The Amazing Childhood of Joni Mitchell

Posted March 15, 2006

The Mendel Art Gallery of Saskatoon presents:
The Amazing Childhood of Joni Mitchell
March 17 to May 22, 2006

As part of the Mendel Art Gallery’s Naked City series, The Amazing Childhood of Joni Mitchell is presented in celebration of Saskatoon’s centenary, and in conjunction with COOLART ‘06 (formerly School Art), the Gallery’s annual showcase of artwork produced in local schools by Saskatoon's creative youth. This special collection of photographs, drawings, writings and other memorabilia, on loan from Myrtle and Bill Anderson, provides an intimate glimpse into the formative years and childhood imagination of their world-famous daughter, the legendary musician, songwriter, poet and visual artist Joni Mitchell.

Joni was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort McLeod, Alberta, but grew up in Saskatchewan. Her parents moved around a lot, living in Creelman, Maidstone and North Battleford, before settling in Saskatoon when she was eleven years old. Joni proudly considers Saskatoon her hometown.

This exhibition documents Joni’s youth from infancy to high school years, and derives from a scrapbook lovingly compiled by Myrtle Anderson and titled The Life and Times of Roberta Joan Anderson. Myrtle, a teacher who taught grades one through eight in a one-room rural schoolhouse, describes her young daughter as having been "precocious, strong-minded, always talking and busy, busy, busy." For Anne Bayan, Joni’s long-time childhood friend, "she was a force of nature... magnetic, daring and inventive."

The sources of Joni’s numerous artistic and creative adult accomplishments may be found in some indissoluble blend of the effects of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’. As for early influences, she was an only child, and her supportive parents provided her with many opportunities. Starting with a small blackboard as a gift for her second birthday, Myrtle made sure her daughter had art supplies and even let her paint a tree on her bedroom wall. Joni’s friends and peers recognized her talent for drawing, and, as she had an early predilection for music, which may have been inherited from both of her grandmothers, she was given piano lessons at age seven. The Andersons also thought it important that Joni experience the world beyond Saskatchewan and took vacations in the United States, where she saw the Lewis and Clark Caverns and a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Like all children, she enjoyed playing dress-up and making angels in the snow. Her father, Bill, a grocer who played the trumpet, made a bowling alley in the basement of their home, and she became an excellent bowler, playing on a team and winning several trophies.

Outside of her parents, there were other important influences. Playmates Frankie McKitrick and Peter Armstrong shared their passion for music and she was fortunate in grade seven, at Queen Elizabeth Public School, to have had an exceptionally responsive teacher named Arthur Kratzman. His advice to her was to "write and paint in your own blood." But perhaps the most profound experience that shaped Joni’s creative sensibility occurred when she was hospitalized with polio at age nine. She states, "Polio probably did me good.... I drew like crazy and sang Christmas carols to the other patients.... The creative process was an urgency...a survival instinct.... I believe convalescence in bed develops a strong inner life in a young child. I think it solidified me as an independent thinker. Nietzche was a convalescent."

The creative impulse is a quintessential attribute of all children, who have an honest sensitivity to, and unbridled curiosity about the world around them. In early childhood there is an easy, natural commerce among expressive media – singing, dancing, role playing, drawing – which develops out of personal experience and serves as a natural means for working out various potent themes in a child’s life. As adults, we can learn much from the depth of perception and emotional honesty expressed in the imaginative play of children, which for many people seems to progressively wane as they grow older.

This exhibition suggests that the interdisciplinary relationship between music, poetry and visual art that is fundamental to Joni Mitchell’s unique genius had its impetus in the artist’s childhood, reinforcing a theory posited by Edith Cobb (The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood), that adult creativity is built upon a childhood sense of self and world. Although childhood is so short-lived in terms of time, it is lasting in impact and memory. As Joni herself states, "you carry your childhood with you.... When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured."

The Mendel Art Gallery is delighted to be working with Joni Mitchell on the creation of "The Joni Mitchell Café", as part of the plans for an expanded facility. This unique, multi-sensory space of image, word and sound will celebrate the creative spirit through the telling of Joni’s story, and provide a pilgrimage destination for her many fans around the world.

–Terry Graff, Executive Director & CEO

Seventy-Seven Signs Ltd. & Mastergraph Inc. are gratefully acknowledged as exhibition sponsor for The Amazing Childhood of Joni Mitchell.

Mendel Art Gallery
PO Box 569
950 Spadina Cres. E
Saskatoon, SK
S7K 3L6
306.975.7612
www.mendel.ca