Galerie Harwood Artists

Artist, agent provocateur, bad-assed iconoclast Ihor Fu Fangio (Todoruk), was born in wartime Poland [1949] right up the street from some nutty fun palace called Auschwitz. Eventually made his way to Canada to be weaned on Kerouac, Ginsberg and the raucous beat scene that was Alberta in the late '50s. Following the obvious life course for a young hipster, he soon made his way down to San Francisco just prior to the summer of love, lived next door to his buds the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin before returning to Vancouver to launch Poppin, which was the third-largest music publication in America at that time.

In 2001 he opened the Galerie Harwood in Hudson, an art gallery that not only showcases Ihor's work, but that of internationally renowned contemporary artists.

One pretty cool thing he did: Introduce Cheech Marin, who worked for him at Poppin, to his old pal Tommy Chong, who at the time was thinking about getting into comedy.

Something he can slap on his résumé no one else can: Being the only person in Canada to be legally charged with blasphemy after his 1970 Cerebral Erection film festival in Vancouver rubbed certain authorities the wrong way. Ultimately they dropped the charges.

Somebody he was pretty good pals with once upon a time:
Jim Morrison.

Another cool thing on his résumé: Ihor produced the one and only Jim Morrison Film Festival in 1970. "I called him up to see if maybe the Doors might do a benefit for us. They were pretty well finished at that point. Jim was working on a film at the time called HWY, so he suggested that he could let us screen it for free, so long as we let him do the promotion. Shit, the poster I designed for that thing goes for 5k now."

Words of wisdom: "After all is said and done the genius of humanity is said in its artwork. As we go through the centuries this is all we leave behind.