Artist Clinton St. John's exhibition opens with a death house backstory
The show 'Excerpts from the Death House' premieres June 20 at Nvrldn Arts Foundation, tied to a century-old home where two deaths occurred.
The day's top stories, food & events — every morning at 7. Unsubscribe anytime.
Calgary artist and singer-songwriter Clinton St. John opens a multimedia exhibition June 20, rooted in the unsettling history of a century-old house in rural Alberta where he discovered—and lived with—death itself.
In 2020, during COVID-19 lockdowns, St. John bought a deteriorating two-storey home in Delburne (east of Red Deer) for just over $30,000 to use as a studio for large-scale paintings. The house reeked. A real estate agent blamed bat droppings, but when St. John's father Bob visited and inspected the property, he corrected his son.
"That's not bats you're smelling. Someone died in the house and was here for a long time," Bob told him.
Neighbours confirmed the former owner had died in the house six months before St. John's purchase, from a fall. Determined to eliminate the stench, St. John ripped up flooring, painted walls, and sanded floors throughout—except in one room painted white that he'd been using as his studio. The smell persisted. He eventually called the RCMP in Three Hills and asked if they could pinpoint where the woman—who was also an artist—had died.
"She went away and came back and sounded a little freaked out, a little rattled, and said, 'the main floor bedroom,' " St. John recounts. That was the room he'd been painting in. He scraped off the paint and found an oil stain of a body outline.
The town had been calling it the death house for years. St. John handed the property over to his father, Bob, who remained unsettled by the master bedroom. On Christmas Day 2021, Bob St. John died in that exact spot—an accidental overdose of fentanyl and morphine he was taking to manage pain.
"Excerpts from the Death House," opening June 20 at Nvrldn Arts Foundation as part of the Sled Island Music and Arts Festival, is St. John's artistic reckoning with these two deaths and the weight of living in a space haunted by them. The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, and multimedia work exploring death, mortality, and memory.
Showing at what is predominantly a music festival fits St. John, who is also a veteran of Calgary's music scene, having played in bands such as Florida B.C. and Jolie Laird.