Patti Normand, Artist, Toronto, 1988

When Brian Hay and I, photographers of household accoutrements, chanced renting a house on Toronto’s Palmerston Street, in the fall of 1987, knowing the rent was beyond our means, we could not have anticipated our newspaper ad would attract the talented women — two modern dancers and a visual artist — who would become our roommates.

If the house (just off Queen St. W. in a Portuguese neighbourhood) was an art incubator, we were its babies — speaking for myself, anyway, the “senior citizen” of the house, at 35.

Patti Normand, the youngest member of the household, was attending the Ontario College of Art and Design. Lisa Cochrane had arrived from the west coast, after studying dance and communications at Simon Fraser University. Susan Sinclair was a graduate of Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal.

I’ve mentioned before in these Toronto Diaries, and it bears repeating, that there was never a dull moment at the house. With such a range of talent and related interests, there was always an event on the crowded calendar: dance recitals, art shows, music performances, or just nights out on the town.

Like any family, we had our ups and downs, but we stood by one another through the inevitable disappointments of life in the arts, confided our problems, and offered encouragement.

I’ve often wondered how these extraordinary women got on. I haven’t seen Susan since she visited Vancouver in ’89. Brian recalls that she joined a dance company in Ireland, some time after that.

Susan Sinclair, Toronto, 1988

I’m happy to have discovered lately, through the wonders of the Internet, that other women artists with whom I shared the rambling house continue to weave their magic in the world.

Patti lives in Ottawa, and seems to be following the thread she established early in her career, exploring the sometimes unsettling corners of our place in the womb of nature, which nurtures us at the same time it defines our mortality.

Via email, we concur that we had immense fun at the house. “You were like my older brothers and sisters!”

In the photo above, she is working on one of her early series of oil pastel drawings that contain natural refuges, hut-like structures hidden within shadowy landscapes (Patti can be seen unmasked in the inset photo in my millinery tale). Her contemporary dioramas and related photographs, I think, continue in that vein. The photographs innovatively reverse the selective-focus technique, usually employed to miniaturize urban scenes, to “enlarge” her mysterious model tableaux.

Lisa Cochrane, Palmerston St., Toronto, 1988

Lisa has also succeeded as a multidisciplinary artist, working in dance, documentary filmmaking, TV, dramatic writing, and sculpture. Her 3-D works, made with found objects — animal skulls, hides, clothing, furniture — also examine our place in nature, referencing the increasing challenges of environmental degradation and climate change. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Other talented women who roomed at the house included Lisa’s good friend Rebecca Jenkins. Already a sought-after singer, touring with Jane Siberry and The Parachute Club, Jenkins went on to a successful career in television and cinema, notably starring and singing in the film Bye, Bye, Blues. I’d promised to do some promo shots for her, but England intervened.

It is intriguing to imagine the exchange of interests and ideas that permeated our shared home, thirty-years-ago, may still be influencing our work.