The author Christina Johnson-Dean joins Joseph Planta to discuss her latest book, the ninth book in the Unheralded Artists of British Columbia series, The Life and Art of Mary Filer (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2016).

The Life and Art of Mary Filer by Christina Johnson-Dean (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2016). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The Life and Art of Mary Filer

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

Christina Johnson-Dean joins me again. The teacher and biographer has recently published The Life and Art of Mary Filer. It’s the ninth book in the Unheralded Artists of BC Series published by Mona Fertig and Mother Tongue Publishing. In January 2016, Mary Filer died at the age of 95. Her life is recounted in this new book. Filer was a significant artist whose skills as a muralist is preserved at the Montreal Neurological Institute in a 142-square-foot mural, The Advance of Neurology. She was educated at McGill, Pennsylvania State, and New York University. Her formative years were spent on the Prairies in Edmonton and Regina, and lived in Britain from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, where she thrived as an artist commissioned to do murals, and she was known for her pioneering work in glass. When she returns to Canada in the late 1960s, she takes up with Harold Spence-Sales, an architecture professor and urban planner, and they remain married until his death in 2004. Throughout her prolific and varied career as an artist, she is lauded by academia and the community. I’ll get Christina to tell us about this remarkable person, the art and legacy, and the process she undertook to write this book. Christina Johnson-Dean is a graduate of the University of California and the University of Victoria. She has degrees in art, history and art history. She is a teacher, and the author of The Crease Family, BC Women Artists 1885-1920, The Life and Art of Ina D.D. Uhthoff, and the Life and Art of Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher. She lives in Victoria, where she joins me from today. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, Christina Johnson-Dean; Ms. Johnson-Dean, good morning.

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