Already as a boy, art was Ray Dirks' passion. His drawings helped him to deal with the pain of growing up in a household dominated by his mother's long years of illness.
At the same time, the British Columbia boy was fascinated by missionary and service workers' slide shows. However, the posed people in the foreground did not interest him. He wondered about the people in the background, the anonymous figures of everyday reality in those places.
After graduation from the Mennonite Educational Institute in Abbotsford, Dirks had no idea what to do with his life--in his mind, art was not a career option. He attended Columbia Bible College and a local community college. At age 22, however, he decided that the ability to draw seemed to be the one obvious talent God had given him and he enrolled at Vancouver Community College's Art in Merchandising program.
After working in display and design in a Vancouver department store, Dirks and his wife Katie left for Kinshasa, Congo (then Zaire) where Dirks worked as an illustrator for Mennonite Brethren missions. His love of art and interest in other cultures merged in Kinshasa.
In 1985, their hearts remaining in Africa, the family moved to Winnipeg where Dirks cobbled together a freelance career, including illustration and design for Mennonite Economic Development Associates. He also worked on his own art and kept in touch with African artists.
Dirks is widely known for two touring exhibits. Africa: Art of the People featured art from four African countries and toured Canada and the U.S. for over four years. Rise With the Sun: Women and Africa began in 1995 and is still touring. He also co-curated an exhibition hosted by the German government's Goethe Institute in Ethiopia.
Among his solo shows, Two Journeys proved a turning point. The most popular exhibition ever hosted by Winnipeg's Main/Access Gallery, Two Journeys followed the lives of two Mennonite grandmothers from their youth in Russia to old age in Canada.
That study of his Mennonite roots birthed a desire to link his work more closely to the church and led to his appointment as curator of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery. He wants the gallery to offer a professional home within the church to artists who sometimes feel they must leave the church to pursue their art. He also wants to include artists of refugee backgrounds.
"We wish to link that ethnic past to the multi-ethnic now and tomorrow through shared faith and ideals," he wrote in Canvass, the gallery newsletter. "The MHC Gallery will join Mennonite history with art in order to stimulate and keep alive Anabaptist/ Mennonite distinctives built on faith, perseverance and obedience, as opposed to culture and ethnicity."
Canvass, edited by Dirks, is available free. Dirks can be contacted at (204) 888-6781 or e-mail: raydirks@gatewest.net.--From Canvass
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