A prolific Okotoks artist has taken centre stage at Calgary’s Central Library.
Paul Rasporich’s new body of work, titled Assemblé, is years in the making, created from observations of the National Ballet Company in Toronto.
The collection, spanning the artistic gamut from sculptures and ceramics to oil and watercolour paintings, occupies a space on the main floor of the Central Library, where it will stay until the end of April.
“It’s an honour. It’s probably one of the most beautiful spaces, architecturally, in Calgary,” Rasporich said.
Having started work on the show six years ago, he had booked the space for June of 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, his show got bumped for two years.
“We weren’t able to have it then so I’m just thrilled to have it right now,” Rasporich said.
“I’m thrilled for it to finally happen because I’ve had a house full of paintings that I’ve just continued to obsess over.”
The collection came to be in 2017 while visiting his son Kai in Toronto, when he approached a former subject of his, Karen Kain, then-artistic director for the National Ballet Company, asking if he and his wife, writer Lee Kvern, could observe the dancers for a couple days.
“There were about 73 dancers and they were just floating across the floor,” Rasporich said. “They are absolutely different human beings in that they are totally physically graceful and athletic beyond belief.”
During that time he created sketches and photographs that would be the seeds for his creations.
“I just sat and drew and took the photos back to Okotoks where I worked up a whole show from them, that ended up being about the physicality and sport of dancing," he said.
“They are way stronger than me, and I just have ultimate respect for [Kain] and for the art of ballet. It’s just amazing.”
While Assemblé began just a few years ago, it was the result of a painting Rasporich had created 24 years earlier at the start of his art career, when he met Kain, then a ballerina performing in Swan Lake.
Just starting out, Rasporich had reached out to various figures he respected, asking if he could create their portraits.
He was supplementing his early art career carrying out groceries at Calgary Co-Op in 1992 when the reply came.
“I was carrying out groceries at Co-op and my wife called and said, 'Karen Kain phoned and she’s happy for you to come down to paint or take photos or whatever you need to do at the Jack Singer,’” Rasporich said.
Then a ballerina, Kain was in town performing her final farewell as the Swan Queen, a Pas de deux with dancer Serge Lavoie.
Rasporich met her the next day before her performance where he created photographs he would use as the references for his oil painting of Kain, Nine Minutes Before Curtain.
“It was a major thing to be a fly on the wall for one of her last performances,” Rasporich said.
“It was a very significant moment in my art career, also, because she had said to me, ‘You know what Paul, you are a real artist,’ and no one had told me that before, not anyone of that stature.”
The Central Library show will also mark the first time he and his wife Lee Kvern, a writer, will share an exhibition space.
When the building opened in 2017, Print(ed) Word, a collaboration between 12 Alberta writers and printmakers was given a home on the fourth floor of the library, adjacent the Great Reading Room.
Among the works is Kvern’s story How to Build a Street Girl which was given physical form by printmaker Carole Bondaroff.
Sharing the space with her husband was a new occurrence for the lifelong creatives.
“In terms of each of us in our own disciplines, we're never in the same space,” Kvern said.
“It’s amazing, because he’s an artist and I’m a writer, and rarely do we ever cross paths with each other. So yeah, it’s super cool.”
This article has been updated to reflect the exhibition being extended until April 30. Originally published 03/08/2022 9:00 AM, updated 03/23/2022 11:09 AM.
