A 'Modest' Art Collector

Avrum (Avi) Morrow has been in love with art since age 15. He’s not just an artist, but also quite the art collector.

Avi, the founder and chairman of the board of Avmor Ltd. in Laval, Quebec, Canada, a manufacturer of environmentally-friendly cleaning products for industrial use, houses his vast collection of artwork in a gallery in Avmor’s original headquarters in the heart of old Montreal.

“I don’t call it a museum — I call it a collection” said Avi. The collection began when Avi commissioned an artist to do a portrait of the building in Montreal. “Every year we commission a new painting. We now have 380 different portraits of the same building,” said Avi. Three different books detailing the collection have been published to date.

Even though there are close to 500 pieces of art in the collection, it doesn’t feature any of Avi’s own work. Avi is very modest about his artwork.

“I play around with it,” he said. “I do mostly acrylics. I’m so impatient that I use a hairdryer to dry the paint.”

Equally modest about the building that houses the art collection, Avi said they use the facility for the community. Non-profit organizations hold their board meetings and donor recognition events there. The building is also used for educational purposes.

“We invite teachers to come with their classes in order to show students creativity,” Avi said. “It’s a privilege to be able to use the building for educational purposes.”

The art collection, by the way, is open to the public by appointment.

Besides the beautiful artwork in the collection, “we also have some junk on one of the floors,” according to Avi. Actually, it’s some pretty interesting stuff — and I think of it more as “treasures” than as “junk.” The “junk collection” includes lots of old collectible stuff. Things like old milk separators used on farms, sewing machines, typewriters, meat grinders, a circa-1918 razor-blade sharpener, and even an experimental heart valve from 1965.

Avi also does artistic collages. He asks people to send him their junk. “Take a plastic bag and fill it with things that you don’t want to part with,” he said. “Things like badges, buckles, keys, buttons, old knives, broken wristwatches, and earrings. I’ll make a collage of it.”

He’s done about 100 collages for people including a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic cardinal, an ophthalmologist, an artist and an auditor. Soon he’s going to do one for a column-writer (I promised him I’d send him a bagful of treasures, including a flamingo, a lifeguard whistle, a little French candy tin, and a pair of pink reading glasses as soon as I finish this column).

As passionate as Avi is about the arts, he’s just as passionate about doing good things for people. Earlier this year he was named to the Order of Canada, a distinction that is the highest civilian honor in Canada. The Order of Canada recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation, and honors people who have enriched the lives of others and made a difference to Canada.

Always self-effacing, Avi didn’t tell me about his Order of Canada honor. I learned about it elsewhere. When I asked him about it, he simply said, “To quote a great explorer, “I’m an ordinary bloke, and then the media got ahold of me.”

Gretchen Roufs, an 18-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns a marketing and public relations company in San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “freetime,” contact her at GretchenRoufs@aol.com.