Little is known of Marta Goertzen Armin and her art. She did not show her work in galleries. She was not encouraged to hang her art in public places, nor did the notion of displaying her work appear to interest her. Born October 10, 1923, in Schanzenfeld, Manitoba, she was raised in the village of Chortitz near Winkler by her parents, Abram Frank Goertzen and Elisabeth Neufeld Regehr Goertzen.¹ Marta was the middle child of seven children. Her mother died March 26, 1928, when Marta was only four. Margaretha Kauenhowen, the family’s maid, helped Abram raise the children. Abram and Margaretha were married December 24, 1938. The family lived on lot 29 in Chortitz from 1926 to 1953.²

In a note about her stepmother, Marta wrote: “Margaret said she’d promised Mother, who had trouble getting help, she’d stay with us and look to us. Only Father believed. She was, after all only sixteen, red hair, blue eyes, and freckles, loved to work outside more than inside although she did that too.”³ Marta’s son Richard Armin observed that Margaretha was devoted to the family. She taught the girls about homemaking and appears to have fully embraced the role of mother.

At the age of seventeen, Marta married her former music teacher, James (Jay) Sawatzky, who was born January 11, 1915, in Rosenthal, Chortitza colony, in imperial Russia (near the city now known as Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine). Jay emigrated to Canada with his family in 1923.⁴ At the time of Jay’s passing on July 12, 2008, he had been married to Marta for sixty-seven years.⁵ Marta and Jay raised four children: Otto, twins Richard and Paul, and Adele. Around 1952, about the time the twins were eight years old, the family name changed from Sawatzky to Armin. Paul explained that they changed their name because during numerous border crossings to the United States, when they stated their name was “Sawatzky” they were asked if they were communists.⁶

Marta was an artist. She was a painter, a poet, a storyteller, and much more. Her heart and soul were invested in art, spanning poetry writing, playing the violin, painting, drawing, and creating. Art was her heart song. Her visual art, rendered in a wide array of media, ranged from folk to modern to abstract.

Reflecting on his mother’s artistic skill, Richard writes: “Any technique or concept she used, she mastered.” She worked in oil, pastels, ink, acrylic, watercolour, glued sand and string, and much more, as evidenced in her artwork with her children. Her first grandchild, Mischa Armin, describes her as “forever an artist.”⁷

As a young mother with four children born in the span of three years, Marta tapped into her creativity by illustrating stories for her children. She drew little pictures on a scroll and told stories while moving the pictures across the back of what was like a paper box television. Both Marta and her children delighted in making art.⁸ In later years, Marta continued to express herself in artistic activity that was life affirming and essential by including her grandchildren in her projects.

When all four children were in Indiana on a music scholarship in the mid-1960s, Marta poured herself into her art, despite having no formal training. In 1965, without her husband’s blessing, Marta walked into the Brooklyn Museum Art School and requested to enrol in their art program. The empty-handed Marta was asked to show them her portfolio.

“What’s a portfolio?” she wanted to know.

“It’s a sampling of your work,” she was told. They needed to see her work before they would consider accepting her into the program.

“I’ll have a portfolio for you tomorrow,” she replied.

Marta proceeded to buy art supplies and drew all night. The next day she had six completed works of art in her portfolio to show the school. Alix Davis, a long-time family friend, said that when Marta showed her brand-new portfolio, the school admitted Marta on the spot and gave her a scholarship.⁹

Marta’s tenure at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (1965–66) coincided with the time her son Paul was attending the Manhattan School of Music. She and Paul had occasions to get together with Paul’s friends, who accepted Marta as “one of them.” Marta thrived in the company of the young, bright, and inspired artists, and her art flourished. Paul says she “never behaved as a Mom.”

Paul tells a story characteristic of his mother: On several occasions Marta had been warned of the dangers in Brooklyn and advised not to be on the streets alone. Marta marched into the police station to inquire how dangerous it actually was on the streets of Brooklyn and what she could do to be safe. She was told, “act like you belong.” Marta followed that advice.

While at art school, Marta was strongly urged to apply to the Art Students League of New York, which the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, Jackson Pollock, and others had attended. Marta declined. Instead, at the urging of her husband, Marta left the school after eighteen months to return home. Later she enrolled in the Toronto Artists’ Workshop, where she took up design.

Marta’s Sketches

On behalf of the Armin family, in 2019 Adele Armin donated a collection of her mother’s sketches entitled “When the Sun is Two Hands High: Sketches From My Canadian Prairie Mennonite Village Childhood, Marta Goertzen, 1923–2008” to the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg.¹⁰ In a handwritten note from 1989 about this volume, Marta explained her motivations: “Many of these are done with the left hand in attempt at strengthening the subtle muscles that control heart function. The purpose of these sketches from my Canadian Prairie Mennonite village childhood, 1920’s–30’s, was first of all as a kind of self therapy following open heart surgery. Seeing the extreme fragility of life at such close quarters, I wanted both to thank those suddenly great people for this way of life that I had always taken for granted and also show our children and grandchildren these connections with their historic past. I therefore can only invite you to look at them as extended family rather than Art.”

The gift of Marta’s sketches from the Armin family is clearly a small yet very important sample of Marta’s broader spectrum of work. The collection gives testimony to her grandson Mischa’s description of his grandmother as being fully present and “receiving the world rather than forcing herself on the world.”¹¹ She depicts her life in Chortitz from the perspective of a child, and of a parent who understands what is important to a child. The sketches detailed minutiae from Marta’s early childhood in the 1920s, into the “Dirty Thirties,” and beyond.

According to Richard, Marta began the sketches during a 1980s trip she and Adele had taken to visit Marta’s childhood home in Manitoba. There, they toured the village of Chortitz and beyond. The sketches reflect a village with all its yards, gardens, children, and households. The subjects of the many drawings range from the memorable moments of her father comforting his grieving children after their mother died, to making Mennonite borscht, to farming practices, to toileting in the barn before bedtime and using a pot to go to the bathroom during the night.

Clearly, Marta was a keen observer and had a sharp memory for details, evidenced in her drawings organized by seasons. The child in me delights in the “footnotes” that Marta left on a number of her sketches. They are almost like an afterthought, yet they enrich the depicted story and speak of soul-filling nostalgia. In “Bucket of Water,” Marta not only sketches her mother pouring a bucket of water on Marta’s father, who had not been responding to his wife’s reminder that dinner was ready, but she adds an addendum sketch of her father chasing her mother, with the line, “People still laugh about it.”

Marta accompanied many of her sketches with a handwritten narrative explaining the drawing in English, German, and Plautdietsch. Without her explanation, most people would not know of some of the implements and tools that Marta saw and used in her early years. For example, there is not much call for manure pressers or ice cellars nowadays, and in many cases people would not be able to identify or know their purpose.

Marta’s sketches tell the stories of her childhood. In a kitchen scene, featuring a cook stove and a calendar on the wall, children play with freshly hatched chicks on the floor. Her sketches bear a delightful charm that is easily embraced by the child in the viewer.

In her sketch of her mother’s passing, recollected from her perspective as a four-year-old child, Marta touchingly describes how the local women cared for her young mother’s body and how her father decided what was best for his family. There is a softness about the potted geraniums that Marta’s aunts placed around her mother’s coffin, recognizing the importance of beauty in the young mother’s life.

In another sketch, Marta reveals her early educational experiences. She depicts the students seated at their desks in razor-straight rows, with the teacher at the front desk and a blackboard filled with lines of writing. In the “footnote,” the children rush home at the end of the day. Marta’s curiosity is demonstrated in the accompanying narrative. Having just been read the Bible story of Abraham and Sara by the teacher, Miss Warkentin, Marta asked, “Will we be in the Bible too one day?”

In her sketch of a semlin (sod hut), Marta depicts the life her ancestors would have experienced when they first settled in Canada. Marta must have heard stories and descriptions of semlin life as a child. Her caption on one page reads: “Two more early sketches of (earlier) Mennonite architecture as my . . . great-grandparents lived in their first years in Canada. The poorest could not afford a separate ‘Semlin’ for their animals, chickens, etc. & partitioned their habitat to accommodate. Also it was late in the season and so, timewise, it was not possible to put up even a rougher version for them.” She continues: “Who could have predicted us descendants of the Semlin generation would ever get to live in such a fine penthouse apartment as we do in only a century plus, thanks to you.” She goes on to thank the people who established the hospitality tradition that permeated the community in which she lived.

Like her drawings, paintings, and sketches, Marta’s poetry, philosophical quips written on small pieces of paper, and her short handwritten vignettes are laced with unconventional humour, memories, wisdom, and pride in her children.

Marta found beauty in everyday life – even in housekeeping. In her bathroom shelving she kept tightly rolled towels, and from the centre of each roll peeked a dried flower she had tucked inside.¹²

Paul Armin describes his mother as a woman strong in herself. Marta had tremendous determination. She was fascinated by everything she touched, she read voraciously, and while she liked people, she was not a joiner of groups. Alix Davis refers to Marta as “an exceptional woman” who was unconventional, unique, strong, kind, and had a big talent. Richard Armin writes: “Outwardly she was an exemplary Mennonite wife and mother. Inwardly she kept her artistic sense modest.”

Early in her marriage, as a full-time mother and homemaker, art was her support line. Marta was described as someone who sparkled. She was fascinated by everything – long before it was in vogue, Marta introduced her family to rennet, yogurt, and tofu! However, her grandson Jesse Riley fondly remembers her green bean soup (Schaubel Sup) and her raisin Tweeback (double-decker buns).¹³ He also recalls that his grandmother “definitely always wore the most colorful clothing. I loved her style. So unique.”

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Marta and Jay were regulars at a Toronto storytelling organization. Jesse was one of the grandchildren with whom Marta and Jay shared these events, leaving a legacy of stories to be passed on. Marta had a keen sense of family history and welcomed opportunities to tell stories that created interesting connections. She wrote that at the Mennonite bicentennial celebration at Toronto’s Harbourfront, she was introduced to Dr. C. W. Wiebe of Winkler after she told a story about her Aunt Mary (Marie-Moum), who had helped many of the poorest women deliver their babies despite her one disfigured hand. Dr. Wiebe informed Marta that he had delivered many babies with Mary, but never thought to ask her about her disability. No doubt Marta reminded him that he had also been present when she gave birth to her children.

Marta was also sentimental. She embraced love and beauty where she saw it. In her very last days, she still wore a ring her ten-year old grandson Mischa had given her twenty-nine years earlier.¹⁴ Was it due to sentiment or was it tradition that Marta and Jay celebrated every Christmas and Easter with all their children and grandchildren? Perhaps both.

In a questionnaire that Marta completed in 1992, she provided details of family history that launch into poignant stories and reflect her perspective.¹⁵ For example, when asked her mother’s profession, she responded, “Multi-talented village woman.” Marta could not restrict her words to the small spaces provided on the simple questionnaire. She offered a multitude of stories, leaving the reader asking questions and wanting more – stories that balanced humour, passion, and compassion. She concluded: “For me, a village child, there was an un-realness about townspeople who always seemed to wear Sunday clothes, which made town church seem almost like looking into a peep-show. For no one’s fault, I’m sure, I did not feel included. These did not seem [like] real people who could feed pigs, stook oat sheaves, to say nothing of Durum wheat – oh this is getting away from the point, yes.”¹⁶

Marta Goertzen Armin was a woman of strength, a woman with love for family, a woman who needed to tell her story and her history, a woman with a passion for beauty and art, a woman who signed her art “Goertzen” – a woman who was truly a gift.

Eleanor Hildebrand Chornoboy weaves narratives that connect us with the past and resonate with the human experience.

1. Obituary of Marta Goertzen-Armin, Toronto Star, Aug. 24, 2009. ↩︎
2. Chortitz Memories… 1875–2002 ([Chortitz, MB]: Cemetery Project Committee, 2002). ↩︎
3. Note from Marta, shared by Richard Armin, email to author, Jan. 2023. ↩︎
4. GRanDMA (Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry), #313513. ↩︎
5. Obituary of James Armin, Globe and Mail, Jul. 14, 2008. ↩︎
6. Paul Armin, telephone interview, Jan. 2023. ↩︎
7. Mischa Armin, video interview, Mar. 28, 2023. ↩︎
8. Paul Armin, interview. ↩︎
9. Alix Davis, telephone interview, Jan. 2023. ↩︎
10. Marta Goertzen-Armin fonds, Mennonite Heritage Archives (MHA), Winnipeg, MB. ↩︎
11. Mischa Armin, interview. ↩︎
12. Paul Armin, email to author, Feb. 2023. ↩︎
13. Jesse Riley, telephone conversation, Feb., 2023, and email to author, Mar. 12, 2023. ↩︎
14. Mischa Armin, “EULO-JOY,” presented at Marta Goertzen Armin memorial service, Aug. 26, 2009. ↩︎
15. “Preserving Our Stories: Personal History Questionnaire,” 1992, MHA. ↩︎
16. Ibid. ↩︎