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My name is Royden Mills, I played for the Red Deer Midget Chiefs and the Bantam Chiefs and the Ponderosa Pete’s PeeWee teams.
When I played PeeWee Hockey I worked at my dad’s family run carpet store not far from where the sculpture that Ray has decided to pass his judgement on in the newspaper. I swept the sidewalks each morning not 100 feet from this sculpture before walking east each morning to go to Central Elementary School and Central Junior High. I learned to respect cultural diversity on those streets because at first I didn’t know how to appreciate people of other cultures like the Mah family who have long run Wei’s Western Wear and the Yee’s who ran the Valley Hotel. I came to see my narrow vision of Alberta as a problem and later came to be friends with Harold Yee and Chung and Allen Mah. The things I learned about their Asian Culture mixed with dreams of being an NHL hockey player like Mike and Randy Moller and Brian Curran . Red Deer was a great place to grow up. Though I wasn’t as good as those NHL bound friends or Rob Hammil , or Sutters, I had the time of my life in Red Deer.
I eventually attended the then world class Department of Art and Design at Red Deer College , and later got a Masters Degree in Visual Art and set up my first professional studio in Japan where I lived for two years. I studied the aesthetics and the proportions, the writing and the philosophy of this ancient society. When I came home to Alberta and set up my professional studio here on the prairies again I bought 3 acres of land using 1000 dollars that my Homesteading grandfather left me when I was eleven.
The sculpture that Ray decides to pass his judgement on in this newspaper was made with obvious respect to Asian influences but also with respect to the vulnerability that my grandfather survived to build a shelter out of dirt in the face of the harsh landscape of our Canadian Prairies. I was fairly young in my Art Career when I made “Onisama” that is pictured in the paper along side of the renown Ken Macklin’s sculpture in the Advocate. I felt fearful that I could ever sustain an art career from Alberta.
I felt vulnerable to an international Art World that seemed harsh and very exclusive and so this sculpture was a kind of fortress. A safe place to shelter one person. Don’t we all feel vulnerable sometimes? I have gone on to have work purchased and located in very prominent public and private international collections. Does Ray have any idea how hard it is to make the NHL? To be a Red Deer kid and make it in the international art world is possibly as unlikely!
But I made this and a beautiful soul in Red Deer bought this sculpture and donated to the city. It was given to the people free of payment. It stands humbly in a fairly modest street corner across from a burned out homeless shelter where people like the ones I used to say hello to each morning face the harsh reality of the streets. It may not be glitzy or sparkly or merely pretty, I but I hope it respects a sense of poetic beauty that some kid of any age might take to heart. Think of what can be done with a life my dear Red Deer friends! Think about a Red Deer that used to have its own TV station and two very different Radio Stations and two or three newspapers. Do we really want to criticize art we haven’t even bothered to research? Do we want to limit the art we see to only pretty and glitzy, top 40 type tastes?
I hope some soul might come upon the art I make and feel less alone knowing that another human felt something beyond eye catching like an earring or pretty bobble. I tried to make something that makes a person think about what might be inside sheltered there.
How might we think of our Red Deer of environment and a degree of insecurity we might sometimes feel in it? Do We need shelter from our brothers, who might criticize our life’s work in the community newspaper? Perhaps some folks will speak up for this point?
Lastly, thank you Ray and the Advocate newspaper for allowing me to answer so fully.
The Red Deer boy who swept those streets was discovered by a girl who’s family lived above the funeral home just north of Mills Carpets and we’ve been together 37 years now and her mum donated this work to Red Deer. Isn’t it encouraging to know that any kid in Red Deer could choose a path and follow that beyond a narrow orthodoxy? Shouldn’t a Red Deer kid be defended in his own home town? Especially over a gift?
Royden Mills , RCA