Organization of Kingston Women Artists

NATALKA NATALKA NATALKA

2012-02-05T21:34:00.004-05:00

Natalka Husar talked at the opening to the OKWA Library show on February 4th and followed that with a visual talk at Agnes Etherington the next day. OKWA is honoured by Natalka's generosity with her time. She also donated her honorarium back to OKWA to be used in the highschool scholarship fund.

Both talks are transcribed here:

Natalka's response to this posting: "What i said at the show reception was really what i meant. What isn't clear was that i really feel you can't judge for "the best" when you have apples and oranges-- it's not fair to put paintings up against photos up against prints and bookworks and ceramic works and assemblages etc etc... because all have their merit and there is something honest and pure something artificial and forced in every single work of art. I tried to look at the latter only as a method of elimination. So my only suggestion to OKWA would be to reconsider the reason for having 'prizes' in the first place. Maybe simply somebody to give a 'crit' if indeed artists want some outside feedback. But again-- the most important thing is FOLLOW YOUR HEART --even though that sounds like such a cliche. So i chose work mainly whereI felt that was most evident."

Natalka Husar, Juror for 2012 OKWA Library Show:

" I am happy that I didn't know you before I started judging. I have met some of you since and you know you, and I love you. It is different when you look at work and you know the person.

I am an artist like you. When I looked around, I saw problems everywhere. I saw the same problems I see in my own work. I have a hard time making a decision, I really do. So what I did, with Michele as a sounding board, I put on my teaching persona and I gave a tough crit to every single work, eg. this is too genteel, this is too easy, this is too much blue, too much wax, too saleable, this is too cliche, this lies, this jokes, (you can't joke) this one is clever but only for a minute…I can see right through it, this one my mother-in-law would like, this one looks like it is painted by a guy--no woman could actually paint like that. So that is what I did only because every work has merit.

What I choose and what any juror or anybody in the art world would choose, that they would want whether it is to buy, to show, to sell, to curate is only a matter of opinion for that particular event. What I reject, someone else in another situation will embrace. That is very important to keep in mind. Every work here has merit; it has good and bad. I have looked at a lot of art, a lot of mediocre art, a lot of good art and a lot of bad art. I have a huge appetite for bad art. I am very open to share that opinion with you individually if you like and it is just my opinion. It is nothing; its just one person's opinion.

MARY PEPPARD

The paintings that survived this sort of whipping: I must say that "Chick and Two Chicks by Mary Peppard--I was attracted to that painting as soon as I walked in here before I even looked at anything else. Because I couldn't believe it. And then when I saw the title, I said "this cannot be serious." The title is a joke, but despite that I loved the painting. I loved that painting because the composition is cool and warm. There is all that blue--the blue pants, the blue sky and there is the ochre top and pants and the warm chicks. Even though it looks naive, it is naive in a way, it felt very much like the artist did not care what I thought or anyone thought but just wanted to do this.

ERIKA OLSON

The second one that I had a hard time dismissing: I had a hard time saying "you are trying to fool me". I kept looking at all the work and looking at it as if I was talking to the artist saying, " I know what you are doing, you are trying to make it look good, you are trying to make it sell, you are trying to make it pleasant." When I looked at Erika Olson's Studio Painting, it is what it is and that honesty in it is what I couldn't criticize. What I liked about it-- first of all the juxtaposition of this strange, soft nest-the robin's egg nest, and that same shape but hard and cold porcelain and that badly painted cup, but that didn't matter. And in the space that doesn't really exist and the cast shadows that are illogical but the simplicity of that works despite all those faults. It works as an abstract and works with that simplicity of a Giorgio Morandi. So I chose that. I could be totally wrong. I say that the cup is badly painted but you might have intended that.

MARY CRAWFORD

It is beautifully hung. I think of both of these works as one. If they were hung separately maybe I would see it differently. It does capture in a very fresh way, that soggy landscape. It bounces off in a voice that feels private and not cliche somehow. Normally I am very weary of things attached to paintings, ie. if you can't paint a log, attach it idea. But despite that I thought that the painting felt very fresh.

I could have given 11 awards probably. There are 2 honourable mentions.

Really a painting of this pond by Su Sheedy is like that. It is beautiful. That isn't always what I would look for in art. But despite that, it is seductive. It is a beautiful abstract and its wet. I like that.

The other that I was attracted to is TRACES #30 by Michele LaRose. From a distance it looks like a landscape with this fence and shed but when you get up close its not about that at all.

I think it is fantastic that you do this. It is very important that you not take what anyone says to heart and you continue doing what you want to do regardless because there is no formula and there are no rules in making art.

______________________________________

NATALKA HUSAR AT AGNES ETHERINGTON February 2012

I couldn't decide whether we would play THEATRE or AIRPLANE. (2 titles up on the screen). But because the talk was billed BON VOYAGE we will do it kind of like a trip. Artist talks can be so flat and for a Sunday afternoon I appreciate you taking the time to come here. So we are going to try to have a little fun.

I am going to talk to you about my two obsessions. The first one is being an artist, the second one is the muse that I have picked--my parent's homeland, Ukraine.

We will do it like a trip: (image of stewardess) This is my alter ego but I actually was a flight attendant in another lifetime. I used the character of a stewardess not at all biographically but just (like an artist) as someone who transports people from one reality to another and leaving them jet-lagged. In a way this is the public persona of an artist, you have a show and this is what you do, you are a cultural guide.

I do these kind of confessional paintings which are small where I try to place myself with my work. This image is my persona as stewardess by night and a surgical nurse by day. In the private persona of the artist I see myself very much as a surgeon. By this I mean that I really like to be specific. I like to get to the very heart of a wound. I like art that isn't on the periphery. I like to be exact.

I have used these 2 characters in these little confessional works. In this image the stewardess is doing the waltz out of step, country music in another country, here dancing with the dead (Elvis head). Like painting they say is dead but it isn't, Elvis is alive and so is painting. Here the nurse and Stew are playing old world music.

Painting really is like scrubbing the floor.

In this image I painted myself as this "has been". Matinee Midwife has old work and new work juxtaposed. (the young girl is wearing different shoes) Here specifically you could say is a composition in grey black white. Its also a memory and a shoe like this growing up, and the other contemporary for its time. I don't know exactly what it means but if it feels right I go with that. When I use different shoes it also connotes not being able to run, a kind of bondage of sorts. I understood that after I painted it .

A painting like this that still makes me kind of cringe, "Self Portrait of an Old Artist" still wanting to be turned on by your muse.

It takes us to a painting about being too confident as a painter. The last thing you can do as a painter is say 'Oh this is a masterpiece, I can just relax .' When you think like that all of a sudden the wings fall off. It is a constant anxiety that everyone as an artist can feel.

We are going to time travel. I am going to give you a reader's digest version of my upbringing. That will inform you about why I do the work that I do. We are going to go all the way back to 1955 New Jersey. I am four years old. Kids are painting/drawing hearts, flowers, birds, bees, trees. My parents see some promise in me and save the portfolio of the drawings I did at age four. (images of christ on the cross, the black devil). Somehow early on the die was cast, I realized that art can have a very emotional power on the artist and the viewer. I remember hearing stories of the crucifixion, being the most horrific stories i could imagine. Also, even in this age I realized you could use art to show good and evil. In a way in essence my work has stayed like that.

1965 is the year that the Beatles came to New York and though I was an immigrant kid I was fortunate enough to go to Shea stadium and see them. Basically I show this to say to you that I felt very comfortable in both those worlds. From that time I possessed the key to both those houses. I spoke the language and I felt totally American. I knew where the medicine cabinet was in both houses.

I did a few bodies of work 20 years later using this kind of imagery in my work (Ukrainian and American content) I realized as a young artist that this was a secret that I had, a gold mine, that I had information that other people didn't have. As I started doing more work in this vein, the theme of the identity of displacement and dislocation became dominant in my work. I didn't even know what the word 'identity' meant at that time, it was 1985. But my parents' obliterated homeland and the face of the people that were left behind became a sado-masochistic obsession for the last 20 years.

A seminal piece from that time was Pandora's parcel from the Ukraine now at the National Art Gallery. It was with this work that I took a character like this to be emblematic of this country in the beginning of change. That character has been growing with my work. When I was in the Ukraine in 1992 I saw this girl sucking her thumb, who had a look as if her wings had been clipped. She was too shy, coyness. She was from the Chernobyl area. I changed her throughout my paintings, (image) Here she is sucking her thumb attempting to be luring and missing the mark. (image) Here I don't know where I am going with her, she is sort of an obstacle in my painting. (Natalka shows the evolution of the painting of the figure). If I have a plan of where I am going, I don't want to go there. (Seed Spitter).

Getting a grant to go to Ukraine to do research with poet Janice. We thought this was fantastic. I got paid to do what I want to do. I really hit a wall when I got there. What happened is that I started to question what it is that I, as an artist, can actually say or do or contribute to a conversation that was already universal ie. everyone was already talking about what was happening in Ukraine. It wasn't my own playground anymore, it was public.

I am not really a photographer. I didn't want to be documenting what was there, that's for photographers. I am a painter. I didn't want to write because all these journalists were writing. At the same time it was hyper stimulating. (images of contemporary Ukraine) Even though the images were very exciting they weren't anything that I could use in art. You would think that for someone like me who loves grotesquery and bad taste this would be very inspiraring. But it wasn't, it was art already on its own. It didn't need my intervention. Even candy looked like eye candy with titles like 'Masterpiece'. Playboy billboards on the street in 2005. Women in public half dressed. I had never seen anything like this so absurd. It is usually stimulating but for me it was very frustrating.

I went to the country and found more interesting subjects for me. Like this look of ennui, a desire for something better, for another life. I took all photos of men squatting. People hung around in this position all the time, making deals with a kind of innocence. I didn't know what anything meant.

What I was looking for is what I call the "indescribable". This is what you want as an artist to be able to speak about that which cannot be articulated, not spoken. I found a sense of that in this little anecdote: a couple of months before I went with Janice (the poet she collaborated with) to Ukraine, I went with my mother and my cousin for one week. We went to this castle. My mother says ' I am a ruin already, I don't want to look at ruins. I am going to go to the coffeehouse.' So I go to the castle. The castle has tons of tourists, none speaking Ukrainian. And then I hear a child's voice, it was beautiful Ukrainian. And they turn around and the woman is blind. And something happens where the artist in me takes over the human in me and I have to have a photo of this. I reach into my pocket and whatever I pull out which happens to be a twenty dollar bill, and the ugly American in me gives the kid the twenty dollar bill and asks to take a photo of him. I took only one photo. (image). And that photo was what I was looking for. I wanted to do work that felt like what that woman was doing (the blind companion of the boy).

I filled up a couple of sketchbooks in Ukraine and I started to collect old Leningrad oils, dead artist paints. I heard from word of mouth that these are extremely good paints. Paints no longer available anywhere (from the 60's,70's) they are lead tubes and toxic with pure cadmium etc. toxic metals. Can only get these through conservators because they collect them or old Babas who sell them from dead relatives.

We are in TURBULENCE now. Things are starting to move. This is a study I did in Ukraine. I became obsessed with this look, vicious circle. Kind of passive, bored, bruised but beautiful bruised look, a wound covered with make-up look. A kind of aggressive and depraved look still lingering from the Soviets but no one spoke about. And I started doing these composite portraits where I would instil these looks. I did maybe 30 portraits but 9 of them ended up in the show. Portraits of people that wouldn't normally come to my studio and let me paint them. Shifty personalities. Its about portraiture and about that depravity. I don't know where I am going with this. This is how I work. I don't know what I am going to do with these guys and they are lining up in my studio. I am thinking about everything that I saw.

One of the things I perceived in Ukraine is what I call this code of silence. There were things that were unspoken. This country went from a Soviet state, a third world, to a first world without skipping a beat. There was no accountability for all that baggage I was raised with. There was never any trial. It seemed like everyone had this cultural amnesia. Money and physical pleasures immediately took over.

So I thought I would paint a trial. Old women weigh you on the street in Ukraine.

You see it a lot. For 12 cents you could get weighed. It is sort of archaic and quaint. It is a way for pensioners to make money. I photograph it because I don't know what it means. Then I get this idea that I am going to use that old woman as the judge. As I work developing this judgement painting I take that old woman as the one with the longest memory and the least voice, she is weighing the sins of these thugs. And the artist is in the form of nurse/stewardess. And here is the young boy I gave the twenty dollars to. JUDGEMENT NIGHT

I have a tradition of painting on book covers. I collect all these trashy books. There is one book I found that was written by a journalist in 1949. It has a very racy title, Why They Behave Like Russians. I thought that I would paint on that title. Then I started painting on other book covers and they formed a poem.

After a Trial you need a BANQUET. My plot continues. I take the Seed Spitter girl going to a banquet. At the banquet the has/been shows off, the nurse is her social conscience, the stewardess looks on.

Natalka then shows us her 2 books, the catalogue from the touring show and the book she herself made and had printed in Ukraine.

Group OKWA Exhibit February 2012

2012-01-16T10:36:00.002-05:00

Organization of Kingston Women Artists Group Exhibit

February 3rd to 24th 2012, The Wilson Room, Central Branch Public Library, 130 Johnson Street, Kingston, Ontario

OPENING RECEPTION: February 4th, 5-7pm

from right: Jane Derby, Michele LaRose

From Left: Julie Withrow, Rebecca Cowan, Erika Olson

from left: Erika Olson, Su Sheedy, Terri Wing

from Left: June Anderson , Sally Milne

from left: Mary Crawford

from left: Rose Stewart, Zillah Loney, Michele LaRose

from left: Margaret Hughes, Lee-Ann Taras, Terri Wing

from left: Mieke van Geest, Peggy Morley, Pauline Conley, Margaret Hughes

from left: Rebecca Cowan, Mieke Van Geest, Peggy Morley

from left: Mary O'Brien, Peggy Morley, Mary Peppard

from right: Wendy Cain

from left: Mieke van Geest, Wendy Cain

from left: Mary Peppard, Margaret Hughes, Kathrine Christensen

Sue Lyon

above: Jane Thewell/below right: Lise Melhorn-Boe

bottom: diane black

from left: Sharon Thompson, Lee-Ann Taras, Su Sheedy

from right: Julie Withrow

Alana Kapell

ArtIgnite and OKWA Group Exhibit

2012-01-12T17:30:00.000-05:00

The Organization of Kingston Women Artists Group Show celebrates ArtIgnite - Opening Event
The Wilson Room, Kingston Frontenac Public Library, 130 Johnson Street ,

Saturday, 4 February, 5 to 7pm
Show runs until Feb. 24, 2012

In conjunction with the OKWA exhibit there is a talk by Natalka Husar at Agnes Etherington Art Center on Sunday, February 5 at 2pm.

on Natalka Husar see http://www.ccca.ca/artists/artist_info.html?languagePref=en&link_id=1624&artist=Natalka+Husar

Workshop by Lise Melhorn-Boe

2012-01-10T16:24:00.003-05:00

Sculptural Books

Learn to make artist's books with Lise Melhorn-Boe

This course will introduce participants to a variety of book structures, including accordions, sewn pamphlets, Japanese
stab bindings and the flashy-looking flag book. As well as learning the construction techniques, students will create
several books using their own material, learning about various ways to present that content, covering such concepts as
relationship between image and text, and movement through the book.

St. Lawrence College, Kingston

5 Wednesdays in February, 2012

Kingston Printmakers at Central Library

2012-01-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

A group exhibition of woodcuts, etchings and monoprints:

June Anderson; Susan Beyette; Margaret Bignell

Wendy Cain; Barb Carr; Rebecca Cowan

Shirley Kalfin; Margaret Lock; Jenny Raymond

5-29 January 2012

Reception: 7 January, 2-4pm

Second floor foyer, Kingston Frontenac Public Library

Hours: Monday-Thursday 9am-9pm; Friday & Saturday 9am-5pm, Sunday 1-5pm

130 Johnson St.

613-549-8888

Salon Prize Winners

2011-12-03T16:42:00.000-05:00

The Salon Prize (organized by Cleah Bunting) was held at Gallery Raymond on Nov. 18, 2011. There were 20 finalists that included OKWA Members Sally Chupick, and Su Sheedy, with the $2000 1st Prize awarded to members Zillah Loney, and the $500 2nd Prize to Barb Carr.

Barb Carr

Zillah Loney

Swamp Ward Window Project by Matt Rogalsky

2011-11-17T13:54:00.000-05:00

new exhibition

Flying V Down

a Swamp Ward Window project by Matt Rogalsky

dates: November 10 2011- January 15th, 2012

location: 448 Bagot St., Kingston, Ontario Canada

Flying V Down is a study for a larger work incorporating twenty

or more 'crashed' guitars, and is one of a series of pieces

by the artist that explore the history and culture of the electric

guitar.

Matt Rogalsky is an artist and musician based in Kingston,

Ontario. He performs and presents his solo electroacoustic

music and installations internationally, and plays electric guitar

with The Gertrudes, Canada's folkestra. Rogalsky teaches in

the School of Music at Queen's University.

The Swamp Ward Window is a venue for contemporary art initiatives in an

unconventional site in Kingston’s north end. It takes advantage of

pedestrian curiosity and the intimacy of a dense urban setting. Proposals

for projects are considered on an ongoing basis. Contact:

jocelyn.purdie@gmail.com.

ART TALKS October 26

2011-11-15T21:02:00.000-05:00

ART TALKS started off this season with the topic of SOCIAL COMMENTARY presented thoughtfully by 3 artists: founder, Jocelyn Purdie, currently director of the Union Gallery and initiator of the Swamp Ward Window Gallery; printmaker, Rebecca Cowan; and Lise Melhorn-Boe.

The subject was inspired by Toronto artist, Natalka Husar, who will be OKWA's 2012 juror for the group show held at Kingston Public Library in February with an opening Saturday February 4, 2pm-4pm. Natalka will also be speaking about her own work at Agnes Etherington at 2pm Sunday February 5.
These talks were transcribed from presentations on Wednesday, October 26 at the Mansion in Kingston.

LISE MELHORN-BOE

Lise talks about her gender-related, older work. For her "Breasts" book, she cut the cups out of a bra, put it on and had someone cast her breasts in plaster and then she was able to make paper casts from the mold. The pages fit together and the text was rubber stamped onto the pages. "Which was kind of tricky because of the forms. The stories are collected from various women; at that time I was mainly talking to women that I knew about their breasts and how they felt about them. The one I liked the best was a woman who went to a convent boarding school in England and they

had to sleep with their hands crossed over their breasts so that the nuns could see that they weren't masturbating.

She attributes that to the fact that she has small breasts. They never got to grow.

I did quite a few that were about women's impressions of their bodies. I got a very high heeled pair of sandals and glued my foot to the sandal and had a friend cast it so that I was able to make shoes with toes and the insoles are the pages. There are eight pages in each shoe and they fit into a box.

"Leaky Stories". These are sanitary napkins made out of paper. At first I used real ones. It's an edition of ten. So I spent a day printing the whole page one ten times and put it aside and printed the next one. And then for some reason when I was doing page three, I looked back and realized that they had done what they were

supposed to do and had absorbed all the print. So I had to manufacture the pads.

I turned my eye to fashion magazines (actually women's magazines in general) because there are so many bizarre images. This is called "Anything Can Happen: A Love Story". It's a shuffle book with 26 cards with 52 images on both

sides. You can make up your own story.

"Suitable for Success" also uses images from the fashion magazines. The text running across the top of all the pages is from John T. Moyes book, "Dressed For Success", popular in the seventies. There were rules about what women should be wearing in a business situation. The text at the bottom is stories that I collected and mix and matched. The first image is a very sedate dress, almost like a wedding dress, but the woman's stance and gaze is a very come-hither look and it is repeated in all

the images. The last one is a woman in a corset with a machine gun and a pistol. That one was from a Hustler magazine and it was amazing how much the same they were.

Then I had a baby. I started looking at kid's stuff. This was called "There Once Was a Little Girl and Boy." This consists of life size baby garments made out of

handmade paper with real buttons and real lace. The rubber-stamped text pairs nursery rhymes about girls with those about boys. Similarly, "What are little girls/Boys Made of?" which was off-set litho printed in a large edition also has

similar rhymes.

"Tommy Trot a man of law

Sold his bed and lay upon straw

Sold the straw and slept on grass

To buy his wife a looking glass." is one of these. It's paired with:

"See Saw Marjorie Daw

Sold her bed and lay upon straw

Was not she a dirty slut

To sell her bed and lie in the dirt."

This rhyme was actually in a Toronto library nursery rhyme book for kids.

The next piece is called, "Good Girls Don't". It is a tiny pop-up book. When I first moved to North Bay in 1990, I did a series of quilts and quilt related books that were using quilt patterns. This is actually a SunBonnet Sue quilt pattern that has the Virgin Mary superimposed on it. The text on the quilt border is Good Girls Don't…all sort

of things. "Someday" is Marilyn Zimmerman's story—she was my professor at Wayne State where I did my master's degree. "Sometimes I would be playing with my daughter and she would designate me the prince and herself the princess

and I was to save her. I would rebel and ask why do you have to be saved ,can't you save me instead? Trying to offset the internalization process of being female, meaning subordinate, weak and needful in a relationship. My strong, bright daughter of infinite potential being reduced to a stereotype at the age of three. This is the biggest personal

nightmare for any feminist professor mother. I would soon buy her all the feminist versions of fairy tales, the Paper Bag Princess, etc. but she would have nothing to do with it. She has observed the world and noticed that boys were in charge. I do what I can but she is strong."

This next image has very brief text from women who were abused as children in their homes. The pattern, and the book itself, are called "Little House". This actually started as a quilt and then I later cut it up and made it into the house shape. It is all pink and cute but I was sitting on the train once working on it and someone said "What's that about" and I said "sexual abuse" and that ended the conversation.

And then I started looking at what happened to the good girls when they grow up. I moved into looking at women's lives. "Bound by Convention 2" consists of life sized 1/4 inch plywood gingerbread cookie cutouts. This is the front cover. All of them have pink rubber gloved hands that are sort of tied together in the back with their apron strings. One text reads, "I began editing myself, asking for approval of behaviour I had never needed approval for, of my habits, my daily life…checking myself.

He didn't ask me to do that. I did it even when I didn't want to. I constructed a wax doll for 18 years of marriage. It is a doll with no feelings. She's simply whatever he wants her to be. I was really his creation, learning opera and chinese cooking. When he was out, I played Fleetwood Mac and ate ice cream. When the wax doll became suffocating, I began doing all sorts of things he didn't approve of, not cooking at all, taking tap dancing, and he felt betrayed. When I realized how many parts of myself had to be locked off to fit inside the doll mould, I panicked. If I burned through it and become myself I would lose the relationship."

Here's a story from the "Young Mother" page: "After months of having her sleep sliced and diced, a new mother develops a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. She can never quite relax because the call might come. If she goes to a party the sound of the phone ringing will act on her like one of those choking collars that dog trainers use. Instantly she will know that it is her sitter calling to insist that she stop having fun."

Using the Little House patterns again, this one is stories of women who were abused by their partner. Although it is made out of paper it is all hand-stitched.

"A Good Wife Wouldn't" is a tunnel book where you have the pages with holes in them so that you can look through the tunnel. There are accordions that hold the pages together. So the whole thing shrinks up. This has dirty dishes at the front and the light at the end of the tunnel is a dishwasher. "Why doesn't she just buy the god damned machine and have it delivered to the house? " The woman who told me this story is a lawyer, she couldn't understand this stay-at-home mother. But to me, it made sense. I could see it in my mother and unfortunately now I am beginning to see it in me too.

The next piece is called "Ghost Costumes" . It is a large piece: there are eight replications of garments that my father wore and then eight that my mother wore. They go in 2 semi-circles and hang from the ceiling. On my father's, they are all his work clothes ; he was an electrician. When I hang them the legs touch the ground so they don't move so much but my mother's are made of sheer fabric and they sway. They are quite beautiful but very sad. They have text hanging from the crossbar of the hanger down inside the garment so it is a little difficult to read through the layers of the

garment. The text came from her journals. She had left 43 volumes of her journals when she died. They were both dead by this time, hence the "Ghost Costumes". The text reads, "This is how I felt at 11:30 a.m., May 3, 1983. I am surrounded by army ants who nibble at my time and disturb the mold of my life. Each night I lie in the dark and plan paintings , write poems and draft stories . In the morning they begin. Their chewing prebosicies take the form of telephone calls, lost objects, loud voices, disturbing thoughts, incompetencies. I empty the garbage, prepare the noon meal, wash a few clothes, gnash my teeth. The poem is lost, the painting never reaches canvas or paper, the outline vanishes. Only left is a tiny pile of dry thoughts which crumble and blow away. My heart contracts, my muscles tighten, I choke fear." The poignancy of her text talking about things that she wanted to do, paintings that she

wanted to paint or writings that she wanted to do is a really good contrast to the photos of the actual installations of my father's that he accomplished and was very proud of. I was with him on his 77th birthday—he died before he reached his 78th—and he said , "I've accomplished everything that I wanted to do in life." But she didn't get to, like

many women.

REBECCA COWAN

"The topic is Social Commentary. I never think of my work that way, but maybe it is.

I am going to show you some prints, a couple of books and some collages.

The first three are from a suite of prints I did a long time ago. 8 prints called "Terms of Confinement" and they all have to do with family relationships and sibling rivalry. Images Inner Beauty, Mother and Child, Real/Ideal.

In 1992 I got a scholarship to Open Studio in Toronto that gave me a year of free rent and an exhibition. To do that I had to present a good proposal of what I was going to do. I had an idea that I was going to do two sets of prints to work together exploring the idea of beauty. My plan was to do large dry point images of people with scars and then I was going to do small almost abstract images of the scar itself in colour. This is a large drypoint 24 x 36". I had to find people with scars. Some people I knew and I also contacted a support group of people with facial deformities.

The models would come to my house. They would tell me about their scars and surgeries. I would do a bunch of drawings and then go into my studio and make a dry point. I started in September, but by December I hadn't got one image that I was happy with. I realized that though my concept sounded good it just was not right for me. I couldn't make it work, because I kept making the scarred people too beautiful. I was getting nervous because I had this exhibition that I was committed to and four months had gone by and there was nothing yet. So one day I was in the studio and I realized that I was the god of my own pictures. I could make the scars as big as I wanted. They could take up the whole picture frame if I wanted.

This one model had a neck injury that had several surgeries and the end result was that she couldn't lift her arms above shoulder height and she couldn't lift anything more than 15 lbs. so her life as a sculptor was over and she became a painter. So I tried to show that one door is closed but one door is open in the print.

One of the reasons my initial concept wouldn't work for me was that I just couldn't draw these people ugly. That seemed important because I was so moved by their spirits and their spirit of survival. Some of their stories were amazing.

This is Jane who dances through the world as if there is no pain at all. And Mildred who conquers her pain and becomes a healer. She has a little needle there to sew other people up. And Allen who knows how to put his pain away. David, who travels the world with his pain attached to him at all times unable to fit through the door to enlightenment. Sarah who lives with the shadow of child sexual abuse. Joe whose pain is all around him and he cannot escape. And Jenny who clings onto her pain/scars as if it were a loved one.

I finished this work and hung it in the gallery and stood in the middle of the room and was immediately overwhelmed about how sad it was. Somehow when I was making them I didn't know they were sad. These were all people who had survived and came out the other side. The other reaction I had was that they felt almost like they were ten self portraits. I felt that I had to answer that series with work that looked at pleasure and happiness.

I felt that to really appreciate pleasure and happiness, you had to understand pain, so I decided to etch directly over the previous set of prints. Using those same etching plates I etched a new image directly on top. These are all found images. I used a xerox transfer technique to get the image onto the plate. The second image relates to the story of that person. Then I had the issue of titling these prints. In prints the title is usually on the bottom, and the previous set I had just named them after the people. That was easy enough but I didn't want to call these, for instance, "David 2". I struggled with that quite awhile and then I decided I would use newspaper headlines for the titles of this work. I chose that because the headlines bring us back to the dark side. This first one is called "Boy Found Unharmed"; "Tragedy Strikes Family on Way to Party".

One of things that inspired me to do this is that when I was working on this print the story Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, was in the news. There was a big interview in the Globe and Mail with his father who talked about happy memories of fishing trips.

This fellow was a childhood friend of mine. He was adopted when he was four. When his adopted parents got pregnant, every time he was bad they threatened to send him back to the orphanage which he could remember. When he was fourteen he built a bomb and tried to blow up his mother in the house. He ended up in reform school and jail and I don't know what has happened to him later. When we were children my mother was the only parent that would allow him in the house. He was the "bad kid". That's his story.

One of the most remarkable experiences I have had with my art is that I had this print at the Toronto Outdoor show and this biker guy was walking by. He walked right by and then he came back. He said, " I know that guy. I was in prison with that guy." He saw that from that image. So that was incredibly powerful for me. Especially from a person who doesn't look at art.

This one is called "Mother of Aid's Patient".

People ask me about the titles alot. I just felt they had to be there.

I was lucky enough when I finished this second set of prints to have an exhibition with both sets of work hung side by side in their pairings and that was really satisfying.

In 1995 I had some of my work published in a literary journal and before they went to press the editor called me and asked, "What would you like us to write about these?". Just say that I want to collaborate with a poet. The magazine came out and a month later a poet , Julie Pollack, got in touch with me

A story captured our interest about a woman who was sentenced for killing another woman in prison. What made this story even more interesting is that the woman who died had been a heroin addict. She had had several strokes and needed considerable care in prison. The woman who killed her had been one of the people giving her care. So there was a question of euthanasia. Julie and I both found this story amazing but we didn't feel that we could deal with it directly. We had never been to prison and didn't know that experience. So what we decided to do was to create a series of poems and images based on the seven deadly sins and seven cardinal virtues. We used that story of the 2 women in prison as sort of a background story for us to use as a place to jump off of.

IMAGES: "Anger", "Fortitude", "Temperance", "Pride", "Gluttony", "Greed" "Envy", " Lust" "Justice".

This collaboration with her was very remarkable. We would get together every 2 or 3 weeks and do a show and tell. We worked on all of the images simultaneously. One of the most interesting things about it was how many images about these topics were common to both of us, the archetypes etc.

The finished book is 18 x 24" bound with metal. The poems are silk screened on transparent Japanese paper that is interleaving paper between the images. 7 copies were made in the edition with 2 artist proofs.

So often you work within your comfort zone, pushing a little bit here and there. I wasn't sure I could actually get this book bound. It really pushed me to the edge of my capabilities which was wonderful. When I finished the first proof copy and it opened and laid flat and did everything that it was supposed to do, I just sat in my studio and cried. I just couldn't believe it had come together.

I had been wanting to do something about my sisters for quite some time (in my art). I couldn't get it right, and then my older sister turned fifty and had a big party out in Victoria and we all flew out. She was a complete bitch to us and we became kitchen slaves at her party. I had a kind of epiphany as I took myself to Starbucks to cool off. We don't get together much as adults. One of the things I realized was that we were still stuck in roles that our parents had given us. We were still wearing them with each other and probably in other parts of our lives. That inspired another series of dry points: double plate images, there are two plates printed on top of each other. I used photo references and some of them are family pictures that I used. I was playing with the text as texture without any real theme. I thought about these labels that we all have, like the oldest, the flirt, the beauty. "And Yes, She Really Is Bossy" . I was afraid to show her (my sister) that print for about ten years. This is "The Baby". By overlapping them and making one more dominant than the other I was also trying to speak to how the way your parents' affection changes. When you are the oldest you have all the affection at the beginning because there was no one else. When you are the baby you take a lot of space too. "The Flirt" and "The Beauty".

COLLAGES: current work for the past two years. These are 8 x 10". I have been saving images of working women for a long time. I had been carrying this image of the girl reporter around for about 30 years. I just love the look of her and it was great to finally put her some where.

JOCELYN PURDIE: The Swamp Ward Gallery on Bagot Street, Kingston

The Swamp Ward Gallery operates out of Jocelyn's front porch and front yard. The public does not come into the porch so the work has to be accessible from the street. There is a broad range of installations that have happened over the years, not just sculptural installations; there have been sound and performance pieces.

The first project was 2001. It has been going on for 10 years now. There have been over 20 projects and they usually stay up for 2 to 3 months. Because this is something that I do on my own time I try to make it logistically possible. It comes out of interest in seeing contemporary art in public spaces. I work in a gallery setting and as artists we all visit galleries to see art work but the general public doesn't necessarily do that and I think if there is any way to engage people to get them interested and aware of the kinds of things artists are doing outside the norm this is one way of doing it because they are actually encountering it in their day to day lives as they walk through the streets. I am also really interested in work that is temporary.

For this particular project which interestingly ties in with Lise and Rebecca's work of domestic and women's space, I wanted people to think about projects that would relate to the site, not necessarily the home but sensitive to the home, the neighbourhood and the community. Most of the projects have some kind of tie into that."

One of Jocelyn's own pieces, "Carapace" has a warm glow about it. "I was thinking about carapace which is sort of an armour or shell. Thinking about the home and womb-like soft feeling that emanated and also the shell that hides the reality of what often happens in the home to women. So it had this double edge to it. There was a house full of guys that lived across the street, not young men, older guys. They sort of fell in love with it and were disappointed when it disappeared. They liked to smoke their cigarettes outside and watch. That was the first piece.

I have presented the work of local artists as well as artists from out of town. This piece was by Montreal artist, Anne Ramsden. This is called "Winter Garden". She had earlier participated in the exhibition Museopathy where contemporary artists put works in museums throughout Kingston. Anne did one down at Murney tower. Murney Tower was a place for soldiers and their wives to stay. They could live in there. She played with this idea and installed fake flowers on the outside around the tower in the garden area trying to bring out that domestic aspect of this fortification. This is a translation of that onto a domestic space.

In this installation, ‘FOR’, by Craig Leonard, the artist created a facsimile of a real estate sign exploring the idea of language and symbols. People actually did stop to see if the house was for sale but I don't think the artist got any actual calls however.

This one is done by two young artists who had just graduated from Queen's University. Julie Fiala and York Lethbridge created this piece, "Salvation", referencing the home and the idea of, "Is the home a place of refuge or violence?” This lit up at night.

"Turbulent” is another piece I did with Jan Allen. This was a combination of installation and sound. Behind a sheers curtain that was backlit, the sound of breaking dishes was projected from speakers onto the street, while a fan inside created constant movement of the curtain.

Another piece we did together was "Continuous Colour" made from lipstick applied to the inside of the window.

Toronto artist Sarindar Dhaliwal did a piece, ‘Call the Wind Virago’, an archive of hurricanes. For the piece she made 72 sets of multi-coloured curtains of Indian cotton, which were installed on each windowpane of the porch. In the opening between each curtain are a woman's name and a date that references the name of the hurricane and the year it occurred.

This is a performance piece by Jan Allen called "Neighbourhood Watch" so it is playing on the idea of the neighbourhood watch. She constructed a platform that sat in the porch. There was a day where there was a gathering of people where they could come and participate in the piece, sitting in the porch and be the neighbourhood watch.

This piece is by Thunder Bay artist Ann Clarke. She was the director of Modern Fuel for a short time. In 2006 she did this piece called "Random Courses" based on the old stone walls that were called random courses. With this in mind she used household product packaging, consumer products and constructed a wall from them.

"Blue Red Blue" is a poem, almost like a nursery rhyme. Artist Ted Rettig states, "The text is like a nursery rhyme that has a bit of an edge. It has a degree of innocence and playfulness but also contains an undercurrent of pain. The pronouns he/she is interchangeable. Two can mean an affirmation of the relationship of a couple or it can refer to a third person. " It was lit up at night.

This was an installation from artist Mark Prier from Newfoundland whose work was about citizenship and borders. He set up a fake consulate to talk to people and issue passports. He also set up a temporary consulate in Confederation Basin.

In this installation, ‘Intruder’, artist Kathleen Sellars draws on a friend’s illness to create this tumour-like object, which would inflate and deflate over the course of the day.

‘Passing’, is one of my pieces, which was inspired by a trip to Venice to a small cemetery island. The island was incredible; it was a sea of artificial flowers and cypress trees. The piece consists of a blanket of white flowers that flowed out from the windows onto the lawn.

Dave Gordon did an installation titled “Inside’ of text on banners outside the porch based on his time spent teaching art in the prisons in Kingston For example one of the banners read, "Inmate seen participating in sexual activity during social. Visitor was seen with her hand inside his pants." It was interesting in peoples' responses.

The most recent piece ‘Settle’ was done by a graduate of Queen's Fine Arts Program as well. This is an installation of chicken wire figures poised for running or settling.

How do people apply? I am in the process of developing a website but if people want to put in a proposal they can do so through HYPERLINK "mailto:Jocelyn.purdie@gmail.com" Jocelyn.purdie@gmail.com.

Michele LaRose at the Wellington Street Art Gallery, Toronto

2011-11-08T08:27:00.002-05:00

Artist in attendance Thursday, November 17, 7-9pm

Members display at the Window Art Gallery

2011-11-08T08:22:00.000-05:00

Shagrug Collective

an exhibition of artwork produced at the studio with the yellow shag rug

The Window Art Gallery

at the

The Kingston School of Art

647a Princess Street, Kingston, Ontario

Please join us for the opening on

Sunday November 20th 3:00pm until 5:00pm

The exhibition will run from November 16th until January 2nd

Open hours are Wednesday until Sunday 12:00pm - 4:00pm

and Thursday 1:00pm - 9:00pm

613 549 1528

works by Deborah Brown, Margaret Hughes, Erika Olsen

Evelyn Rapin, Rose Stewart, Sharon Thompson,

Ron Wilkinson & Josephine Wren

Marney McDiarmid and Maggie Hogan in Ottawa

2011-10-27T21:08:00.000-04:00

Maggie Hogan and Marney McDiarmid exhibit at the Wallspace Gallery in Ottawa until November 13th, featuring ceramic/wire sculptures and some photographs by Jeffrey Barbeau.

Lise Melhorn-Boe at the Artel

2011-10-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

ART TALKS BEGIN AGAIN!

2011-10-07T18:04:00.002-04:00

REBECCA COWAN WORKSHOP

2011-10-07T18:01:00.000-04:00

Studio B

Holiday Card Workshop

Ideal for both budding and more experienced artists this one day workshop will teach you a new skill, and send you home with 10 hand-printed cards. Award-winning printmaker, Rebecca Cowan will begin by taking you through the process of creating a drypoint* plate. Then you will learn how to print it on an etching press. At the end of the day, you will have produced a limited edition of hand-printed cards to send to your favourite people.

Two dates to choose from

Saturday November 12 or Saturday, November 19, 2011**

10 am to 4 pm

The workshop fee of $75.00 includes all supplies

To Register

Call Rebecca at 613-548-4873 or email rgscowan@gmail.com

Studio B

59 Herchmer Cres (back entrance)

Kingston, Ontario

Directions: From Sir John A. Macdonald, turn onto Norman Rogers Dr., then right onto Byron Cres., and left onto Herchmer Cres.

Workshops are for adults

* Drypoint is a traditional printmaking method that was used by artists like Rembrandt and Whistler.

**If you have a group of four or more, another date can be arranged.

AUTUMN ART EXHIBITION OCTOBER 15 & 16

2011-09-29T11:04:00.000-04:00

SALLY MILNE WATERCOLOUR WORKSHOP

2011-09-27T12:58:00.000-04:00

SALLY MILNE will be running a Watercolour Workshop called
"Paintings of Glass" on the weekend of October 22nd and 23rd.

In this 2-day workshop we will explore techniques which will help participants conquer the notion that “glass is the hardest thing to paint in watercolour!” Sally will talk about her approach to this fascinating subject, do demonstrations focusing on achieving clean, transparent colour using both hard edges and soft fluid shapes. Topics for discussion will include setting up a palette, planning compositions using glass objects and creating both representational and abstract paintings. Students will be encouraged to work on some small technique paintings as well as a larger piece which communicates the transparent, reflective, fluid and solid aspects of glass. Some experience with watercolours will be helpful for this workshop.

Location: Kingston School of Art, corner of Princess and Victoria Streets
Date: Saturday, October 22nd and Sunday, October 23rd 2011
Time: 10am - 3:30pm (bring a lunch)
Fee: $135.

Materials list available on registration or, materials available at an additional cost of $25.

To register, please send a cheque to:
Sally Milne
49 Edgehill Street
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 2T7

Class registration will be kept to a maximum of 10 students to allow for individual instruction.
For more information email Sally at sm@sallymilne.com or phone 613-544-3906.

Rebecca Cowan Fall Studio Sale

2011-09-27T12:48:00.000-04:00

Fall Studio Sale

Making space for new creations

Etchings, drypoints, monoprints, & collographs

$50.00 - $200.00

Saturday & Sunday October 1 & 2, 2011

11 am – 6 pm

59 Herchmer Cres. (rear entrance),

Kingston

Directions: From Sir John A. Macdonald, turn onto Norman Rogers Dr., then right onto Byron Cres., and left onto Herchmer Cres.

OKWA members in Toronto

2011-09-15T11:59:00.000-04:00

J.T. Winik in Toronto Gallery

2011-09-08T19:47:00.000-04:00

Upcoming Exhibitions

2011-09-07T07:29:00.000-04:00

Kingston School of Art Classes

2011-09-02T15:47:00.000-04:00

LISE MELHORN-BOE is teaching at the Kingston School of Art this fall:

Pop-up Books in the Classroom with Lise Melhorn-Boe Oct. 29: 9:30-4:30
Making pop-ups books with students integrates writing, drawing design and 3-D art! Books can also be linked to many other areas of the curriculum. (Not a teacher, but you'd like to learn about pop-ups? Please feel free to sign up anyway.)

Flag Book Fun with Lise Melhorn-Boe Nov. 19: 9:30-4:30
A flag book has small pages flying off an accordion spine. It's a great way to turn small two-dimensional works on paper into a three-dimensional extravaganza! If you have prints, photos, drawings, collages or other works on paper that you don't mind cutting up and playing with, come out for a day of fun.

register at the Kingston School of Art www.ksoa.info/adult-courses.html

In Praise of Older Women (Artists)

2011-07-28T09:55:00.001-04:00

Interesting article at the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/945ee902-07ce-11e0-8138-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TPKkYhrk

"Spirit of the Land" Exhibit at the Marianne van Silfhout Gallery

2011-07-23T18:55:00.000-04:00

Mieke van Geest, OKWA member, is participating in "Spirit of the Land " exhibit in Brockville.
Canadian artist Emily Carr wrote, " if spirit does not breathe through it is lifeless, dead, and voiceless the spirit must be felt so intensely that it has the power to call others in passing."

With this quote in mind, jurors for this year's fourth Annual Juried show chose the works of 42 artists who best represented this theme. The exhibition will be on view at the Marianne van Silfhout Gallery on the Brockville campus of St. Lawrence College from July 28 until September 8, 2011.
Visitors will experience the presence of the life and energy of our land through the varied interpretations of each artist. From paintings in oil, acrylic and watercolour to photography, sculpture, mixed media, serigraph prints and jewelry. All these works are of exceptional quality using both traditional materials and forms to contemporary approaches of material use. Occasionally some of the artworks involve abstract imagery. Each of these pieces carries with them their own uniqueness and originality which is part of the true creative spirit.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday to Friday 10 am to 8 pm
Monday and Saturday 10 am to 4 pm

About the Art Gallery
The Marianne van Silfhout Gallery is a state-of-the-art community art gallery located at the front atrium of the Brockville campus of St. Lawrence College and is a focus for the visual arts for Brockville and the larger Eastern Ontario area. Creation of the gallery was made possible by the generous bequest from the Estate of Marianne van Silfhout, a graduate of the Fine Art program at St. Lawrence College, and other contributors to the St. Lawrence Foundation.

Academy Gallery in Bath

2011-07-22T10:40:00.000-04:00

Michele LaRose at the Mill Street Gallery/Cafe

2011-07-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

Michèle LaRose is a painter from Kingston who navigates the world of colour with gay abandon. Her lively pieces seek to add visual music to life and provide springboards to flights of imagination. Come and enjoy a cappuccino, look at original art, and dine on local, organic produce in the historic, scenic village-on-a-lake of Sydenham, just a 1/2 hour drive north of Kingston. Cafe/gallery is open for lunches Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30 to 2:30 and for dinner on Saturdays 5:30 to 9pm. (Reservations: (613) 376-1533.) Michèle’s exhibition is up from June 29 to August 27, 2011.

THE MILL STREET GALLERY http://millstreetgallery.blogspot.com/

4400 Mill Street, Sydenham, Ontario

For more info about the artist see www.michelelarose.ca

Margaret Lock at Agnes Etherington

2011-06-13T20:48:00.000-04:00

Artists on Art

Saturday 18 June, 2 pm

Kingston artist Margaret Lock gives a talk in the exhibition Kingston in Relief: The Woodcuts of Gwyneth Travers. As a printmaker she provides intriguing insights into Travers’ technique and how she captured well-known local buildings and sites.

Margaret Lock studied fine art at McMaster University and Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has lived in Kingston since 1987 where she works as an artist and letterpress printer. The Art Centre presented an exhibition of her woodcuts in 2002.

We present this talk as part of our celebration of Kingston’s annual Doors Open. The Art Centre will be open from 10 am to 5 pm, and admission is free. Throughout the day, docents will be in the galleries to discuss all the exhibitions.

AGM 2010

2011-05-24T09:39:00.000-04:00

OKWA’s Annual General Meeting, May 15, 2011

Present:

Board Members- Mary Peppard President & Treasurer, June Anderson Vice- President, Barb Carr & Martine Bresson Past Co-Presidents, Lee-Ann Taras Secretary, Alana Kapell, Jane Derby

OKWA Members- Zillah Loney, Mieke Van Geest, Sue Lyon, Mary O’Brien, Margaret Lock, Diane Black, Pauline Conley

New Members:

June gave an update. There have been 7 new members to OKWA since the autumn of 2010. New members are Diane Black, Pauline Conley, Margaret Lock, Caroline Marshall, Lise Melhorn-Boe, Mary O’Brien and Teri Wing.

OKWA’s website has all the updated information for the submission process. Slides are no longer accepted, submissions are on cd & viewed by board members before a board meeting when the jurying of submissions takes place.

OKWA Scholarship:

All members present voted unanimously to award the $500 scholarship again this year. The award goes to a promising art student of either gender in The Creative Arts Focus Program run by Karen Peperkorn at QECVI. Karen selects a few students’ portfolios to be juried by the board of OKWA. A cheque is presented to the recipient in August to assist with their future art studies. June will contact Karen to begin the process.

Election of OKWA Board for 2011-2012:

3 long–serving board members have retired from OKWA’s executive: Hanna Back, Barb Carr and Lee-Ann Taras.

The following board members remain: Mary Peppard as both President & Treasurer, June Anderson as Vice-President, Alana Kapell as Blog/Newsletter Editor, Martine Bresson and Jane Derby. Past executive member, Zillah Loney returns to the board after a short absence. OKWA welcomes new board members Mieke Van Geest and Diane Black.

Thank you Barb Carr, Lee-Ann Taras and Hanna Back for your years of generous contribution to the life of OKWA.

(photos contributed by Martine Bresson)

President AND Treasurer, Mary Peppard zipped through the AGM in probably OKWA's fastest meeting in history, to accommodate members' desires to attend Su Sheedy's opening reception!

The MANSION provided great munchies and comfort.

Maureen Sheridan on exhibit

2011-05-17T19:22:00.000-04:00

Erika Olson on exhibit

2011-05-17T19:20:00.000-04:00

2012 Mill Street Gallery Submissions for OKWA members

2011-05-15T22:06:00.000-04:00

THE ORGANIZATION OF KINGSTON WOMEN ARTISTS CURATES THE MILL STREET GALLERY/CAFE

The Mill Street Gallery/Cafe http://millstreetgallery.blogspot.com

4400 Mill Street/PO Box 70/Sydenham, On K0H2T0/613 376 1533

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for 2012 deadline June 01

OKWA PARTNERS WITH THE MILL STREET GALLERY/CAFE

Because OKWA has now partnered with the Mill Street Gallery and members have already gone through a jurying process, submissions will be very simple.

1. Send an email with your month/s preference. (see below)

2. You can apply for a solo, duo or group show of YOUR MAKING.

3. Read gallery requirements and if in agreement, email your choices of first and second time slots to alanakapell@mac.com by June 01/2011.

_______________________________________________________

BEFORE SUBMITTING PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY.

I1. A nominal fee of $10 in cash is requested for gallery maintenance.

2. Artist is responsible for SET UP and TAKE DOWN at specified dates. This means supplying your own equipment to hang and REPAIRING the walls at take down (removing nails, filling holes and painting). Gallery supplies paint and polyfilla only. Artist brings own hanging equipment, patch up paintbrush and polyfilla applier.

3. Artist(s) are responsible to ensure they have full copyright on all materials presented in the gallery. Only ORIGINAL work is to be exhibited.

4. All sales go to the artist. The artist is solely responsible for negotiating sales.

5. The artist is responsible for their own advertising. The gallery prints one poster at the beginning of the exhibition season advertising all the shows. The gallery will email a list of recommended sites to e advertise to the artist.

6. You cannot expect drop-in traffic to this Sydenham Gallery. Your best use of this space is to advertise an OPENING RECEPTION in which you can actively sell your work if that is your focus. There is a cash bar. Pat Dawson will help you with an appetizer menu; this is not obligatory.

7. All art must be ORIGINAL WORKS and mounted (ie. no paperworks glued or taped to the walls).

8. Opening receptions are set at the first Sunday of each month. Artists pay Pat Dawson/ cafe owner for the refreshments. Opening receptions are optional.

9. The gallery key can be picked up from Alana Kapell /Michele LaRose for installation and take down.

10. The gallery is only open to the public when there is staff working in the building (in February and March this is generally only Saturday evening dinners). As soon as the weather warms up in April hours open up to 11 to 3pm Tuesday to Saturday and Saturday dinners. The gallery is locked otherwise. There is a security system, however INSURANCE is the responsibility of the artist.

View this space as just that, a SPACE provided for your use. There are no other services. You are basically renting a space for a $10 donation. You do ALL the work.

If you agree to all the above conditions, please consider submitting to exhibit.

_____________________________________________

TIME SLOTS AVAILABLE IN 2012:

1. 2 month display, February and March. Gallery open only Saturday evenings and special events.

2. April and May, two month slot open lunches and Saturday evenings and special events.

3. June, one month heavier cottager traffic.

4. July, one month heavier cottager traffic. RESERVED

5. August, one month heavier cottage traffic. RESERVED

6. September and October, two months with lunches and Saturday dinner RESERVED

7. November and December, limited lunches, Saturday dinners.

State your preference for 2 time slots (in case there is duplication in application dates) and also state any period you CANNOT exhibit (ie. if out of the country etc.)

SEND SUBMISSION TO alanakapell@mac.com

THE SALON PRIZE

2011-05-08T19:50:00.000-04:00

The birth of The Salon Prize came from Cleah Bunting’s overwhelming desire to help out other artists in their own working lives. The prize was originally done in association with The Kingston School of Art–however due to the demands of the growing contest–the competition out grew the school.

Judges this year include OKWA member J.T. Winik, as well as Bonnie Brooks and David Perkins.

OKWA members, Barb Carr and Zilla Loney, have been past finalists.

First place: $2,000, 2nd place receives $500, 3rd place $150

This competition is open to Canadian, US and international submissions. All applicants must be 18 or older. The works must be done in the previous 10 years.

Works of any genre and/or medium (abstract, realism...oils, watercolours etc.)

16 people will be chosen and exhibited from November 09 to 30 2012.

Submission deadline is September 10, 2011. Submission forms on website http://salonprize.com/

Zillah Loney

Barb Carr

WORKSHOP Introduction to Typesetting and Letterpress Printing

2011-05-06T09:08:00.000-04:00

Introduction to Typesetting
and Letterpress Printing Workshop
2-3 July, 2011

taught by Margaret Lock, at 231 Johnson Street, Kingston

Participants will learn basic typographic design
concepts, and how to set lead type by hand and
print on a Vandercook proof press. The workshop
will cover setting type, letter-spacing capitals,
imposition, proofing, registration, and printing
on handmade paper. As an exercise, participants
will design and print a broadside up to 10 x 14
inches in size. The text should be a poem of up
to 20 lines, or a piece of prose of fewer than
160 words. Notes and all materials are provided.
Space is limited to three students, so pre-registration is necessary.
The workshop hours are 9:30am-5:30pm.
The cost for each participant is $185.
(A non-refundable deposit of $50 is payable when participants register.)

If you have a favourite poem or piece of prose
that you want to print, and if you are intrigued
by letterpress printing, you should enjoy this workshop.
Please contact Margaret Lock at 613 544-3505;
or 231 Johnson St., Kingston, ON K7L 1Y2
or lockfp@queensu.ca

Margaret Lock holds an Honours Degree from
McMaster University, Hamilton, and a Diploma of
Visual Communication from Goldsmiths’ College,
University of London. She is a private press
printer and printmaker. An exhibition of her
woodcuts was held at the Agnes Etherington Art
Centre in 2002. Work produced by Locks’ Press can
be viewed on the following web sites:
• Library and Archives Canada, Canadian Private Presses
• McMaster University Library, Perspectives in Canadian Publishing
An article on the press was published in The
Private Library, 5th series, 10.1 (Spring, 2007) pages 2-26.

CLOYNE ART EVENTS

2011-04-27T19:22:00.000-04:00

Cloyne is along Hwy. 41, north of Hwy. 7, north of Kingston and Belleville. Here are some art events for July and August:

CLOYNE STUDIO TOUR and SALE

JULY 15, 16, 17 : from 10 am.- 5 pm.

The STUDIO TOUR will take place at Little Pond Road off Highway 41 at

1074 Little Pond Road, Cloyne, & at 1005 Fosters Lane off Road 506 just south of Cloyne.

You are invited to visit the studios of Carla Miedema and Gaile & Trevor Bethell, and see their impressive new paintings, pen & ink drawings, photography and other art works. This is a great opportunity for visitors to see the artists’ studios and artists at work. Enjoy the beautiful countryside on your drive to their studio.

Nature artist, Carla Miedema, enjoys painting, in acrylic & mixed media on canvas, the rugged landscape and wild flowers around her home in Cloyne. Her intricate drawings of children, homes, and wildflowers are depicted on handmade papers and various other papers.

Gaile Bethell enjoys painting in all seasons, striving to capture the play of light and shadow in the woods at her summer home near Cloyne. The rhythms and music found in her landscape paintings portray a strong sense of place.

Photographer, Trevor Bethell’s passions are flora, birds, and butterflies. He also enjoys capturing the varied landscapes of the Precambrian areas of Eastern Ontario and the scenic beauty of the coastal villages of the Atlantic Provinces.

Admission is FREE.

Information: Carla 613-336-8860, the Bethell’s 613-336-8691.

BON ECHO ART EXHIBITION & SALE

JULY 22 : 11 a.m. to 5 p.m..,

JULY 23: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.,

JULY 24: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Exhibition Theme: Original Art of

“Canadian Nature, Wildlife or Countryside”

The Friends of Bon Echo Provincial Park invite you to the annual Bon Echo Art Exhibition and Sale taking place at Bon Echo Provincial Park, Hwy. # 41, Cloyne, ON. This is a juried art exhibition and sale, which takes place in a central location in beautiful Bon Echo Provincial Park. About 50 artists will have their work on display and for sale. Make a day of it and enjoy art & demonstrations, BBQ, snake show, and music.

All profits made by the Friends of Bon Echo Park go back into preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the Park.

Included, with admission to the Park, is admission to the Bon Echo Art Exhibition &Sale.

Information: (613)336-0830, (613)333-2329

CLOYNE SHOWCASE 2011 , ART & CRAFT SALE

Friday, AUG. 5: 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.,

Saturday, AUG. 6: 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.,

Sunday, AUG. 7: 10 am.- 4 pm.

You are invited to the annual Showcase of arts and crafts, sponsored by the North Addington Guild, held at the North Addington Education Centre, Cloyne, ON, Highway # 41. Over 75 exhibitors will be displaying and selling a huge variety of Arts and Crafts, such as wood working, sewing, jewellery, paintings, soaps, quilting, just to name a few.

Food and refreshments, provided by the Mazinaw Lake Swim Committee, is also available. All profits from this venture go directly back to the swim program.

All profits made by the Guild are donated to enrich the arts programs at North Addington Education Centre, Cloyne, ON.

Admission is FREE.

Information: (613)336-0995

Su Sheedy and Jeanne Campbell at The Academy

2011-04-23T09:32:00.000-04:00

Join Jeanne Campbell and Su Sheedy in their "MOTHER DAUGHTER" Art Exhibition in Bath, Ontario at The Academy Art Gallery: 352 Academy Street. Opening Reception is Sunday, May 15 from 2 to 4pm. Show dates are May 13 to June 14.

MAUREEN SHERIDAN AT GALLERY RAYMOND

2011-04-17T09:31:00.000-04:00

Maureen Sheridan exhibits at Gallery Rayond and opens as part of Art after Dark on Thursday, May 26th from 7 to 10pm. Gallery Raymond, 334 Princess St. Kingston ON 613 549-2477.

Michele LaRose at the Academy

2011-04-14T14:30:00.003-04:00

2011-04-13T13:31:00.002-04:00

JANE DERBY on Exhibit at Modern Fuel

2011-03-24T15:41:00.000-04:00

Jane Derby exhibits "Second Life" at The Modern Fuel in Kingston from April 30 to June 4 in the State of Flux Gallery. Opening Reception is April 30.

Artist Statement:

I am one of many contemporary artists who are finding inspiration in cast off or undervalued objects, granting them a kind of second life. The artist wrestles with the limitations of these everyday materials, pushing their natural abilities to a point of transcendence, ideally, turning ‘dross into gold.’ Meaning is created in the tension between the familiar and its recontextualization in unfamiliar ways.

The surface textures of the natural world fascinate me, and, for the same reason, I am attracted to the physical properties of the discarded objects I select. Previously I have worked with lath and found objects, imbedding these in plaster. My current series reflects my experimentation with the cans found in kitchen cupboards. The beauty of these, hidden under their commercial wrappers, has always appealed to me, and this work is an attempt to push the natural aesthetics of the object into new territories. On a personal level, I find an equivalence between the ridges of the tin cans and their light reflecting properties, and the textural surfaces of the land around Kingston. My aim is to translate this visual pleasure into my reliefs.

JULIE WITHROW

2011-03-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

APRIL ART TALKS AT THE MANSION

2011-03-22T21:50:00.000-04:00

SALLY MILNE WATERCOLOUR WORKSHOP

2011-03-22T17:51:00.000-04:00

Paintings of Glass: A Watercolour Workshop with Sally Milne

In this 2-day workshop we will explore techniques which will help participants conquer the notion that "glass is the hardest thing to paint" in watercolour! Sally will talk about her approach to this fascinating subject, do demonstrations focusing on achieving clean, transparent colour using both hard edges and soft fluid shapes. Topics for discussion will include setting up compositions using glass objects and creating both representational and abstract paintings.
Students will be encouraged to work on some small technique paintings as well as a larger piece which communicates the transparent, reflective, fluid and solid aspects of glass. Some experience with watercolours will be helpful for this workshop.

Location: Kingston School of Art, Princess and Victoria Streets.
Date: Saturday, April 16th and Sunday, April 17th.
Time: 10am-3:30pm (bring a lunch)
Fee: $135.
Materials list available on registration or, materials available at an additional cost of $25.
If you have a glass object which has a simple shape and interesting colour, please bring it with you.

To register please send a cheque to:
Sally Milne
49 Edgehill Street,
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 2T7

Class registration will be kept to a maximum of 10 students to allow for individual questions and instruction.
For more information email Sally at sm@sallymilne.com or phone 613-544-3906
Thanks and Happy Painting.
Sally Milne

Belleville Opening Reception in Parrott Gallery

2011-03-22T17:43:00.000-04:00

SYNERGY continues at the Parrott Gallery in Bellevile Public Library until the end of March. Here are some shots of the successful reception.

V.P. June Anderson

Su Sheedy Exhibits in Toronto

2011-03-01T17:29:00.000-05:00

Su Sheedy opens her new show, "Pond", at the Muse Gallery in Toronto on Friday, March 4 from 6 to 9pm. The exhibit continues to March 24, 2011 at 1230 Yonge St, Toronto. 416 974 9986. 5% of the proceeds will be donated to "Lake Ontario Waterkeeper".

Listing of Works on Exhibit at SYNERGY, OKWA February Group Exhibit

2011-02-16T14:20:00.012-05:00

SYNERGY, OKWA's February/March Group Show is at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library from 02 February to the 25th Feb and moves on to Belleville into the John M. Parrott Art Gallery in the Belleville Public Library from March 2nd to the 30th, 2011.

Here are a few listings of works on display. Unless specified NFS (not for sale) or SOLD, artworks are for sale. Contact the artist by the given email address with each artwork.

Su Sheedy NFS. encaustic with coneflowers diptych.
sheedy@kingston.net

BEST IN SHOW:
Julie Davidson Smith $450. acrylic. "Submerged"
juliedavidsonsmith@gmail.com

BEST IN SHOW:
Julie Davidson Smith $450. acrylic/oil pastel. "Night Walkers"
juliedavidsonsmith@gmail.com

Julie Kojro $325. acrylic on canvas. "Wild Irises".
juliemikkola@hotmail.com

Julie Kojro $450. acrylic on canvas. "Window Boots".
juliemikkola@hotmail.com

Sharon Thompson $2,000. oil/concrete on board 48x43"
griffin@queensu.ca

Verna Vowles $1,000. acrylic. "Reminiscence"
bandv@kingston.net

HONOURABLE MENTION:
Verna Vowles $1,000. acrylic. "Reminiscence 2"
bandv@kingston.net

Judy Springer $90.00. Digital drawing. "Flight"
jspring@persona.ca

Margaret Lock $1200 framed. chalk pastel on paper 22x30" "Maples and Shagbark Hickory"
lockfp@queensu.ca

Margaret Lock $1200 framed. chalk pastel on paper. "Beaver Dam" 22x30"
lockfp@queensu.ca

HONOURABLE MENTION
Martine Bresson $350 Giclee "Maguey Man"
martinebresson@yahoo.com

HONOURABLE MENTION
Martine Bresson $350. Giclee "Woman with Garlic"
martinebresson@yahoo.com

Erika Olson $750. chalk pastel. "Geraniums on Blue"
erikaolson@yahoo.com

Erika Olson $950. chalk pastel. "Mexican Jug on African Cloth.
erikaolson@yahoo.com

Lee-Ann Taras $500.
16x48" mixed media. "Balance"
leeanntaras@kos.net

Lee-Ann Taras $500.
16x48" mixed media. "Exuberance"
leeanntaras@kos.net

Mieke Van Geest. $135 unframed photograph. $300 framed. "Within the Pines 01"
miekevg@distributel.net

Mieke Van Geest. $135 unframed photograph. $300 framed. "Within the Pines 02"
miekevg@distributel.net

Sally Milne $1500. watercolour "Sunlit Blue"
sm@sallymilne.com

June Anderson. $900 oil on canvas "Apples II"
june-anderson@cogeco.ca

June Anderson. $550 oil on canvas "Apples I"
june-anderson@cogeco.ca

Diane Black. $450. Clay "Celest"
blackmac@sympatico.ca

Wendy Cain. $800 handmade paperpulp spray and stencil. untitled
wcain@persona.ca

Barb Carr $850. Collage. "Autumn Woods"
barbecarr@hotmail.com

Diane Black SOLD

Barb Carr $450. collage. "Snow"
barbecarr@hotmail.com

Pauline Conley. SOLD

Pauline Conley. $450. Mixed media on panel 20x24" "Al Forja"
paulinegerardconley@gmail.com

Hanna Back $2,500. Paperclay 18x12.8x11.75" "Emerging"

j.hanna.back@gmail.com

Mary E. Crawford $400. oil and mixed media
"Island Wilderness 01"
mecrawford@sympatico.ca

Mary E. Crawford $400. oil and mixed media
"Island Wilderness 02"
mecrawford@sympatico.ca

Julie Withrow $550. oil stick on panel "Chair Box"
jwithrow@reztel.net

Mary O'Brien $450. mixed media on canvas.
8x10" mobrien@kos.net

BEST IN SHOW.
Jane Derby NFS "Breakup" oil on plaster and found materials.
jderby@kingston.net

Jane Derby $900. automotive paint on found materials.
"Surface" jderby@kingston.net

Mary O'Brien $450. mixed media on canvas.
8x10" "King Stone"
mobrien@kos.net

HONOURABLE MENTION
Michele LaRose. "Allegretto" acrylic on canvas.
laing.larose@gmail.com

Isidora Spielmann $1200. fox collar, velvet cape, needlepoint, applique,
painted wood. "ode to the fox"
isidora@rideau.net

Wendy Cain $450. Handmade paper pulp spray
and stencil. "Untitled" (Frosted Landscape Series)
wcain@persona.ca

Kingston Public Library Exhibition 2011

2011-02-16T10:02:00.001-05:00

Sorting painting labels.

wendy adding support.

OKWA members put up the February show in the Kingston Library. Photos by Martine Bresson.

June centering.

Mieke and Mary Peppard

June and Mary in a precarious place.

Su and Sharon take time to contemplate after all is hung.

JUROR: JENNIFER HORNYAK is introduced by Michele LaRose

Michele LaRose gives the following introduction....

Jennifer Hornyak

Jennifer is originally from Grimsby, about 200 miles north of London, where she and her family experienced to excitement and tribulations of WW2. She was artistic from an early age and went to the Grimsby School of Art after high school. Following that she moved to London with a friend where they dreamed of moving to North America. In 1961 she and a friend took a freighter from Liverpool and it was in Montreal that she met her future husband, Nicolas Hornyak, married and had three children. When her third child was 1 year old she returned to her passion, painting. She studied Fine Art at McGill and pursued other opportunities such as a Vermont residency with Stanley Boxer, Elmer Bishoff, Georges McLean and Tom Butters.

In 1983 she began showing work at the Galerie Claude Lafitte in Montreal. Thanks to this partnership her work was also shown in group exhibitions in Montréal, Toronto, San Francisco, New-York, Boston, Nice and Paris.

During the 80s Jennifer’s work gravitated primarily to the human figure, with the odd foray into landscape and still-life. However, in the 90s, feeling a need for change, she moved from her studio in Old Montreal to another along the Lachine Canal. There she encountered Jacques and Helen Bellefeuille who encouraged her new work and offered her a show in 1993 in their Galerie de Bellefeuille on Greene Avenue in Montreal. Her new work was primarily still life and of a more sombre palette than previously. The show was a huge success and her collaboration with this gallery continues to this day. She has had 5 solo exhibitions there and she has been included in many group exhibitions, notably the Toronto International Art Fair, Miami Art Basel and the Chicago Contemporary and Classic. She has also developed partnerships with other galleries such as Wallace Galleries in Calgary, Galerie St-Laurent & Hill in Ottawa (where she is having a show in April, 2011), Trinity Gallery in St. John’s, Studio 21 in Halifax and the Bennet Street Gallery in Atlanta. During this time she has also taught and juried shows. Over the last 10 years Jennifer has dedicated herself completely to her art. She now relies on a team that attends to the administrative and management sides of her practice, providing her the luxury of concentrating exclusively on painting. She was generous enough to come and visit us in Kingston and give us the benefit of her considerable experience. She was also available during the reception for members to speak with her about their individual works.

Michele LaRose said, "Our juror, Jennifer Hornyak turned out to be a lovely lady and was very generous with her comments and willingness to discuss individual pieces with the artists showing."

___________________________________

As you can see, attendance was rewarding as well as the abundant and tantalizing munchies!

Jane Thelwell (honorable mention) beams!

_____________________________________

THE BEST IN SHOW were by ROSE STEWART, JULIE DAVIDSON SMITH and JANE DERBY.

There were four honourable mentions: VERNA VOWLES, JANE THELWELL, MARTINE BRESSON and MICHELE LaRose. (Photos of exhibiting pieces will be posted shortly.)

thanks to the following for their able work in getting the show up and advertised:

Show Coordinators: Jane Derby and Barb Carr

Show designers: Su Sheedy and Sharon Thompson

Poster and Evite: Isadora Speilmann

Reception Refreshments/Goodies: June Anderson

Coordinator for Belleville Show to follow: Hanna Back

Juror, Jennifer Hornyak (center) with BEST IN SHOW: Jane Derby (left) and Julie Davidson Smith (right)

FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER

2011-02-04T20:24:00.003-05:00

OKWA's February Newsletter is now posted to the website, http://www.okwa.ca/newsletter.htm
Click on the heading to get there.

ART TALKS: Evolution/Sally Milne, Julie Davidson Smith, Sharon Thompson

2011-01-22T11:19:00.037-05:00

The following photographs were contributed by Martine Bresson, taken at The Mansion on January 19, 2011 ART TALKS. The speakers (Sally Milne, Julie Davidson Smith, and Sharon Thompson) discussed the evolution of their art practice.

Jane Derby and Julie Davidson Smith

Julie Davidson Smith

munching at The Mansion

Adept projectionist, Sandra Jass

Sally Milne with watercolours

on stage: Sharon Thompson and Sally Milne

Sharon Thompson

inspired discussions
___________________________________________________________

SALLY MILNE

"Plum Glass and Lemon Reflections" watercolour Slide #1

We’re here to talk about the evolution of our work and I think that as artists and people we are always striving to develop and grow. Some of this process of development happens through conscious choice and directing our efforts and some of our growth - and this became clearer to me when looking back at my own work, in preparing for tonight’s talk - comes as a natural or unconscious progression and to me this is the exciting part about evolution in our work.

I have always painted in watercolour and I’ve been doing so for 23-24 years. The biggest factor in my early development as a watercolour painter was that I was able to work at it full time right from the start. I was living in Switzerland and I didn’t have a work permit so I was able to go to art school. I did a lot of work on drawing and colour theory there but, there wasn’t much watercolour instruction available so, I am largely self-taught in terms of technique.

The qualities that attracted me to watercolour in the first place became the qualities I looked for in my subjects: Transparency, the fluid aspect of the medium, clean and clear colour. So, the medium really was my starting point.

I’m going to go back about 15 years to when I started to work on some still life paintings with glass objects in them. SLIDE 1 (Plum Glass and Lemon Reflections): In this painting I was interested in capturing the transparency of the glass, reflected colour and the effect of light shining through the glass. This was an expression of the qualities of watercolour and of my interest in colour. At this point I had been working in watercolour for 7-8 years and I my own style and technique were starting to emerge. My approach to painting has been to use strong, saturated staining colours and to try to achieve the final result in as few layers or washes as possible. In doing this I am keeping the white of the paper close to the surface so it can shine through the colour and I can achieve transparency and keep the colours clean. One thing that stopped evolving in my work many years ago is my palette. Years ago I established a group of 12 colours to work with and I have stuck with these colours ever since.

SLIDE 2 : ( Glowing Amber): For a period of time my only subject was glass objects. Once I had developed my technique and my palette I continued working on these paintings which I saw as studies in transparency, colour and light.

SLIDE 3 (Pure Light ): I had never really been interested in traditional representation and I found myself getting closer and closer to the subject - looking for places of intersection and compositions where there was little background and the objects extended beyond the borders I had determined as the edges of the composition. In all my work I am using photographs as a reference and I would set things up in sunlight to photograph them, thus capturing the light in a certain position and allowing me to approach the subject from different perspectives - such as in this one where I am looking down at the objects.

SLIDE 4 (Transparent Shadows): The composition - placement of objects and use of light and shadow started to become as important to me as the transparency which had first attracted me. I was excited when I did this painting because it was one of the first ones where I became aware of the element of abstraction in my work. (1998) I wasn’t necessarily about the objects any more.

SLIDE 5 (Colour Balance): In this piece, where the bowl and vase are more clearly represented, I started to focus on some of the abstract shapes within the glass. I wasn’t aware that I was doing this at the time but, this is an element which re-surfaces in my later work.

Now, at this point, I had been working on paintings of glass objects for about 3 and a half years and I’d done roughly 130 paintings. I got to a point where I felt I had explored the subject and I couldn’t see where to go with it further. I had done paintings representing the whole object, I had worked with light shining through glass. I had placed glass objects one in front of the other and worked on transparency and intersecting lines and overlapping colour. I had worked on composition with objects extending beyond the edges of the frame. I had explored many of these elements without really asking myself any conscious questions but, at this point, I started to wonder where to go next and I felt that I needed to open myself up to something new.

Subsequently, I have found that “opening oneself up” to something new does not always lead to fresh inspiration but, at that particular time I got lucky!

One night I was watching tv and a documentary came on about icebergs off the coast of Newfoundland. I was completely mesmerized by it and knew right then that I had to go there- to see them and to try to paint them.

In the Spring of 2000 and 2001 we went to Newfoundland specifically to find and to get as close as possible to some icebergs. We were very lucky and saw quite a few icebergs of varying size and were able to go on boats and get close to most of them. I came back with hundreds of photos.

SLIDE 6: (Majesty) This was a departure for me and it responded to a need for change.

This was a very exciting time as I tried to capture something so large, so sculptural, with such a presence and power, which wasn’t transparent but, which was also something transient, passing, melting, fluid.

The paintings were larger than any I had done before. This one measures about 2 feet by 3 feet which is large for watercolour and presents a physical challenge. The first paintings I did showed icebergs that could not be contained by the edges of the composition. People who had known my work with glass for years had a physical response to them, taking steps back...It was exciting to see that people had a physical response to my work but, a little disturbing to see that the response was to move away from it!

SLIDE 7: (Grounded) So, I painted some with land in them - which provided a reference people could grasp, a context they were familiar with.

SLIDE 8: (Ice in the Sunlight) And, some where I showed the whole iceberg. Some of the biggest technical challenges for me in this work were things like painting a large sky wash. Most of my previous work had been done in what I would call defined shapes.

In 2000 and 2001 I did about 30 of these iceberg paintings and then I started to yearn for warmer colours again so, I took a new look at my collection of glass objects.

SLIDE 9: (Aerial) One of the things I was now interested in - and which may have come from my work on the icebergs - was the element of movement and trying to convey movement through the fluid aspect of glass.

SLIDE 10: (Day’s End) Another painting focusing on fluid movement as an element of composition. This picked up and continued with the evolution away from representation.

I had been exploring the abstractions found within representation for a while - earlier, without even realizing it and now I started to use the glass objects as a source for abstract compositions.

SLIDE 11: (Gyro) This work still came from photographing glass but, I found myself cutting up the photos and only using small pieces of them to base my compositions on.

"Life Forces" wc

SLIDE 12: (Life Forces) These paintings are not pure abstraction. They all come from things I see when looking at glass pieces close up.

SLIDE 13: (Bloom) One of the challenges I found with this work was to do a painting without hard edges - to only paint the shapes within. This was pushing away from my natural tendency toward clean, clear edges and was a technical challenge working in larger areas and keeping the whole thing soft. I felt this was a new progression in my work.

SLIDE 14: (Shadowy Ice) Where there is abstraction within glass, there is also abstraction to be found within ice and in my most recent paintings I am working on looking into the ice and developing the forms into compositions on their own, no longer relying on the whole. Some of the paintings in this group have defined edges and shapes and others do not.

SLIDE 15: (Within the Ice I) Again, the soft edges are challenging me and drawing me closer - away from my earlier days of representing the whole with clean, clear, crisp objects, sharp edges and moving into softness and becoming aware of mood as an element to explore.

SLIDE 16: (Within the Ice II)

What I’d like to say to sum up is that sometimes we are lucky enough to grow and evolve and develop without even being aware of it. During other periods it is a struggle and demands a lot of hard work, persistence, discipline and determination. As artists, we have a physical representation of that evolution in our work, showing us where we have come from...and I think we are pretty lucky to have that.

_________________________________________________________________________

SHARON THOMPSON

I appreciate this opportunity to share some of my process with OKWA. It is always valuable to reflect upon where one has come from and where one might be going as an artist. I have decided to confine myself to showing work from the last two years because with 20 minutes it does not seem possible to cover the whole long time that I have been working.

The first images are of my most current work finished at the very end of 2010 and into 2011, which I will show as I talk generally (image #1) and move back in time later.

I want to begin by saying that for me, to be an artist is and has been to embark on a journey of fire, a journey of considerable difficulty which requires facing oneself, all of one's passions both light and dark and using the energy of those passions as a spring board to make art. For me. making art is about transforming the passions of being human into light and space and energy.(image #2)

Part of the journey of fire that I speak is my having a double sided voice. This voice seems to have one side that is highly structural and formally demanding ( #3 slide of a still life) and another side that is fluid and loose ( #4 slide of a garden). I find both of these sides beautiful and expressive but they have also seemed different, both visually and emotionally, impressionism vying with cubism. The art making emerges from the dance and conflict of these two sides in an effort to bring them together.

For example, here is an abstract which I finished in the spring of 2010 ( image #5) , highly structured and typical of where I was at the time. Then at the end of June we took a road trip across the prairies. I painted every day and behold, the other side that loves movement and looseness jumped forward.

( slide #6) The experience of the prairies really had an impact on me. I felt as though the whole landscape was whispering to me as I worked. I could see through this whispering sense, that the space light and energy that seemed to be at the centre of my abstract work was right here in front of me. It was not just an imagined journey that lay beyond the daily ups and downs of this world.

(slide 7) This gave me a new confidence in what I am doing in the abstract work, and I returned to Kingston and completely reworked the show for North Bay in 3 weeks on the basis of this experience.

I want to speak now about the use of line in my work this is a recent drawing done with the left hand. ( #8 image figure) Life drawing is a practice that I have done off and on ever since graduating from art school and it is an important part of my vocabulary. Lines do a host of things in my work—making connections. expressing energy, creating spatial depth to name the main ones. In February 2009 I broke my right wrist and spent 8 weeks living and working from the left hand. I was left handed as a small child and was shifted to the right hand. To my large surprise I found that the left hand could draw much more accurately and expressively than the right hand. Since then all of the drawn lines, and the use of the paint brush are with the left hand. At Queens I studied sculpture and painting equally during my BFA because I loved them both. I often think that I am a sculptor using paint.

The sculpture had a very large influence on my painting, especially in the areas of composition and form (image #9 landscape). Though both the painting and the sculpture in my graduating show at Queens were completely abstract, I spent most of the years after graduation, from 1983 to 2000 as a landscape/garden/still life painter. I felt I did not really know enough about painting when I graduated and, I also believed it was important to work and learn from life. I did learn a great deal, especially about colour from trying to reproduce the colours in nature. I also learned about relationship, seeing, light, space and depth These are practices that I continue to this day, feeling both personally and artistically nourished by them.

(slide #10) I have not confined my artistic activities to painting however and have experimented with other materials through collage. Part of the impetus to experiment comes from the question in my mind “who am I”, “what is my voice?--and so when something in the work of others attracted me I wanted to try it out. I think this sort of experimentation is really important in one's development especially early on. The 'collage' practice also goes some way towards incorporating my love of sculpture. I also like the additive process of collage, which is different from the painting process . I like the difficulty of resolving what is already there but not quite right by adding something new rather than covering up or painting over. This has been a great help in strengthening the painting. In these collage pieces I put everything, pencils, hardware from the basement, buttons, glass), anything that I could create rhythms with basically. I kept redoing the series with every new material that came to my fancy and attention like tissue paper, string but it was concrete (slide #11) that really caught my fancy. What attracts me to the concrete is that it is both very physical and stone like ( and I have called these works stone drawings), but at the same time, using paint one can achieve a diaphanous effect and this ironic combination appeals to me visually, and spiritually.

( slide #12) I also experimented briefly with hair pieces for a show at the State of Flux gallery of Modern Fuel. In this series each piece needed to have a hair piece in it to fit the theme. I found this need to work with a theme intellectually and formally challenging. It stretched my conceptual side and gave me the brief satisfaction of realizing that I could or might do this kind of work if I felt inclined..

(slide #13)I want to speak now about my abstract painting. I have learned to do many things competently over the years and each of these has added to my artistic vocabulary . I also learned what appealed most to me amongst these, and all of it has been the ground work for where my heart and soul lie which is in the abstract painting. I will show you a few recent pieces (slide #13).

A little bit of history. After graduation in 1983 I did not again do abstract painting in any serious way until the year 2000 and from that year it has been my main focus. My BFA sculpture teacher, Alan Dickson asked me when he saw me pursuing abstract work again, why I had waited so long to return to this, implying that I had wasted a lot of time. In part he was right ( slide #14) I was avoiding.

This serious return to abstract painting in 2000 was the beginning of the real journey of fire because it is truly walking a path of unknowing and the reason I had avoided it so long was the need to gather enough life and artistic experience to sustain a practice that walks completely in the unknown.

I am inspired by the cellist, Pablo Casals who every morning would begin his day by playing one of the Bach Cello Suites. I imagine that it was his way of preparing himself for the day, of embracing and celebrating that day to come no matter what it might bring.

(slide #14) I think of my painting, especially my abstract painting, in this way. I have no real words for what it is about, just as Casals could have no words for what the music he was playing was about. However, 2 things come close to describing it. The first is the sense of transforming human passion into space and light and energy which I have spoken about. The second is the sense of the world as whispering; I tell a story which relates to this of another encounter with Alan Dickson who was by the way a wonderful teacher. We were discussing a piece of abstract sculpture that I was working on at school. I said to him that I heard what to do. He said, "You do not hear what to do, you see what to do." Despite his authority I could not reneg on this sense of hearing what to do. Looking back on this event, I can see that at some level there was a sense of what I call the world whispering inside me and inside itself even then. I see this in the works of some of the great artists—Cezanne, Emily Carr, Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin and also far back in art history, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Giotto, and Fra Angelico to name but a few.

It is to participate in this, to probe it, and to try to express it, that I make art and that I am prepared to undertake the journey of fire that is at the heart of art making.

__________________________________________________________________________________

JULIE DAVIDSON SMITH

Julie Davidson Smith contributed spontaneously to the discussion of the evolution of one's art and so her talk is not transcribed here. Be sure and check in to see when the next ART TALKS will be held at Kingston's THE MANSION.

Kingston Printmakers Exhibit at the Library

2011-01-03T19:49:00.000-05:00

The Kingston Printmakers group is having an exhibition in the foyer
of the Wilson Room, Kingston Public Library, during the month of
January. Our reception is Saturday, January 08 from 2 - 4pm.

OKWA ART TALKS JANUARY 2011

2010-12-17T20:14:00.000-05:00

At The Mansion in "The Living Room" on Wednesday, January 19, 6:30pm, Sally Milne, Sharon Thompson and Julie Davidson Smith will dispel the "winter blues" with their colourful slide show and talks. Open to All and Free Admission. Come early and enjoy The Mansion's menu.
The Mansion: 506 Princess Street, Kingston, Ontario. 613 531-0003

OKWA Group Exhibitions 2011

2010-12-15T13:42:00.001-05:00

OKWA's next BIG group show is at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, February 2nd to 25th, 2011 at 130 Johnson Street. The opening will be on Saturday, February 5th from 2pm to 4pm.

This exhibit will move on to the John M. Parrott Art Gallery at the Belleville Public Library from March 3rd to 30th.

Screenprinting Workshop in Kingston

2010-11-30T08:06:00.000-05:00

An intensive 2 day workshop where participants will learn photostencil techniques, mesh selection for printing fabric or flatstock, inks and additives, set-up and multicolor registration, and printing techniques using hand and automated presses for both t-shirts and flat graphic printing. Waterbased inks and low-tox materials used, all materials supplied.*

This is a Squeegeeville.com workshop featuring instructor Andy MacDougall ASPT. It takes place in Kingston Ont.

Dec 4&5. Course spaces are limited. cost is $250. for more information or to register contact Julian Berry ironcladgraphics@gmail.com or phone 613-484-6666

OKWA RECEPTION AND DINNER

2010-11-10T07:42:00.000-05:00

November 07/2010 OKWA reception was held at the Mill Street Gallery. Dinner followed with almost a full house celebrating the art with a menu reflecting the paintings. Hopefully this is a beginning of a lovely yearly celebration?

Pauline Conley digs into an Erika Olson look alike.

Suki and Fred

Sally Milne and Chris, Michele Larose and Sherry

Barb Carr, June, Sue Lyons and friends

Tantalizing Menu for November 07

2010-10-22T11:23:00.000-04:00

Dinner at the Mill Street Cafe/Gallery surrounded by the OKWA exhibit: Sunday November 07 one seating only at 6pm. Prix Fix at $25 for three courses.

NOVEMBER EXHIBITIONS

2010-10-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

"Swamp Bog Marsh Fen" Su Sheedy November 12-22 at Terrence Robert Gallery in Ottawa, 531 Sussex Drive. 613 860-9888 www.terrencerobertgallery.com Opening Reception Friday November 12, 6-9pm

OPEN STUDIOS KINGSTON november 13 and 14 1-5pm

6 artists in 2 studios

1. 49 Edgehill Street off Centre Street for Lee-Ann Taras ,Sally Milne and Barb Carr

2. 477A Princess St at University for Erika Olson, Hanna Back and Jane Derby

call 613 544 3906 for info

ISIDORA SPIELMANN AT:

"The Maker's Hand" - Picton Nov 5, 6, 7. http://www.themakershand.com/
"A Fashionable High Tea" - Westport Nov 28, 11-4 http://www.artatwork.ca/fashiontea
My studio is open all through December. 613-273-3359

Seasonal Showcase of 60 works at the Agnes Etherington Art Rental and Sales Gallery November 4-7, 2010 Meet and Greet the Artists on November 6 Saturday 2-4pm. university ave at Bader Lane 613 533 2184 artgall@queensu.ca

Sharon Thompson Painting Workshop

2010-10-14T09:50:00.001-04:00

October 19 and 20th, "Plein Air Painting" with Sharon Thompson. 9:30 to 3:30pm $140. Painting from life using abstraction and expression as well as observation to develop skill in landscape and still life painting. 613 352-5582 The Academy Gallery, 352 Academy Street, Bath, Ontario K0H1G0

(It is easily reached 100 meters north of the only signalized intersection in Bath, which is at Church Street (Hwy 33 and County Road 7).

OKWA Mill Street Gallery Show Pricelist

2010-10-05T21:28:00.116-04:00

Barb Carr "Les Girls" SOLD
12 x 12" paper collage
barbecarr@hotmail.com

Barb Carr "The Secret's Out" $150
12 x 12" woodcut
barbecarr@hotmail.com

June Anderson "Plate of Eggs" $400
oil on canvas 12 x 12"
june-anderson@cogeco.ca

June Anderson "Mixed Vegetables" $400
12 x 12" oil on canvas
june-anderson@cogeco.ca

This show should be called "Deck the Halls" because the pieces are all small in price and size! Ideal xmas gifts, especially for those art lovers who say they have no more room. Many of the paintings are safe for small spaces like bathrooms, for example the acrylic on canvas of Pauline Conley, the metal and encaustic works of Sheedy, Falkner and Derby. These will also stand up in the kitchen thematically as well as being impervious to food spatters! eg. June Anderson's and Erika Olson's still life paintings.

Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 3pm and Saturday dinners 5 to 9pm. Look at the gallery website for directions and more information : http://millstreetgallery.blogspot.com/

You can purchase by directly contacting the artist.

Pauline Conley "Limp Noodle"

$185 8x8" acrylic on board

www.paulineconley.ca

Pauline Conley "Orangey Orange"

$185 8x8" acrylic on board

www.paulineconley.ca

Pauline Conley $360
"Waking up in Delhi"
36x12" acrylic on canvas
www.paulineconley.ca

Pauline Conley "Pashmina Scraps"

$280 acrylic on canvas 12 x 12"

www.paulineconley.ca

Mary E. Crawford "Pat & Patsy"

$115 oil on canvas

10 x 12" 613 542 1761

Mary E. Crawford "Rhapsodist in Concert"
$175 acrylic collage 12x15"
613 542-1761

Lee-Ann Taras "A Pause in Time" $225
mixed media 10 x 10"
leeanntaras@kos.net

Lee-Ann Taras "Ascending" $225
mixed media 10 x 10"
leeanntaras@kos.net

Rebecca Cowan "Working Women" $200 8x10"
rgscowan@gmail.com

Rebecca Cowan "Working Women 2"
Mixed Media $200 8x10"
rgscowan@gmail.com

Rebecca Cowan "Working Women 3"
Mixed Media $200 8x10"
rgscowan@gmail.com

Hanna Back paperclay $2,500
18x12.8x11.75"
j.hanna.back@gmail.com

Mary Peppard "Purple Haze" $200
12x12"
marypeppard@gmail.com

Mary Peppard "Purple Haze 2" $200
12x12"
marypeppard@gmail.com

Wendy Cain paper pulp spray $180
wcain@persona.ca 7"sq.

Wendy Cain paper pulp spray $180
7" sq wcain@persona.ca

Suki Falkner "Ground Duration"

Suki Falkner "Neighbourhood Gas"

Suki Falkner "Announcements"

SOLD

Suki Falkner "Rubber Stamp"

Suki Falkner "City Shrine"

SOLD

Suki Falkner "Public Telephone"

Suki Falkner's encaustic transfers are all 6x6" on wood panels for $75.
Contact her at 613 374-1180

Erika Olson "Chocolate Cupcake"
$100 4x6"
erikaolson@yahoo.com

SOLD

Erika Olson "Blue Icing"
$100 4x6"
erikaolson@yahoo.com

SOLD

Martine Bresson "Monet's Garden" Photograph $250
23 x 36" martinebresson@yahoo.com

Judy Springer "Field Lines" $65
11 x 13" photo collage jspring@persona.ca

Su Sheedy "Wool Grid" $650
12x12" encaustic
sheedy@kingston.net

Su Sheedy "Marsh Grid" $650
encaustic on pressed tin
sheedy@kingston.net

Jane Derby "Domestic Arts #1 $400
automotive paint on metal
jderby@kingston.net

Jane Derby "Domestic Arts #2" $400
automotive paint on metal
jderby@kingston.net

OKWA GROUP SHOW AT MILLSTREET GALLERY/CAFE IS UP

2010-10-05T18:28:00.000-04:00

Hanging the Millstreet show was an enjoyable experience, a gaggle of women 'milling and hanging' around somehow without direction arranging themselves into units that tackled individual walls and accomplished hanging a show with style! Another experience of women working harmoniously together. Here are pictures of the crew hanging on Monday October 4. Soon, pictures of all the works will be put up with prices/sizes/etc. for those unfortunate people who cannot make it out to Sydenham to view the work 'in the flesh'. Gallery/Cafe hours are from 11am to 3pm Tuesday to Saturday and Saturday 5pm dinner. The reception is scheduled for 07 November 3 to 6pm with dinner at 6pm.

Martine Bresson, Mary Peppard, Su Sheedy, Pauline Conley, June Anderson, Rebecca Cowan and Alana Kapell.

Su and Martine getting it level.

Mary and Pauline positioning Martine's photograph.

Martine photographing the finished product.

the finished product!

Rebecca and June being technical.

17 artists with 2 or more pieces each.

June, "Hope Barb Carr is okay with this."

Pauline, "What do you think? here, there...?"

Millstreet Gallery OKWA GROUP SHOW posters

2010-09-27T16:40:00.003-04:00

The next show at The Mill Street Gallery/Cafe in scenic Sydenham, Ontario is a group exhibit by some of The Organization of Kingston Women Artists: June Anderson, Hanna Back, Wendy Cain,Barb Carr, Martine Bresson, Kathrine Christensen, Pauline Conley, Rebecca Cowan, Mary Crawford, Jane Derby, Suki Falkner, Maya Jagger, Sue Lyon, Erika Olson, Mary Peppard, Su Sheedy, Judy Springer, Lee-Ann Taras, J.T. Winik. October 05 to December 30. Reception Sunday, November 07, 3 to 6pm. More information and images on http://millstreetgallery.blogspot.com/

..........................................

Participants please bring your work to the Mill Street Gallery this coming Monday, October 04 before noon, ie. between 10am and 11:45. We begin to hang right at NOON.

Have all work labelled with your name, title, price and contact information. If anyone wants to purchase they have to contact you directly so we will put your phone number or email address on the info sheet.

We have found that it assists people to see your information if there is an image beside it. we will not be having labels on the walls, only numbers. the information will all be on one sheet. Therefore send me a digital image of your work to go with the contact information.

Wendy Cain at Douglas Library

2010-09-24T09:11:00.000-04:00

Wendy Cain at Douglas Library, Kingston October 13-December 23, 2010. "The Nature of Words" Group Exhibit.

Michele LaRose at The Wellington Street Gallery

2010-09-23T17:10:00.000-04:00

Michele LaRose at the Wellington Street Art Gallery (300 Wellington St., Kingston) October 7-24, 2010. Reception Sunday, October 17, 2-4pm

JT Winik at Oeno Gallery October 2 -November 5

2010-09-21T10:33:00.000-04:00

"Banquet of Consequences" opens at the Oeno Gallery in Picton October 02, 2010 and runs for 5 weeks. Opening reception 3-6 or maybe? 4-7pm.

JT Winik:

"In this body of work, the images of children function as metaphors for adult psychological and emotional states. ...the subjects are often blatantly confrontational. They are not innocent. There are times we must all do things we don’t want to do. Like the subjects in this series who must posture themselves as children, we all answer to expectations in our daily lives, yet … we may not like it and, at times, it shows. Although at their core, these paintings speak often of inner disturbances, they are rendered with a softness or humour. Creating them has allowed me to smile at the gravity of life. "

JT Winik "Party Hats" 24 x 22"

Artist Talks Series "Influence of Foreign Cultures on One's Work"

2010-09-21T10:01:00.004-04:00

This 2010 Artist Talks Series begins with JT Winik, Maya Jagger, and Suki Falkner discussing how their work has been influenced by foreign cultures. The talk is being held at The Mansion, 506 Princess Street, Kingston, at 7pm upstairs in a private room. Stop in early for a bite.

JT Winik, Pink Girl Spain 09

Maya Jagger "Twilight Song"

Suki Falkner

October 13 OKWA ARTIST TALKS with Suki Falkner, JT Winik, and Maya Jagger at the MANSION

OKWA members attending: mary peppard, sandra jass, jane derby, lee-ann taras, pauline conley, margarent, su sheedy, diane black , julie davidson, sally milne, june anderson, jane thelwell, peggy morley, alana kapell, jane derby, sandra jass, julie davidson smith, sharon thompson, diane black.

a few guests attended

Appreciation to Jane Derby for organizing the talk and Sandra Jass for her skill in digital projectors.

TOPIC. All three artists have spent a considerable amount of time living and working abroad. How has this influenced their work on subject matter, inspiration, challenges, and focus?

SUKI FALKNER: graduated from OCAD in 2007 and has a career as a lecturer in pyscho therapy. in 20's worked for CUSO in India for two years. She has returned to India numerous occasions since, 2008 most recently, for 3 months. She was researching modern indian art to see how it could inform her own art.

Suki struggles with the moral issues around appropriation of other people's culture: can a western artist find a way to represent aspects of a different culture in a way that does not demean the other or suggest a superiority of self and western culture.

Suki quoted Edward Wadie Said and his book, Orientalism 1978, the Western study of Eastern cultures. He was a University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a Palestinian-American literary theorist. Said drew on Foucault for his argument that knowledge is created within a discourse; it has to be spoken. It occurs within a discourse of unequal power relationships, often unconscious knowledge, not belief which assumes that the norm is centered in the self. Foucault's theory leads to a distrust of all representation and meanings not secure in way used to be. Edward Said applied this analysis to orientalism, a whole study of eastern cultures, in literary scholarship and art. The knowledge created in unequal relationship between European empires and colonized "others". The "other" in the case of Suki's art is India; in Said's view, the "other" was seen as being primitive and crude, amusing. The European self in contrast was active and sophisticated. These qualities were generalized across the cultures, later romanticized and made exotic. He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the Orient's languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not capable of composing its own narrative.

It was assumed by Westerners that they could represent the Orientals all by themselves without their own discourse.

In psychoanalysis this process would be called projection. Put an idea about a person into them and if you are dominant enough they begin to behave that way too, unconsciously.

Critics of Said said he was too extreme. Some criticism points out that all societies do this. We project these meanings onto the other person, generalizing.

Suki asks herself, "I am in the Western culture. What is my justification for this work? This theory has tremendous influence. Whether we use the above language as discourse, knowledge,,,we nonetheless know now that we have to find a way to be respectful. Picasso said, bad artists copy other cultures, real artists steal. He put african masks into his work without worrying whether he was appropriating or not. We are not in that position anymore. Why choose my subject matter at all? Ultimately i find that unanswerable. i love India, but that doesn't work as an answer. Psychologically I see that the age i was there gave me a tremendous sense of mastering my experience, making my way in this strange place, my first real adult decision. In reality though I can't answer why these things get so internalized. Being in india changed me, specifically in two ways: 1. I experienced a change in my relationship to colour. 1963 was more like the 50's and we were very mix and matchy still, sweater sets...cardigan same colour matched. We as a society were not daring in colours. Combinations like mauve and orange were not in our culture at large. The colours in India changed me. The indian people thought my colour wardrobe was boring, so I changed because of that. The other thing that changed was a kind of careless joy in the way that incongruities are made to go together in india. For instance, there was a little temple by the side of the road. On the side was garishly painted a toothpaste advertisement. This affected me later in feeling a certain freedom in composition, to accept incongruity and mistakes. I also was interested in politics and leaders. To this day many of my thoughts weave around india."

SUKI'S PROCESS: with these works. In my last year at OCAD, I had tried different works on india and they were awful. They felt superior and condescending. I realize now looking back that they were attempting to be ironic. i would choose an image of Nehru with an image of partition, implicate criticisms. India on the whole has wonderful critics and art theorists who are sophisticated but in general they are not trying to be ironic; they are much more unselfconscious. My attempt at irony was ill founded.

Beyond pictorial convention, I created shapes not rectangles or squares..i used one of them in this OCAD class and had another crack at india…I set a limit of only using some papers from india. A grid pattern emerged. This work was much more successful. It felt like a direction now.

When I graduated I asked myself, 'What will id o now?' The answer was to go back to India and renew my sense of the place.

I bought a very good camera. I looked at indian art in Delhi, Calcutta, Mombai and 2 tribal areas where they made wonderful traditional art. I also began to take photographs tentatively. I began with stray dogs. I liked them because they were in so much better shape then in the 60s. I didn't set out to do people but ended up with many portraits.

Kashmir landscapes, little stores on wheels, temples and cows, vehicles on the road, photographs of gods in temples, and more cows. At home I began to group them in my mind and in my computer.

I began to transfer the images to wax on 6 x6" square panels. I loved the way the wax received them, imperfectly, softened. Be aware how this does not represent reality. I boosted the colour in the computer a lot, cropped the images to fit the square format.

When arranging I didn't have a set plan. I began to do an arrangement with space, disrupted grids, incomplete grids emerged. I was still overwhelmed by the information in the whole. I then had an idea to put monochromatic pieces with an image, repetitive images, ie. the cows knit together...to allow one to approach it as an abstract work, i hoped. Colour was a compositional device...semi abstract work, not only representational.

I liked the wax and felt it meshed with the subject because of the impurity of the transfer; indistinct, soft shapes. The grid is a relentlessly organized pattern imposed in much modern abstract art. I felt it did not suit the subject so I made incomplete grids. I ask myself, does the process with the materials address some of these issues? Does it point to an awareness within the work itself to the issues of objectification and appropriation? Through the indistinctness of the image is it apparent that i am aware of not appropriating?

In response to a question concerning directing the viewers to a specific response, both JT Winik and Suki answered with polarized opinions. JT believes in her work the observer provides the story. Suki on the other hand said, " I don't want to give the viewer that much freedom. I want the viewer to LOVE India. That is what my hope is. There is a lot of ambiguity in the images. I am not presenting single images. I am presenting a tumult of images at a time. I want some sense of being overwhelmed by the place. i don't want the grid tightly packed and packaged, but at the same time it does provide some order to the chaos inherent in India."

___________________________

MAYA JAGGER is very inventive in making a living. She has been a chef, bus driver, computer programmer, and a teacher. After graduating from McArthur, she taught drug dealers' kids in Columbia and wrote a book about it. She has a full time teaching job in Deseronto and is a partner in a landscape business in the summer. When she was 49 she went to teach in Columbia and did appropriate other peoples' symbols without thought.

When I was 49 In Canada I was a mother and paid my bills and was very responsible and stuck close to home. The opposite of a daredevil, I went rafting on the Ottawa river and cliff jumping one summer with no friends to observe whether I succeeded or failed. The adrenaline rush kept me high for a month but it wasn't enough. I needed something more substantial and so when the opportunity came up to teach in Columbia i went for it. I taught in a private school for children of the wealthy. It seemed like a chance of a lifetime. i suffered culture shock and was enchanted by many things in Columbia, but the thing that really struck me when i started to travel was the physical geography. I took a wooden dugout canoe in the Amazon and travelled through primary rain forest and little grass huts. I was conscious of my position as a relatively wealthy westerner, but set all aside to experience the visual impact of what i saw and felt. The gold museum in Bogata impacted me and is the subject of this work. Becoming familiar in a small way with pre-Columbian art, gold work and shamanism, (Reichel Dolmatoff's book where he discovered these amazing images so powerful for me) all spoke to me on an non-intellectual level. The art i did as a result is very intuitive and uncalculating and very unlike my computer background. My degree was in religious studies and in Columbia I saw how a different culture demonstrates its concepts about transcendence and transformation.

I used oil pastels as a highly intuitive response to the culture of gold and the myths. Gold has no monetary value in their culture. It is a spiritual substance and indestructible. The culture regarded it as a symbol of eternity. Goldmsiths and shamans are considered connected to otherworldly planes. Many cultures have a cosmology of heaven, earth and underworld. The tree of life is also found in many cultures.i just immersed myself in the stories and started working on paper with oil pastel, scraping a lot, trying to push the pastel to find out what i could do with it, not a typical way to use medium, collage and layering. The subject matter is about layers of meaning and i tried to incorporate technique and meaning in the same way. All of the paintings were done when i got back so they sat with me a long time. i would dream a lot with subconscious stuff coming up. The birdman, symbol of the shaman, metamorphosis..a bird man can fly, die and be reborn.

The place was very mountainous. I was in a city in the Andes. i used to do a series about horizons where the earth meets the sky, traditional looking landscapes in oil paint. In columbia the sky was always blocked by the mountains and felt closed in, claustrophobic. The sun is considered sacred, the father of gold. They would put gold out to be touched by the sun. Shamanic flight can be brought on by meditation or hallucinogens..the shaman leaves his body and is transformed. They used snakes and frogs, animals that had different stages and transformed. i liked the use of intense colour. they used applique of cotton and hand embroidered molas, a traditional art form, patterning and intense colour use and semi abstract format which all influenced me.

Maya commented that she did not like the work she did in Columbia. Three years later, back in Canada the work emerged. It needed time to percolate.

When i left I was bored with Ontario. I went to probably the second most dangerous city in world with10,000 murders a year in a city of three million. I was vibrating fast the whole time. It was visually intense with unbelievably brilliant colours, eternal spring. The juxtaposition of incredible physical beauty and incredible fear: i got robbed at knife point. Coming back to Ontario, i kissed the ground. All the things we think are boing I was so happy to be here. No one was going to abduct me here. You switch gears and feel like a totally different person. You are changed so much by that shift. We become a blank canvas ourselves,

drawn to go somewhere 'other'. It gives you this new raw experience, not just intellectual. It goes way deeper than that.

_______________

JT WINIK is an international artist, full time painter, earns her living by her art. past director of modern fuel gallery. 1996 she did an art residency in Spain and has returned to Europe every year since for half a year. She is currently showing at the Oeno gallery in Picton. JT is entering new phase of photography. "I occasionally work from real people but most times things come from my imagination. I am sure they are inspired from things that are happening at the time. The past couple of years I have been working with photographs that have not been exhibited. In the past photographs were stepping stones to paintings. These photographs now exist on their own. There is a correlation between my photographs and paintings, both seeking the darker side of things. Happy children do not interest me, nor does 'doing pretty'. "

I believe in my work that it is always the observer who lends the work its story. I give a banal title like "girl with braids" but it is the observer who provides the story. In one photo although the child is 7 or 8 she could almost be 30 by the pain, confusion in her face, an adult expression.

i like the composition and silliness of costumes.These are mainly undoctored photos.

i like the interaction of the figures, all together but not interacting with each other...very surreal.

These photographs represent another element of Spanish society, 'samana santa', holy week of easter. During the day or evening of easter week there is a street procession where they carry long candles about a foot long throughout the streets; the whole village comes out. People carry big effigies of Christ or Mary through the streets. I capture the statues with a slow shutter speed to create distortion and a sense of movement to make the statues come alive.

This final series deals with looking at my environment in an abstract way. Usually these kinds of things don't interest me, but i got interested in patterns in streets. The whole village is basically made of cement. They run lines down it to guide the water in a particular direction. Everything is organic; there are no straight lines. i like the abstraction of it. These could be stepping stones to paintings, but why paint it because it is right there already in the photo.

___________________

Look for the next talk at the Mansion in the 3rd wk in January with a theme of the evolution of one's work: how your work has shifted through time. (Sharon Thompson and Sally Milne.)

Reception Sunday, September 19 at Mill Street Gallery

2010-09-14T16:57:00.000-04:00

Lori Richards and Jane Colden's Reception is this Sunday at the Mill Street Gallery in Sydenham from 1 to 3pm. More information on the blog.

Changes

2010-09-10T16:43:00.000-04:00

Farewell Michele LaRose, thanks for your clarity and marvellous organizational skills. And thank you too to Mary Peppard, probably OKWA board's most enduring (and endearing?) member! for stepping up and stepping into the presidential shoes. Lots of changes are stirring in the OKWA community. More to be revealed shortly.

upcoming solo exhibit

2010-09-09T15:02:00.002-04:00

Opening Reception at Terence Robert Gallery, Ottawa

Nov 12th, 2010

more detail to follow..once my comfort level increases with blogging!

"David and Goliath" in today's art scene

2010-09-08T22:01:00.002-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcGTtkPHag I just saw this video. Somewhat behind the times since it was filmed in 2008! I was looking up Damien Hirst who is the richest artist in the world to date. living artist that is. and the "funny" relationship he had with a graffitti artitst named CarTrain. It reminded me so much of a friend of mine (an x OKWA member) who hung and photographed her work surreptitiously in the bathroom of a well known public art gallery, just to be able to say her work was in there (as a private gag).

There are some big issues to look at here. The world's richest living artist, Damien Hirst, suing a 16 yr old graffiti artist for plagarizing Hirst's skull installation. Damien being a radical youth himself to start with, becoming the "established artist" and the butt of a young alternative artist. It's worth the experience to follow some of the videos, especially the interview with CarTrain and his explanation of the event.

How to Post a Comment

2010-09-08T02:58:00.001-04:00

at the bottom of each article is a line saying "posted by ...at TIME ...comments and a little yellow pencil.

to comment just click on the word "comment" in front of the little pencil and a box will open up for you to type a comment into.

Then click the PUBLISH POST orange button at the bottom.

Reading Art

2010-09-07T18:08:00.002-04:00

Inspired by the reading list Sarindar Dhaliwal is using for teaching her OCAD class here are 2 books for a view of the contemporary art scene (ak):

1. Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton $20 at chapters on-line (available as e-book) 2 available at CHAPTERS Kingston in store.

"The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture."

2.The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The curious Economics of Contemporary Art

by Don Thompson NOW ON SALE AT CHAPTERS KINGSTON 70% off for $6.99 , 7 available.

"The $12 Million Stuffed Shark delves into the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world - artists, dealers, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. If it's true - as so often said - that 85 percent of new contemporary art is bad, why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? The $12 Million Stuffed Shark explores money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work of art valuable while others are ignored.

Thompson uses economic concepts to explain the unique practices employed, to great success, in the international contemporary art market. He discusses branding and marketing and how various strategies are tailored to a wealthy clientele, driving a "must-have" culture. Drawing on exclusive interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a surprising journey of discovery."

"You don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art."

2010-09-06T12:36:00.002-04:00

Sarindar Dhaliwal was visiting me recently and talking about some art topics she will be bringing up in her classes at OCAD this fall. She had just watched a documentary on The Vogels. Tomorrow I will present a couple of interesting books she suggests for understanding the contemporary art scene. ak

"On the odd chance that you don’t know who the Vogels are, they built an extraordinary collection of minimalist and conceptual art while working as a librarian and postman. It took three months and five 40ft lorries to pack up and remove more than 2,500 pieces from their tiny apartment: priceless work by Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Richard Long, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and Richard Tuttle, among others. Only three works remained in situ, because they were site specific or too fragile to move (the National Gallery has since been back to collect one of these, a piece made out of yoghurt).

Herb and Dorothy Vogel "You would never think of it but they are one of the famous art collectors in New York."

http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2009/10/13/the-vogels-documentary-airs/

"I have never in my 40 years of museum work met anyone with the kind of income level the Vogels had, putting together a collection of that dimension and that comprehensiveness and of that quality. "

Art Blogs to look at

2010-09-05T17:26:00.002-04:00

Wikipedia has a long list of art blogs to check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_blog

For instance:

1. Culture Girl http://www.artsjournal.com/blogs.php

Lee Rosenbaum, a cultural journalist, writes frequently for the 'Wall Street Journal,and is a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). She has also published several Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

2. http://www.the-dump.net/

The Dump by Maurice Benayoun a new-media artist based in Paris who has won numerous awards for his work. His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale art installations and interactive exhibitions. The Dump... "is a collection of his ideas. Hundreds of ideas. “Everyone can come and take them and do them if they want". In December 2008 "Benayoun submitted “The Dump” as his PhD thesis and became, arguably, the first artist to use a blog to qualify for a doctorate degree".

3. For all those exploring ENCAUSTIC: Joanne Mattera's blog

http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/

4. Two Coats of Paint
Maintained by artist/writer Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint is a daily digest of reviews, commentary, and background information about painting and related subjects. Butler, an art professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, also writes for The Brooklyn Rail and The American Prospect.

"I created Two Coats of Paint in 2007 to share reviews, commentary, news, and background information about painting and related subjects. Since then, maintaining Two Coats has become an integral part of my art practice. In March 2010 Two Coats won a Mindshare Award for art blog excellence.