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Former Caledon farmer and metal sculpting trailblazer Andreas Drenters having final show

October 7, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Rob Paul

Andreas Drenters has lived quite the life, and the sculptor is having one final show to put a close on a legendary career.

As a trailblazer in metalwork, Drenters has built a vast and diverse collection in his decades of work and his final show will run from October 8 to 10 at 5242 Wellington Road 29, Guelph/Eramosa. 

Born in Belgium in 1937, Drenters and his family first immigrated to Canada in 1951 and he first began showing his art on his farm in Caledon prior to becoming a stalwart in Canadian art and being made a member of the Sculpture Society of Canada in 1965. From there, he spent the next four and a half decades showcasing his work.

Now 84, Drenters’ family wants to give him closure on his nearly half-century career that he retired from in 2018 to spend more time with his family; a career full of impossible art and jaw-dropping works of metal that he sums up by saying, “what seems simple is really very complex, and what is complex is really simple. It all depends on how you look at it.” 

To commemorate his works and his career, Drenters daughter Lisa wanted to give her father one final hurrah with this showcase and to make it nostalgic, she’s set it up on a family farm like her father used to do in Caledon.

“It’s going to be the final exhibition of his artwork and he’s been an artist and blacksmith for years,” said Lisa Drenters. “He’s almost 85 and he started when he was about five years old working with my opa in his blacksmith shop, so it’s been a very long career. The exhibit will actually have about 100 pieces that have never been viewed that are earlier works from 1960s and the whole show will cover works from 1960 to 2018. 

“The show will be in a beautiful family barn because when my dad began showing his art in the late 1950s and early 60s. He began showing on his farm in Caledon in and around his barn. Over the years we moved his shows to the Academy in Rockwood, and he had five major shows there.”

Having it on the farm just like he did way back when he started really brings his artistic story full circle. 

“It’s incredible, it worked out beautifully and at the end of the day the whole story is that this is going back to the roots and how it all began for my dad,” Lisa said. “He’s a farm boy and we’re a farm family and hence why many of the pieces used in his sculptures are farm influenced and from the past. I’m very excited, it’s a massive amount of work, but it’s well worth it.”

What motivated Lisa to put together the showcase was to really put the cherry on top of her father’s illustrious career and let him take it all in.

“I thought, well, we never really closed his career and he stopped sculpting in 2018, and I thought about how much tremendous work we still have,” she said. “I thought we should have a final viewing of his work because that’s it. He’s not able to sculpt like he used to because, if you know my dad, he builds everything to last, and it takes a lot of work.”

She thinks if it were up to her dad, he’d have happily gone out the way he came in, with his head down working hard, but with so much work that’s never been shown on a big stage, she wanted to let him revel in his success. 

“I think he would go out very quietly,” she said. “He actually stopped having major shows just before 2000. The last 18 years or so has really been him having his gallery open in Rockwood, but not actually showing. Like Saturdays and Sundays, you could go have a look, but it was nothing major. So, there’s really a massive volume of work since 2000 to show.”

For many artists when they’re in the midst of their career as creators it can be hard to take a moment to take a step back and take in their work and celebrate what they’ve achieve, and Lisa thinks this can be her father’s chance to do just that.

“My father is a very humble man and he’s quite overwhelmed with it, he came to have a look at how I’m setting the show and, at his age now, I think he’s at an awe,” she said. “I don’t think he can believe how much he has done in his life and what he has created and built. It’s thousands of sculptures. He was an extremely productive artist. He’s sold and done beautifully in his life with his pieces and people have loved his work because it’s so durable and it’s so fun—a lot of it even moves. He kind of has everything in his work—he has abstract, he has figurative, beautiful wall pieces, he covers every style that you’d look for in metal and he brings it to life in so many different forms. I think seeing it made him a little tired too! When he saw everything, he said, ‘oh, well no wonder I’m always so tired.’”

Watching her father spend his life dedicating himself to his craft was an inspiration to Lisa, but it goes far beyond just her who was inspired. Drenters was an innovator and a trendsetter in a unique artistic medium. 

“As a kid I remember how hardworking my father was. If we were having dinner and he had an idea he would always be doodling at the kitchen table,” she said. “If he had an idea and he couldn’t hold on to it, he would be off to the shop because an artist’s brain never shuts off. His story and his history is so great and so long. He, his dad, and his brother were pioneers in Canada at the time for their style of work. People weren’t building, sculpting, and making things like my dad and his brother were. 

“He’s a huge part of the Canadian art culture in this style of sculpture. He’d be the first guy if anyone was inspired to create something or learn how to weld to spend a day teaching them what he knows. He was always so giving, and he would never accept a dollar to help anyone or show someone how to work with metal. He and my uncle really inspired the next metalworking artists.”

Andreas Drenters final exhibition will be open Friday, October 8, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday, October 9, and Sunday, October 10, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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