When the crow doesn't fly: P.E.I. artists accept that not everybody will like their work

Gerald Beaulieu accepts that his art makes some people uncomfortable. For an artist, it comes with the territory.

Consider his piece When Rubber Hits The Road, two large sculptures of "dead" crows made from recycled tires.

It was received positively when it debuted in 2018 at Art in the Open in Charlottetown, a city occasionally besieged by crows. People understood how it literally illustrated the "consequences of our collision with the natural world," as Beaulieu describes it. 

The work has been shown in five provinces since then, and one of the crow pair was purchased by the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton.

The other crow debuted earlier this month in Ottawa — and not everyone has liked it.

"It's getting the whole range of reactions, [from] people who absolutely adore it to people who also dislike it intensely," Beaulieu said. "They find it grim. They find it inappropriate."

That's not necessarily a bad thing, says Pan Wendt, the curator of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown.

Anticipating how people will react to a piece of art is a major factor in determining whether he thinks it would work as an exhibition. And that doesn't mean people have get a warm, fuzzy feeling from it.

"The response doesn't always need to be just cheers and approval. I think discomfort is also something perfectly valid," he said.

"So even if sometimes the reaction is negative, you then you kind of have to ask them why. Why are we so bothered by this work of art? What's causing our discomfort?"

Beaulieu has some theories about reaction to the crow sculpture.

"Some of the negative comments speak to the fact that people might be uncomfortable about the message of the work. You know, in confronting the climate crisis … it leaves all of us a bit uncomfortable because we know that some of our habits are contributing to this and that the change isn't easy.

"So I think there's a lot of that."

It was also made public that the National Capital Commission, a federal Crown corporation, paid $14,022 to display the crow for a year, which may have given some people a reason to criticize government spending without appreciating the art on its own merit.