Cobourg sculptor celebrating 85th birthday with exhibit

Peg McCarthy, Northumberland News--
A local sculptor is never without the tools of her trade.
"The only thing I can do is work with my hands," said Frances Gage, who turns 85 on Aug. 22. Ms. Gage is the subject of the new biography 'Unlikely Paradise - The Life of Frances Gage' by Alan D. Butcher, also a Cobourg resident.
"Just don't believe everything you read," smiled Ms. Gage. "We had to make it a good story."
A description of the biography says that much of her life, "was spent living and sculpting in appalling conditions, which too frequently saw happiness turn to ashes; a blossoming love affair withered and died; paradise became hell... her life seemed one of continual sacrifice.
"Only in the end could she look back, and in spite of everything, say with a wry smile that she had gained a somewhat unlikely paradise."
That current paradise contains her two indoor cats and a dog with attitude, in an old house on Ball's Lane, surrounded by flowers, birds, vines and a pond. Her studio is an old garage and it's filled to the brim. She said she could spend all her time working in her garden.
Born in 1924 in Windsor, Ont., Ms. Gage spent two years in the Royal Canadian Navy in the "secret service" before she entered the Ontario College of Art. Torn between music, medicine and art, she settled on the latter, and specialized in sculpture once she had her first taste of the three-dimensional discipline.
The artist followed that with two years in New York studying at the Student Art League - so poor that at times she survived on canned dog food - followed by an 18-month scholarship at the l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
From 1957 to '59, she worked in Tom Thomson's Toronto "shack" - basically a tool shed, but bathed in the atmosphere of the Group of Seven, and then built her Birch Avenue studio, financed in exchange for The Bear, a seven-foot tall concrete sculpture. Her real paradise was meant to be 25 acres she bought at Crosshill, where she lived from 1971-87. She moved to Cobourg in 1998.
Along the way, Ms. Gage has battled alcoholism, a disease that runs in her family. But in her wake are more than 500 pieces of sculpture, including a twice-life size sculpture and four walnut relief panels at Fanshawe College, in London, Ont.; a portrait relief of Dr. Bertram Collip for the University of Western Ontario; crests for the Metro bridges in Toronto; and 'Woman', a carerra marble sculpture for Women's College Hospital. Ms. Gage's work has been shown in Florence, Italy; Colorado City; Helsinki, Finland; and London, England.
Hers has been a life using the creative side of her brain, and then letting her hands, "do their own thing," with shape and material. She loves the marble she used for Woman, which came as a 3,000 pound lump from Italy.
"It blew my mind - it was naked in the hold of a ship."
Ms. Gage continues to work and just this spring, saw an installation of an abstract piece in Victoria Park.
"I'm still doing what I want to do, most of the time. The life I lived has been hard, lovely, depressing, elating, but I'm very fortunate to do what I want."
Ms. Gage's birthday and the book will be celebrated at an Art Gallery of Northumberland event on Saturday, Aug. 22, from 2 to 4 p.m., which coincides with an exhibit of her work. For more information, call the gallery at 905-372-0333.