CC: How did Persona Volare come together?

Persona Volare (John Dickson, Carlo Cesta): This is before my time but I got the story from Kate Wilson and Lorna Mills. Their incentive was to show with artists they admired so they first invited Reid Diamond and he invited Rebecca and after that it gets a bit murky. I got there near the end and there were maybe 10 artists. And I got there after you.

Reid Diamond and Kate came up with this manifesto – the metaphor was like going for a ride in a car and picking up your friends. Like we were futurists. We liked things that went fast and blew up.

We were the tail end of that kind of idea that we could make our own culture. We don’t need someone else to frame it, or someone else to talk about it or legitimize it.

That was 2000 we had our first show and we’re still together although we haven’t had a show for a year – year and a half. We had shows over a period of nine years. 2009 was our last show at the Tom Thompson gallery in Owen Sound.

It changed a bit at the beginning. Reid passed away, sadly. Lyla joined. David Atcheson left. We’re 11 people. That’s pretty large. We wanted a cross-generational representation, we had older artists and younger artists which I think is a good thing.

CC: Why does Persona Volare appeal to each of you?

Persona Volare: What appealed to me was the idea of coming together for one show. It talked about this idea of friendship and mutual respect. It kind of evolved. It wasn’t like we came from some ideological place as John said we were all scattered which made different from other groups. We dealt with issues personally, not as though we had a mandate.

The nice surprise is doing these exhibitions, these connections come up between work and I think that when we’re installing those things come together intuitively so there’s a similar feeling or attitude, a playful attitude… Often times we would know what each other would make, which is daring, it’s interesting and a certain level of trust is needed, which is nice.

CC: Why does Persona Volare’s chemistry works?

Persona Volare: I mean we all get along very well there’s no competitiveness and there’s no ego. Everyone’s there to a good show and have fun and I think that’s why we’ve lasted so long.

CC: How have the spaces you show in changed?

Persona Volare: I guess for me it’s more of a social interaction. You get to work with together artist and investigate spaces that are different from the formal gallery space. Before we had no alternative. It was industrial spaces or nothing.

So we’re kind of going more into, inserting ourselves into museum settings because we’re more established as well, so we have access to more established venues.

It’s different from the initial rawness of the early collectives, we’re working more within the whole established art system.

There are differences between commercial spaces and museums and site specific situations, you can approach these situations in different ways and that’s appealing to me.

CC: What do you see as the downside of larger museum shows?

Persona Volare: Back in the old days I used to sit the spaces, collectives couldn’t hire anyone, you were more aware of how people perceived the show. Now, showing at galleries and museums you only see people at the opening and everyone is nice at the opening

CC: Can you tell us bout Reid Diamond?

Persona Volare: I knew Reid and I knew Becky and I’m a musician and played in bands and toured and Reid really wanted to do a show around the same clubs that we had played because we played the same route across Canada so inevitably we all played the same bars in Saskatoon, so we never got around to doing that but there was that link musically, he was an amazing guy. And he was very important to the dynamic of the original group, that’s for sure.

CC: What will become of Persona Volare?

Persona Volare: The only thing that occurs to me is that we’ve kind of slowed down. Our last show was 2009 and everyone’s been really busy. We just had our first meeting in a year so I’m worried that we might be winding down. We have another meeting so I’m hoping we can regenerate some enthusiasm and energy. Because I’m not quite willing to give it up yet. We still serve a function for ourselves and the public as well. It’s still hard, being an older artist getting shows in Toronto, you still in some ways have to do it yourself, still. So I’d like to continue.