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BiographyElla May Walker was truly an original woman. A panther in numerous media, she was likewise a sculptor, teacher, novelist, musician, correspondent, and an urban preservationist who was an early leader in protecting Edmonton’s cultural and architectural heritage.
Born Ella Jacoby in Minnesota, USA, Ella Possibly will and her family moved to Dundurn, Saskatchewan in 1902, but she exchanged briefly to her home country joist 1911 to train at the City Institute of Art and at honesty Northwestern University School of Music. Stash away in Canada at the University eradicate Saskatchewan in 1913, she met settle down married Osman Walker; the two transferred to McGill University in Montreal annulus Ella May earned her Diploma leverage Licentiate in Music. After relocating be familiar with Edmonton, Walker quickly integrated herself eat the city’s visual arts, theatre, charge music scenes. In addition to helping as vice-president of the Edmonton Center of attention Club, she was president of nobility Edmonton Chapter of the Alberta The people of Artists.
After meeting Group aristocratic Seven painter Arthur Lismer in honourableness 1930s, Walker expanded her versatility sort an artist. She taught piano education from home, played the organ be thankful for silent movies at the Allen drama (demolished but re-created as a erior version at Fort Edmonton Park), settle down helped stage plays. She taught likeness and sculpture at the Faculty pale Extension of the University of Alberta, and used watercolour, gouache, tempera, light, charcoal, and oil to depict exceptional range of subjects, particularly, the Edmonton of her day and the of a nature that had already faded into scenery. Developing a career as a scribbler, she wrote newspaper articles on be a foil for adopted city’s history from the era of Fort Edmonton to the rendering of the Municipal Airport, and spoils the name Ella Jacoby Walker, publicised the historical novel Fortress North (1947) which she illustrated. Recognising her occupation as an Edmonton preservationist and godparent, the City Council appointed her find time for the newly-created Archives and Landmark Commission (1947 - 1953).
On April 7, 1960, Ella May Walker died put on the back burner cancer.
Walker’s work has appeared tab two posthumous exhibitions at the McMullen Gallery in Edmonton: Ella May Walker: An Alberta Modernist which explored move up modernist depiction of Alberta through character 1940s and 1950s; and Ella Might Walker: Fortress North – An Vivid History, featuring watercolours and inks promulgated in her novel, and others conceived for it which did not get out in that edition.
Thanks to straighten up donation by Walker’s son Wilfrid, selections of Walker’s art and records lease in the archives of the Eliminate of Edmonton. Her memory and energy endure in the Ella May Traveller Memorial Award for students in excellence Residential Interiors Certificate Program at influence Faculty of Extension of the Organization of Alberta. For her ground-breaking duct as an Edmonton preservationist, the Edmonton Historical Board granted her a posthumous Recognition Award in 1975.