Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Cordula Podehl
Article 54 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the July 11, 2007 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Sculpting the Silence
There is a presence in a Cordula Podehl sculpture reminiscent of the woman herself - still and centred, sensitive to the nuances that go beyond language, quietly responsive to the deepest connections of the human spirit. Mother and child. Lovers in embrace. Birds like arrows of "vinged flight. Women swaying, their bodies bent back in abandon. And always the liquid flow of solitary torsos, haunting in their headless singularity. Cordula's work sings with a purity that breaks the heart. All the more so now that she is unable to sculpt with her arthritis; every one of her pieces has sold.
Born in Germany in 1941, Cordula grew up in Marburg, where she attended a Waldorf School with its emphasis on the arts and on the philosophical vision of Rudolf Steiner. She loved sports and excelled in gymnastics like her father. Cordula often gave demonstrations as an instructor with her teachers. At the end of high school she had to make a difficult decision - would she go into the world of art or of sports? Art won out, but her background in athletics carried on in the charged energy she would instinctively embody in her sculptures.
Before starting her studies she worked as an apprentice, restoring medieval church sculptures, learning metal and wood work and preparing archeological drawings for a museum.
In 1964 Cordula graduated with a four year degree in sculpture from a practical art school (Werkkunstschule) in Darmstadt, famous for the Bauhaus movement and art nouveau architecture. There she exhibited in several group exhibitions.
Hungry for travel and adventure she came to Canada in 1969 with her husband and young family. They planned to be here for a couple of years but discovered the Gatineau Hills. An old farm near Farrellton beckoned - they bought it and started their lives in the country with horses, goats and other animals. Gradually her garden grew, turning the property into a paradise that drew visitors for miles around. For the first few years Cordula taught at the Peggy Brewin Nursery Co-op in Wakefield while her two boys were growing up.
In 1975 she began sculpting again, setting up her studio in the barn and gathering stone from as far away as Quebec City. Limestone, marble, soapstone, alabaster, slate, wood, bronze and plaster, her work developed quickly. With other artists she opened the co-operative Orange Gallery in Wakefield. Then Pierre-Luc St-Laurent and David Hill of Galerie L'Équivoque offered to represent her. She began to have regular solo shows, so first in Wakefield and then at "L'Autre L'Équivoque" in Ottawa.
For two years, while her youngest son finished high school in Ottawa, Cordula commuted to Almonte to work with Dale Dunning in his bronze foundry. The experience was a revelation, deepening both the challenge and eloquence of her work. She attained a freedom that rings out in every piece.
The idea of creating a studio tour to bring art lovers to the Hills brought Cordula together with local artists, Denise Atkinson and Sheila Lacharity, to. By 1988 the idea had become a reality and Cordula proposed the theme of "Artists in their Environment". The Tour took off and the rest is history.
By 1999, however, arthritis had silenced her. Although she still sculpts in her mind Codula is only now returning to her studio with the hope of finding through painting that pure line of charged and contained energy she embodies to this day.