‘A gift to the art community’: Friends and family memorialize work of late Sask. artist Victor Cicansky

The Cicansky Gazebo in the Lakeview neighbourhood in Regina. (Available Light Photographics and Design/Gary Robins)

Throughout Regina, whimsical work is out for display for both people to admire and remember the Saskatchewan-born artist – Victor Cicansky.

On March 3, Cicansky’s family announced the passing of the Regina sculptor, who leaves behind various pieces including the gazebo in the Grow Regina Community Garden.

“I grew up in his art studio. I grew up a very colorful childhood around, not just his ceramics but his garden,” said Cicansky nephew Evan Tyler.

“He brought a lot of life into the room himself, and a lot of humour and colour with his personality.”

Tyler said looking at his uncle’s art brings about many emotions – much of which is pride.

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“I’ve been looking at it every day in my life since I can remember, since I came online. I think in the last week, looking at it through a different lens, which is more of a reflective one, and one that sort of forces the hand of all these different chapters in my life that that work has followed me through,” he shared.

“I’ve always considered my uncle a magician as well. Having access to his studio and his process, looking behind the curtain a little bit, looking at his artwork now even – it hasn’t lost its magic.”

Cicansky’s influence certainly extended outside his family. As one of his former art students told CTV News, Cicansky’s work left a profound impact on his own career.

“The work [Victor] was doing was totally different than what I was used to. It was so different that, it touched me in a way that has stayed with me,” Wilf Perreault explained.

“I think Vic was a gift to the art community here because he did not have to go very far for his subject matter. It was right there in front of him – he was a gardener.”

Perreault said he admired how Cicansky would connect his love of nature through art.

“His passion about playing with art, creating art, it is wonderful to see somebody that played with vegetables – really in a manner that went beyond the vegetable,” shared Perreault.

“Who would put vegetables on an armchair and make books and have fun with it? He would do a book of insects and it’s the insects that are eating the book. [Him] playing with clay was really an amazing process for him.”

Photographer Gary Robins classifies Cicansky’s work as exceptional.

“He took a very unique approach to ceramics. He was always pushing those limits,” Robins said.

“When he was first learning to work with clay back at the old Regina campus … they get an assignment to throw 25 coffee mugs. Well, Victor would do that, but he figured anybody can do this. He took those mugs and would assemble them into one distinct structure, a sculptural piece of a pile of mugs, and drove his instructors nuts when he did that, but that was that was the nature of it.”

In addition to his artistic pursuits, Cicansky was a passionate environmentalist and an educator.

“As an established professional artist, he would go into schools and do workshops with kids, he loved doing that,” Robins added. “There’s several of his grandkids who are using his studio to this day – which is a really nice thing to see that his legacy goes on.”