of the 1950s. “I resigned from all exhibiting societies in 1952,” Lindoe told Linda Carney of the Medicine Hat Museum in 1992. “I had hit the wall and had neither the wisdom nor the courage to carry on in an environment that I knew was alien to me, but it wasn’t until 1964 or ’65 that I started to get the courage to expose myself artistically again.” In talking to Carney, Lindoe revealed how much his confidence was shaken by a feeling of not being “fashionable” for his time, a revelation that is remarkable in hindsight, given the style of his work. He had been producing prolifically, exhibiting in international ceramics shows, and gathering up a few high-profile public commissions — including the solemn and gorgeous Neo-Gothic cast concrete Virgin Mary and Christ Child on St. Mary’s Cathedral in Calgary. Later he would design and complete the huge panels that front the Provincial Museum in Edmonton, a recreation of the Plains pictographs found in the Milk River region of southern Alberta. Lindoe’s studio ceramics and sculpture can be loosely divided into abstract and utilitarian — he was constantly experimenting with vessels and slabs, testing clays and glazes, trying to find the best match between form and material. Alberta artist and curator Les Graff, who wrote the catalogue for Lindoe’s 1998 retrospective at the Nickle, describes it best. “Luke has focused on the concept of a more universal clay vessel, something that grows out of the medium and the process,” he wrote then. “And if it should serve as a plate or a bowl, that’s fine too.” By the early 1960s, Lindoe was back in Medicine Hat, running a clay production company called Plainsman Clays, and analyzing firing and glazing techniques for the best results (it was during this period that he got and kept a reputation as something of a guru to ceramic artists). It was also at this time that Virginia Christopher met him, through a roommate, Gail, who would become his wife. A student in some ceramics classes Lindoe taught at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, Christopher says that when she met him, he was doing major sculptural pieces, both figurative and abstract, and building up Plainsman. He was also developing a deep, unshakeable knowledge of kilns and firing. “He would sit there and sip his vodka and let the air in and out,” she recalls. “He would never leave a kiln alone. He just had an instinct for the firing process.” His work for Plainsman absorbed a huge amount of Lindoe’s creative time through the 1960s and 70s, and he all but abandoned public exhibition again. He had been disenchanted with the politics of artists’ organizations, and with the loss of several special pieces that had won international art competitions 60 Galleries West Fall/Winter 2008
www.gallerieswest.ca