DAULT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-15 published
Sculptor 'entirely original'
A wood carver from a young age who made many public works, he
was befriended by the Group of Seven and later carved their tombstone
epitaphs
By Bill GLADSTONE,
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, November
15, 2003 - Page F10
A Canadian sculptor who as a young man was adopted by the Group
of Seven has died in Toronto. E. B.
COX, who prided himself on
achieving artistic and commercial success without ever taking
a penny in government grants, was 89.
Mr. COX was a young associate, of some of the Group of Seven
with whom he went on northern sketching trips; A. Y.
JACKSON
once complimented him on his "good sense of form." He later carved
their tombstone epitaphs.
A wood carver from a young age, he came to master stone and even
the delicate art of faceting and carving precious stones; he
also tried metal, ceramics and glass. Because he liked to work
fast, he pioneered the use of power tools to quicken the chiselling
process, a technique that purists initially disdained as a form
of cheating.
According to one 1990s guide-book, he had "more sculpture on
view in Toronto's public places than any other single artist."
His 20-piece Garden of the Greek Gods, originally installed in
the 1950s on the Georgian Peaks near Collingwood, Ontario, was
later relocated to the far more populous grounds of the Canadian
National Exhibition near the Dufferin Gate. The only fully human
representation in the group, an 11-foot-high statue of Hercules,
was carved from a six-tonne piece of Indiana limestone -- "the
biggest piece of stone used by a sculptor in Canada," according
to friend and patron, Ken
SMITH.
Among his many other public works are a fish fountain for a courtyard
at the former Park Plaza Hotel, a stone bear for the Guild Inn,
a stone Orpheus for Victoria College, lavish countertops and
railings for historic bank buildings, a large seated lady for
McMaster University and whimsical creatures for a school yard
in Milton, Ontario
Having mastered big, he also excelled at small: He used to claim
that he invented coffee-table art. He carved little totem poles
to put himself through university, and became known for his small
bear sculptures, which he sold at popular prices, especially
at Christmas. "At university, I damned near starved," he would
explain. "I don't believe in starving artists."
Influenced by Iroquois and West Coast Haida art, he focused on
bears, beavers, birds and other animals as well as human torsos,
masks and heads; he often caught the animals in quirky fluid
poses and never failed to capture their essential natures. He
once crafted an all-Canadian limited-edition chess set for the
Hudson's Bay Co., with beavers as pawns, coureurs de bois as
knights, Indian princesses as queens, and so on. He was "the
great bridge between aboriginal art and modern art," according
to Mr. SMITH and others. A picture book about him, featuring
an essay by Gary Michael
DAULT, was published by Boston Mills
Press in 1999.
"He was entirely original," said Toronto sculptor Dora DE
PEDERY-
HUNT.
"Absolutely nobody else did what he did. What style he had was
entirely his. I call him a real good sculptor, a real good artist."
The younger of two brothers, Elford Bradley
COX was born on July
16, 1914, in Botha, Alberta., where his family made a short-lived
attempt at farming; he learned to carve by watching his maternal
grandfather whittle kindling by the fireside. He persisted in
sculpting even though his pious father was vehemently opposed
to the creation of "graven images," he told Toronto Life magazine
in 1997. The family returned to Bowmanville, Ontario, where E.
B. spent most of his childhood, and where his mother died suddenly
after an epileptic attack when her favoured son was a young teenager.
When it was time for him to go to university, "his father sent
him off with $5, a suitcase and a wish of good luck," said Kathy
SUTTON, the younger of his two daughters.
Studying languages at the University of Toronto from 1934 to
1938, Mr. COX was befriended by German professor and painter
Barker FAIRLEY, who introduced him to A. Y.
JACKSON,
Fred
VARLEY
and Arthur
LISMER of the Group of Seven.
Mr. COX started teaching languages at Upper Canada College, but
soon left to join the war effort as an intelligence officer,
interrogating prisoners of war in Europe.
Afterward, he resumed teaching at Upper Canada College, and devoted
part of a summer to a school canoe trip on the Mississauga River
the next summer he escorted a group of boys on an even more adventurous
trip down the Churchill River in the barren lands. "That was
just unheard-of in those years," recalled Terence A.
WARDROP,
who joined that expedition and became Mr.
COX's lifelong friend
and solicitor. "It was a big trip and it was almost historic
the rivers and some of the lakes were unmapped in 1948."
Quitting his teaching job in 1949, Mr.
COX married the former
Betty CAMPBELL, bought a farm near Palgrave, Ontario, and discovered
that he could survive as a full-time artist. (Although he considered
government subsidies poisonous, he once applied for a government
grant to study Canadian stones suitable for sculpting -- and
was turned down. "I did my stone research without their damn-fool
money," he told The Globe and Mail in 1970.) Moving to a rural
property in north Toronto and later to a Victorian house in eastern
Toronto, he separated from his wife but remained on excellent
terms with her and their daughters.
Being partial to pranks, he once purchased a canoe for his wife
as a gift and, to achieve maximum surprise, paddled it to the
dock at the family cottage in a rented disguise. Along with his
love of humour, Friends recall his sharp wit and his ability
to cut through social pretense. "He said he wanted his gravestone
to read, 'I told you I was sick,' " recalled art dealer John
INGRAM. "
That's what I remember about him -- his great sense
of humour and just what a wonderful compassionate guy he was.
He tried to give this air of being an old curmudgeon, but in
fact, he was anything but."
Becoming a mentor to many young artists, Mr.
COX generously shared
his tools and experience with them. "He didn't have much mentoring
when he was learning to be an artist -- people didn't help him
so he took the opposite tack," said his daughter Kathy.
Always enthusiastic and full of ideas, he was usually in his
workshop early in the morning -- and kept on working even after
losing his sight in his final years. His home was full of fine
sculpture and painting, including a portrait of Mr.
COX by Mr.
FAIRLEY that hung over the mantel. "It was a lovely place, and
by the time you got out of there, you were in a buying fever,"
Mr. SMITH recalled. "E.B. himself was part of the fun of buying
stuff. People were just charmed by the atmosphere he created."
He was also famously not particular about the prices he asked
from genuine admirers of his work.
As for his art's place in the world, he was confident it would
last, at least in the physical sense. "We'd have these long philosophical
talks about whether there was an afterlife and what legacy to
leave behind," friend Eric
CONROY recalled. "He'd say that his
stone works would be there long after Rembrandt's paintings had
crumbled."
E. B. COX died in Toronto on July 29, leaving his wife
Betty,
daughters Sally
SPROULE and Kathy
SUTTON, two grandchildren and
two great-grandchildren.
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