Janet Davis, Brookfield: Salt Cod Study
 Funded Under: Professional Project Grants Program
Amount Funded: $3,000
Visual artist Janet Davis is currently researching and creating an extensive body of work entitled Salt Cod Study. It explores salt cod as an icon in Newfoundland and Labrador's history.
Project Dates: November 15, 2009 - May 15, 2010
Contact: Janet Davis
Studio and shop: Norton's Cove Studio Inc. Located at the Job Kean Shop, Brookfield
Phone: (709) 536-2533
E-mail: nortonscovestudio@nf.aibn.com
Website: nortonscovestudio.blogspot.com, www.cardsandminis.blogspot.com
Janet Davis
 Since 2003, Janet has been working on a study of fish, which she sees as a metaphor for human life: swarming masses fighting their way through life, constantly in search of food, instinctively anxious to reproduce; the strong flourishing and the weak failing to succeed.
Recent works include images of salt fish in etchings and mat hooking; lino-cuts, etchings, and collagraphs of caplin swimming or dried and arranged in a wreath for the Christmas season. Recently, she has added painting in oils, especially on plywood, to her list of favorite techniques.
Janet enjoys mixing techniques, challenging what is considered art versus craft by the general population. For example, printing an etching on cloth instead of paper, and embellishing the image with hand embroidery and beading is a favorite technique.
During the winter of 2009-10, she is focusing her art-making on salt fish and researching the way of life that was dictated by the salt fish industry. She believes that much of that history is lost on the younger generations (including her own). Her ultimate goal is to produce a generous quantity of work to propose a solo exhibition at a professional gallery. She would like to travel the exhibit around Newfoundland and Labrador hoping it will inspire younger people to think of the past and how it has shaped their own roots.
An Interview with Janet Davis...
 NLAC: What inspired and motivated you to embark on this work?
JD: Well, all my grandparents were involved with salt fish, so it only makes sense that I would be interested in it. I’m living where my ancestors have been for eight or nine generations. I feel really connected to the past and to those that have come before me.
Over the last three or four years I’ve sat on a couple of arts juries (buying art work for the government and things like that) and every time a picture of a salt fish comes up, or any sort of fish whatsoever, everyone kind of groans – except for me. And I’ve had this kind of reaction from other artists, who don’t necessarily know what I do, and they’re all like “Oh God, another fish, just what we need.” And that makes me feel like, what the hell am I doing? Why am I the crazy one? So I applied for an Arts Council project grant – the first time I’ve applied since 2006. I think I felt like I needed some encouragement from the arts community to continue what I was at. Maybe if I had been turned down I would have tried to get my head around something else. I felt (getting the grant) told me “it’s all right what you’re doing.”
NLAC: What is this body of work “about”?
 JD: I kind of want to remind people where we’ve come from. A while ago I was at a craft fair, and there was a girl there – I still can’t get over it – she was 20 odd years old, at least, and had no idea what a salt cod looked like. She looked at one of my etchings of a fish and asked what it was. And I was a bit dumbfounded, so maybe I said it was a fish, and she said, ‘so is it a puffer fish’? And I thought – what?! I couldn’t believe it – I was like where are you from? And she said she grew up in St. John’s all her life. Where has our educational system gone wrong where you can’t recognize a picture of a salt fish? It’s so important in our history. Any child growing up in Newfoundland should be able to recognize what a salt fish is.
NLAC: What will the research for this work entail?
JD: I’ll be talking to some of my older relatives. My grandparents are gone, but their siblings are still around, so I want to talk to as many of them as I possibly can – and other people too, not just relatives, but other people in the community who remember more about it. I don’t want (the work) to have anything to do with the moratorium or any sort of a negative light on the cod fish industry. I want the memories of it as it was, whether good or bad. For instance, one of my friends, she’s in her 50s, and she remembers as a child, when her parents or whoever weren’t looking, she and a couple of her friends would get up on the flakes on a hot day and just pick little bits of flesh off the fish and eat it right there and then run away. And they loved it. She said the fish was warmed with the sun, and the flavour was just so intense. Now, I can’t get my son to eat salt fish, he just won’t do it. There are too many other options right? But (back then) it wasn’t even something they had to eat – they wanted it. I thought it was really interesting how that’s changed.
NLAC: What form will this work take? What will the images be of?
 JD: I envision a room full of several kinds of pieces, like groups of work that fit together. I’ve got one lino-cut edition finished. Another idea is a long line of paintings, each one would have one fish on it, hanging from a rope like a clothesline, and they would be linked. I’m playing with the idea of lineage. I’ve got a photograph: one day one of my neighbours had all of his fish out on the clothesline with rope tied through their tails, so I ran home and got my camera. It’s a gorgeous image because his back yard is just giant chunks of granite, so all behind the fish is just granite and nothing else hardly. The pictures turned out fabulous, so that’s kind of what I’m using as a guideline for the hanging of the fish. I have to figure out how many of these fish I want to do for the clothesline. I’m not sure if I want just a dozen, like he had on his line, or maybe I want 30 or 40, I don’t know yet.
NLAC: Can you tell me a bit about your life as a full-time professional artist living in Brookfield: How do your surroundings inspire your work? What are the advantages of living in a rural community? What are the challenges?
JD: I find it kind of hard living out here that I don’t really feel like I’m part of a larger arts community – I’m just out here on my own. I find it a little hard sometimes not having those conversations that I’m sure other people are having when they go to the Duke or The Ship, you know? But that’s the only thing. Other than that, I don’t see any negative aspect of living out around the bay as an artist, it’s awesome. Because the cost of living is so cheap here. We bought an old house and the shop, which is a totally separate building, and they’re beautiful buildings. I’m sure you’d get half a million dollars or more for it in St. John’s, but here we paid $10,000 for the whole property, and have put in probably $70 or $80,000 altogether for both buildings since. It took me a while to get my house and shop done, but now I don’t have a mortgage, so I’m at a huge advantage.
NLAC: What about advantages from an artistic point of view – the pace and the space?
JD: The space first of all is amazing. I have this separate work space. I think because of affordability, a lot of artists don’t have their own studio space, or their studio space is really small, or in their house. I find that it’s really easy to get work done when your work space is in a separate building. And the building itself is inspirational you know, it’s a beautiful space to be in, very comfortable and cozy. And then of course I’m just looking at the salt water all day! Icebergs are going by all day in the spring, and we’ve had a couple of polar bears.
NLAC: Will they crop up in your artwork?
JD: Eventually yes.
NLAC: Can people view or purchase your work?
JD: I’m here all the time. And even if I’m not in my studio, I’m just in my house, like 20 steps behind. In the winter the studio is open to the public 9-3 every week day, and 10 to 6 on Saturdays. Summertime I get probably 15 visitors a day, but in wintertime you get 15 visitors a month – so it’s pretty slow. But when the iceburgs come people are looking for them, and since there are no other tourist destinations around here most (tourists) end up coming in here. My studio is a shop as well, and I’ve got a coffee sign up in the window. I actually got more traffic this summer because people – not having any idea what was in here – were coming in for coffee, and then going, ‘oh, this is what you do!’
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