On Elke Blodgett’s fridge, there’s a quote by environmental essayist Edward Abbey that has some sage advice to activists about being a “reluctant enthusiast,” which he defined as a part-time crusader, half-hearted fanatic.
“It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.”
I think of that often in reminiscence over the renowned artist and environmentalist most of us knew simply as Elke. She passed away unexpectedly on Feb. 15, the bitter result of a massive heart attack after a long and full life. She was 81. Frankly, I thought she would live much, much longer.
She was known as the keeper of the city’s environment. Everybody knew that she fought for the land. She did so for the sake of keeping it healthy and thriving but also so that we all could enjoy it as much as she did. Boy, did she ever.
Many regarded her dismissively as a tree hugger, though I never once observed her doing so. Yes, she had a substantial garden and fed carrot peels to the neighbourhood rabbits. She also had a love of handpicked dandelions, mushrooms and other earthly edibles. She held herbicides in great disdain. She could tell you about the weeds and berries; better yet, she would let you know where to find a good patch of them and how to cook them.
She was my neighbour too and a vigilant witness to the natural world. As often as possible, she would visit the Sturgeon River and Big Lake, mostly to just observe the sunset. Her photos of them have been seen and shared for years through friends and social media, reminding us all of the beauty just outside our doors if we would only look. I swear I never even knew where Big Lake was until I moved to her block. You can still see her photos at www.elkeblodgett.net.
Far too often, her walks came back with reports on the water level, substances spilled in the water, damage to the wetland, untoward chemical usage, animal injuries or deaths, or other ecological issues. City staffers certainly had heard from her many times over the years, often to their chagrin. She told me that even this newspaper stopped printing her letters a few years ago. If some called her tree hugger then many others considered her a prickly thorn in their sides.
And rightly so as the truth is often unpleasant. She called people out when and where needed. She was the one who pointed at the damage and said, “That’s wrong.” She gathered signatures on petitions and taught schoolkids about the world but she never once organized a blockade. She called politicians and government agencies and community organizations and wrote many letters, offering the full force of her knowledge and determination, not to mention her willingness to make enemies if it at least meant fixing something. But she never once tied herself to a tree.
“She was a mother, artist, shit-disturber. I keep looking for a more tasteful synonym, but there really isn’t one,” said Edmonton author Astrid Blodgett, one of Elke’s three children.
She, along with her brother Gunnar and sister Kirsten grew up in the Grandin house that Elke and poet E.D. (Ted) Blodgett bought in the mid-1960s. Elke was born in Leipzig, Germany, the daughter of an environmental chemical engineer who once figured out how to turn industrial ash and make cinder blocks for construction. She moved all over Europe before immigrating to North America, settling here.
She might have followed in her father's footsteps forged by science, environmentalism and art, but she made a trail of her own by finding, reusing, and re-purposing materials for her own art and for other practical applications. The first home she built was one she made from scavenged bricks. She was 10. She later built a place she called the woodshouse out of similar discarded construction materials, even tools she salvaged. It was said that she could build the best kilns out of nothing.
“She was a great scrounger,” said longtime friend and artistic colleague Carol Stanton. “We used to go up to the old brickyard. She would dig around and find bits and pieces and old kiln bricks. They had all that rubble sitting around. The brickyard was no longer functioning. We used to have so much fun. She was quite a character.”
She offered one story about how Elke courted disaster while doing raku in an electric kiln in the basement at home. The piece she was working on was sizable as was her wont. Elke was not a tall woman. Raku involves heating the pot up to 1,000˚C and then putting it into an airtight vessel with combustible leaves or paper that add dramatic and unpredictable effects to the work. She had this vessel in her backyard.
“The glaze is melting; the pot is red-hot. She would put on every bit of clothing that she had and asbestos gloves, and grab these pots out of the kiln, and run up the stairs with them. In doing this one day, she tripped on the stairs and dropped the pot. It’s a wonder she didn’t burn the house down.”
She also recalled one special kiln that they built, again out of scraps. While the raku was cooking, so was their chicken and potato dinner.
“She was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The mind of an engineer. The heat recirculated in the kiln. It was very efficient. We baked bread in the back part.”
Later, they ate that dinner while enjoying some of Elke’s famous homemade chokecherry wine.
“Our mother had an overwhelming urge to create things,” Astrid continued, listing off the pots, the woodshouse, a jungle gym, a rocking horse, a doll house, and clothing, among so many other things. “She also cared very deeply about the natural world and did all she could to protect an area very dear to her heart. As a friend recently wrote: ‘she fiercely protected what was close and cherished it until it was dear rather than just admire and aggrandize the far distant places’.”
Elke cherished people and never balked at the chance to make new friends, though Gunnar said that growing up in her house was “daunting” with the prospect of living up to the reputations of two well-respected artists as parents.
“It was an incredible way to grow up otherwise because we were exposed to a pretty good range of the arts. As an adult, I can’t complain about how that broadened our minds and gave us an appetite for more,” he said, adding that his mother had a big heart but one that pumped at full force and sometimes too hot. “No end of concern. Anger and love and care and vitriol and nurturing all wrapped up into one little package.”
He recalled helping her set up her exhibits in his youth, and noted how impactful they were for everyone. For one such show at the Peter Whyte Gallery in Banff, she reprinted some of Ted’s poetry in calligraphy and matched them with her pots for “a very, very personal statement” at a time when their marriage was failing. Another show in Stony Plain offered another emotional statement after the divorce.
“My sister would not go into the room. She said, ‘this is too traumatic for me.’ There were middle-aged women coming up to mom crying, saying, ‘thank you for expressing this.’”
After these experiences, Elke started having dreams of druids, moon rocks, and killer whales. Her work became larger still, no doubt a way of leaving the full weight of her artistry to command into the future the messages that she spent her whole life trying to say.
People, if they are unfamiliar with her work, can pop into the foyer of St. Albert Place where three large pots are on display. Looking further, one could discover other works in various private, corporate and government collections in Canada, the U.S.A., France, England, and Germany, including the Banff Centre Permanent Collection, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Esso Resources, the Consulate General of Japan in Edmonton, and the Canada Council Art Bank among others.
She celebrated the earth for its bounty and offered her pots back to it in reverence. Everything about her was rooted in the real world. Gunnar agreed that she had no time for pretenses. “It was one of her most frustrating and refreshing qualities, I suspect.”
That big heart meant that she was ever open to meeting new people.
“Mom's rule was that there was always room for one more, especially at meal time. Even if someone showed up unexpected for dinner, she could manage to make sure there was enough food for everyone,” daughter Kirsten Gill confirmed.
“Mom was very proud of her cooking. She was an excellent cook and refused to serve TV dinners. Everything was fresh and most of the vegetables came from her garden. Healthy food was important to her. The only thing I could never figure out was when she had time to prepare it because her days were spent outside gardening or potting and her evenings walking around the lake. When she no longer could make pots, her days were still busy protecting her beloved Big Lake.”
Yes, Elke loved Big Lake. In fact, the two are intrinsically linked forever for me. Every time that I have thought of one, I have immediately thought of the other.
And so it comes to this: she left this mortal plane on the third Thursday of February, around the time of day that the sun was going down on the eve of the new moon. Even from her hospital bed, I’m certain that something in her soul must have said, “now that is a sunset that I just cannot miss.”
A memorial has been set for 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 24 at the Kinsmen Banquet Centre at 47 Riel Drive.
