"Lisa, Lisa, You Can Save My Soul!" A Love Letter to Artscape Gibraltar Point ❤️

August 2023

I stand behind last year’s assertion that August often feels like a month of Sunday Scaries, but this year the month was so busy that I almost didn’t notice. My day job was popping off; I had family visiting from Germany, there was planning and traveling and entertaining to be done; I felt internal pressure to cook cook cook, to not let the obscenely beautiful produce pass me by.

But! In the middle of what felt like a whirry, blurry time, my partner David and I took a week off and went to one of my favourite places on earth: Artscape Gibraltar Point.¹

David and I on the ferry in August.

AGP, as its adherents call it, is an artists’ residency centre on Toronto Island. You may not think of Toronto as a beach town, but there are some beautiful ones, and the loveliest of all are on the Island, which is actually a grouping of several small islands and sandbars a fifteen ferry ride into Lake Ontario.

Describing the Island and my love for it would take a whole book, but in precis: it’s a very strange, beautiful place with a lot of disparate things going on. Centre Island is the most popular part, thanks to the amusement park for young children that dominates the summers. To one side of Centre is Ward’s Island, where the small community of Islanders reside in the cutest homes; to the other side is Hanlan’s Point, home of a huge clothing-optional beach, a queer party hub where Toronto’s first Pride took place in 1971. There’s a big marina, a yacht club, an airport from which you can fly to New York; there’s a school that serves both the Islanders and kids who live in the glass condos that line the waterfront and get to take a boat to school every day (two of my friends have taught there for years and never seem to tire of that ferry ride; it offers the best view of Toronto’s skyline you can get.)

And then, between Centre and Hanlan’s, there’s AGP. The building itself was once the Island’s school until they built a new one in 1999. Originally slated for demolition, a group of Islanders — notorious for their lefty activist tendencies — fought to keep the old school and convert its rooms into studios and bedrooms for artists. They won, and it forever changed my life.

The artist sits on her ass, AGP Writers Wing, 2007.

Grad school was great and all (kind of), but I truly learned to write at AGP. The first time I booked studio space there was in the winter of 2005, when I was 26. I’ve gone out at least once a year since, save for during the height of the pandemic. That first week I spent there, I admit I didn’t actually make it all the way through. I was trying to start a new project and I couldn’t figure out how to sit my ass down and work without debilitating, stomach-churning anxiety. But at AGP, there was so little else to do that I did end up sitting my ass down much more than I would have at home.

When grinding in my little studio became truly too much to bear, there were two other options. First, go for long walks on the Island, which offers a wild, icy magic in the winter. Second, head for the communal kitchen and get to know some other artists, many of whom were, in those early years of AGP’ing, older than me; many of whom I would continue to see year after year, who were already regulars as I would come to be.

Rory forever.

A brief interlude about our late cat Rory: we adopted Rory via a trap-neuter-release program for street cats that David volunteered at for a bit. When one of Rory’s besties was hit by a car, we decided to take him in. He seemed lonely, and we had three other cats at home to befriend him. The first night he lived with us, Rory was so nervous he busted through the screen window to cower on the balcony though it was fifteen floors up. But over the following months and years, we watched his giant green eyes follow and observe the other cats and how we humans treated them with deep intensity and focus. Learning slowly but surely from his feline housemates, Rory relaxed into the situation one step at a time. We couldn’t even pet him until a few months in, but by the end of the first year, he offered us his signature head-butts; by the end of his life he could not have been a cuddlier, more loving shmoo.

These days, I blessedly mostly feel like a cuddly, loving shmoo toward my writing practice. When I look back, I think observing all those artists at AGP had a lot to do with that. These acquaintances, some of whom became good friends over the years, gave me a legible blueprint for what life could be like for a working artist who didn’t necessarily attain wild amounts of money and fame. They showed me that you could live for a different kind of wealth and success entirely. These people also spoke seriously about process in that kitchen, and it gave me permission to do the same; to come to understand process as a thing, to investigate more intentionally what mine might be.

I’m aware that there’s jokes about how insufferable writers who talk process are, calling to mind pompous, turtlenecky, needy guys. But at the time, I really needed to discuss such things, to name them, to hear from others what worked for them. I still love talking process to this day. I’m just one of those guys, I guess.

Cooking in the AGP kitchen, 2007, with my favourite orange knife. I had 4 of these turtleneck tunics and wore them exclusively at AGP. I called them my monk’s robes.

Though I left a day early my first time out, I came back to AGP the next winter and the one after that. Between the solitude of my studio, the way the Island’s natural beauty stilled my mind, and the real life examples of artists at work, I fought through my fear of being alone with my feelings and a blank page and learned to really enjoy it; to revel in the rhythm of writing hard for several hours, tromping around the snowy island to let my next plot turn unfold, writing again, then having a cosy drink in the kitchen or another artist’s studio to wind down the day. I learned to somewhat better bear depression and uncertainty out there, too; to attach a little less hard.

I’ve mostly gone out for a week at a time due to other work commitments, but a few winters I went out for longer, a couple of times a full month. These were some of the best times of my life, spent mostly alone, giving myself full permission to do exactly what my body wants to do all day long, churning out reams of words. No one out there seems to think I’m weird; everyone’s shuffling around in soft clothes, stopping briefly in the hallways to chat with reverence about the day’s work, or the wind and water and leaves. My fellow artists have given legendary performances and parties at the centre that I will never forget, alongside tacit respect for introversion and need for solitude that I hadn’t realized I’ve yearned for all my life.

Dale Morningstar’s late cat, CJ, beloved and snuggled by so many.

In my time visiting AGP, there have been many wonderful staff, but during my own heyday, circa 2010-2012, the centre was managed by incredible painter, Lisa Cristinzo. She brought to the role a perfect combo of hyper-organized competence and the most welcoming, nurturing spirit one could imagine. Just being around her while she made a sandwich in the kitchen could soothe my psyche when it was rocked — as it often was throughout my thirties — by a flood of self-doubt. I wasn’t the only one to feel that way; I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love Lisa.

Just Like the Strawberry Moon, acrylic, oil, spray paint on wood panel, by Lisa Cristinzo, 2021.

Some of the studios are rented long-term, and one of the longest-standing tenants is musician and producer Dale Morningstar. One night at a gathering, Dale did a song about AGP. The lyrics come back to me often, especially when I’m stressed, and in want of retreat:

Lisa, Lisa, you can save my soul / meet me out at the Art Hospital.

That’s what it’s like — a hospital if hospitals were friendly; a place to actually heal and thrive.

Listen. I could go on for years. I’ll return now to August 2023.

A few of the studios are housed in portable classrooms just outside of the main building. One of them, Portable 3, has its own little kitchen and toilet. That’s where David and I stay when we go out to AGP together. While I prefer the quiet of the winter when I’m solo, the summer is perfect for the type of working vacation we like. During our week in August, I went hard on my novel every morning, often literally writing on the beach, and spent much of the afternoon and evening exploring the Island with David, swimming in the (freezing) lake, staring at the endless flocks of cormorants, watching the rocks for mink, getting high and flipping through trippy old needlepoint and houseplant books David found in the AGP library. Basically, bliss.

Writing on Gibraltar Point beach and the doorway to Portable 3.

We talked about how rare it is for non-rich artists to be the ones with exclusive access to a beachfront property; to have special privileges to stay on the Island overnight where the average visitor has to take the last ferry back; how whenever I’m there, I feel smug as hell — like I’m clearly the one who played all her cards right.

This post has a heavier valence than I’d imagined it would. A week after we got home, Artscape, the organization that manages AGP, went into receivership. As it currently stands, AGP will only be funded until the end of September. After that, we don’t know. Artscape staff were warning of problems with leadership; they’d been trying to unionize. You can follow and support them here.

Organizing among long-term tenants has begun, and there is hope that the space can once again be saved. I have to believe that it will. I’m committed to doing what I can to help with the fight as it broadens and takes shape. Maybe what will emerge from all of this will be even more beautiful than before. I have to believe. Allowing myself to face the idea that this refuge will soon be gone is too much to absorb.

So for now, I will try to go slow. David got into making slow-motion videos while we were Island-side. In the face of September’s steam train, and all of the uncertainty and bad news in the world, I invite you to press play and just vibe if it helps. I know it helps me.

1. Apologies: this post departs from the typical monthly form, I just felt moved to write a full ode in light of recent AGP news. There’s also too many pics of me, I seem to have taken no pics of my Island friends over the years. Sorry!