As some of you may have heard, James Patten, former Director of the McIntosh Gallery at Western University, recently passed away. James was a big part of our shop, always supportive and engaging. He loved books, art, and the creative community in London. As the last guest curator hired during James’ role at the Gallery, Jason was asked to speak at his memorial at Museum London this past Wednesday. Here’s what he said:
“I first met James at Museum London a long time ago when I was a teenager. I believe he was curator at the time. I was at an exhibition. I was young, fraught, awkward, and he was gracious, kind and considerate. I think I told him how good the exhibition looked, as if the opinion of a downtown rat like me mattered. He made me feel as though it did matter. I talked to him whenever I had the chance.
“Through a strange coincidence, I ended up living in one of his old apartments. I only found this out later, but James had lived in an apartment on Central Ave for a time. It is still standing. If you drive along Central between Richmond and Talbot you’ll see a number of beautiful houses. You’ll also see an awful, ugly apartment building that looks condemned. My apartment was there. So was James’, 20 years earlier. Apparently it was just as ugly as that when he lived there too. When he found this out, he immediately asked if the neighbours still brought over their home-made wine, and if Tony still grew his own grapes. They did.
“‘Is it still a dive?’ James asked me.
“I told him that my step-son, Sam, took his first baby steps in the kitchen, with a floor that was so wonky that Sam immediately lost his balance and feel flat on his butt.
“‘That’s absolutely amazing,’ was James’ reply.
“James invited me to curate an exhibition of Michael Bidner’s work at the McIntosh. I recall pitching the show to him at my bookshop, adding that I believed Michael’s work had not received the attention it deserved. James paused, then said, ‘I completely agree.’ Next thing I knew, I was curating an art show. I am not a professional curator. I’m a bookseller. This is the sort of thing you get yourself into out of enthusiasm. It is not always a good idea either. But a date was set and I signed a contract and then, I was curating a show.
“The show ended up being amazing, so this wasn’t a bad decision on anyone’s part, but throughout the steep learning curve I recall mainly James in his office, smiling, calm, cool, saying, again to a fraught, awkward–now much older–downtown rat, that ‘Everything is going to be great. Everything’s going to be great, Jason.’ I don’t know where he learned this magic assuring manner but it worked. I now use it with troublesome customers.
“After it was over he’d still come into the shop and sit and talk, gossip and crack jokes. He’d sit in one of our big red chairs and just relax into conversation, his eyes bright, his wit quick. We stayed in touch regularly. It’s the sort of thing that afterward, after the flurry of the whole thing, after I sort through all of the feelings and memories, that I think, ‘That exhibition was sincerely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,’ or ‘Just talking with James was so terribly cool.’ I would not have been able to do the exhibition without James–or Brian, or Helen, or Catherine, for that matter–and perhaps that’s why I miss those folks, and just sitting with James in my shop on an afternoon talking about the gallery, or books, or whatever. We always chatted small but dreamt big. The little things were ridiculous and sweet, and the big things, in his care, not troublesome at all.
“I miss that. I miss him.”
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
