Tag Archives: Catherine Owen

Exhibition is installed … Opening Tomorrow!

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I’ve had a great week in Toronto so far.

The exhibition installation has gone really smoothly, and Rochelle and Jessica have been so great to work with! It’s been delightful getting to know them, and working in the gallery.
It’s a really nice space, and it’s been really exciting to see the show take shape.
SO! Tomorrow’s the big day …
21st Century Nesting Practices opens Friday, February 1, at 7 pm.
I thought I’d give everyone a little sneak peek – I know there are some people out in the wide world that wanted to see the work, but weren’t able to make the trek to Toronto to do it …
a view of some of the work in the gallery ...

a view of some of the work in the gallery …

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some of the photographs: digital prints, archival, on 100% cotton paper

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Installation view of the video projection …

It’s a diverse show: photographs, gel transfers on birch panel, drawings, sculpture, video, and some of the limited-edition chapbooks that Catherine Owen and I created, called NEST {types} … showing some newly-made work here too … part of the ongoing development of this project that had its start during my residency at Harcourt House. Good to see this body of work grow and shift; I still learn something new from it every day … and find out a more about what I want to say too. The adventure continues …
Hope to see some of you tomorrow!

A word or two from Catalysts …

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A video clip (courtesy Wolsak & Wynn) of our reading from Catalysts in Toronto this past spring.

 

 

Nice to be able to see this from the ‘other side’ … and to remember how great it felt to be bringing the Archives of Absence project out into the world in yet another way.

If anyone’s interested in having these words on their very own bookshelves, contact me … .

 

Artist Books, Bound for Glory …

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I’ve had a lovely invitation.

There’s an exhibition of handmade, artists’, and altered books opening next week at the Nina Haggerty Centre here in Edmonton, and NEST {types} will be part of the show.

I’m really delighted that the book will be in this exhibition!

… I have a serious weak spot for work of this nature, and always have. There’s something so satisfying about the sensual experiencing of books as objects; it’s all about the small things that make them so special. The feel and smell of a particular paper, the textures and colours of the materials used to bind it and ornament it. Altered and artists’ books are even more fascinating to me: individual rabbit holes of making and re-visioning an object that has (up until recently) been a large & fundamental part of our lives.

And perhaps that’s the other thing that makes work like this – and working like this, in this form in particular – so interesting and satisfying to me. The idea of the book, and it’s reality as a ‘given thing’ in our world is much less ‘given’ than it was even 10 years ago, particularly in Canada. Small independent presses are closing, independent bookstores are closing … and with them, places where works like this that explore conveying ideas in some unique way can have a platform.  But – and this is an important ‘but’ – there are still many place and people who appreciate the artistry that goes into books of all kinds.

And that, to me, is a happy thing!

Books make us stop for a moment – slow down – foster sensory input in different ways. Books are tactile, olfactory, visual … sensual delights that reward us over and over again if we take but a moment to unplug and slow down, just a little.

So, if you’re in the Edmonton, Alberta area – pop by the Nina Haggerty Centre (a great organization that does great things for the community in Edmonton) to see Bound for Glory, and NEST {types} … and enjoy a moment or two with all the books in the exhibition.

Books! Printed, Collated and Bound!

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I’ve always been a sucker for paper, pens, letterpress … all the delightful things that keep reading and writing an immediate and tactile experience. I’m a bit of a Luddite or a throwback I guess, but there is something utterly irreplaceable and so very delicious about hand writing a letter with a fountain pen … holding and reading a real book, and smelling the fresh ink-and-paper smell when it’s opened for the first time.

So really, it should be no surprise at all for me to discover that I adore bookbinding.

I have had the honour and pleasure to collaborate with poet Catherine Owen for several years now (her blog is here – and well worth a read!); this latest incarnation of our work together is a chapbook, revolving around – you guessed it – nests. Catherine has written some beautiful nest poems over the last year; her wondrous words and my images (based on the nest forms she used in the poems) come together here.

This little volume with be available for purchase October 18th, at the Opening Reception of NEST, my Residency exhibition at Harcourt House. I was going to wait a bit to show the world  - but I’m really pleased and excited by the results, so it’s Preview Time!

Some images of  the chapbook, NEST {types} :

Seven Limited Edition, hand carved and pulled block prints of Nests will be in the chapbook …

… how I spent my Sunday … collating pages before binding the book. Good thing we’ve got a large dining table!

… and the finished product! 10″ x 8.5″, text stock is 80% wheat straw; block prints are on rice paper; 65 lb FSC certified cover stock. Bound with unbleached linen cord. 50 numbered copies.

I’m happy with the way the entire project turned out – and looking forward to doing more in this vein over the coming years.

This particular project has been both a fitting close and an opening out: I am a little less than a month away from the exhibition of NEST and the end of that year-long process. That reality also marks  an entry into the next phase in the project (nope it’s not over yet!!), in which I will develop more visual work, but also turn my attention to writing, and to working with Catherine further to see what evolves in this body of work.

Looking forward, always, to the adventure …

Archives … exhibition reception this Saturday

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In amongst all the other things going on just now, I have a small exhibition up in the Naess Gallery at the Paint Spot. It’s a nice little space, and an ideal size to show the Archives of Absence work as it has evolved since its initial birthing into the world at the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2011.

Some new work in the mix, and I’m really happy with how they are hanging together with the original pieces in the series.

So, if you’re looking for a way to spend a little time this Saturday (September 15), and you’re in Edmonton, drop by the reception for Archives of Absence at the Naess Gallery – 10032 – 81 Avenue. I’ll be there from 2 – 4 pm, and there will be coffee, tea, and nibblies.

 

Much Afoot …

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Well, it’s been very  - very – busy in the studio lately!

Seems as though I’m actually making some headway though, so that’s a good thing … the last push before the exhibition in October continues, with some interesting related-but-slightly-tangential-to-the-moment projects along the way, for good measure (just in case I felt like I needed more work to keep me busy … sheesh).

The sculptural pieces I want to include in the Residency exhibition in October are nearing completion (phew~!!), and I am really quite happy with the results as they stand just now. Some tweaking and fine tuning to still do, but overall, things have worked out as I wanted and expected them to (no small sigh of relief there).

I have also been writing, and working on writing-related things … since October 3, 2011, I have been collaborating with Catherine Owen on a sustained project related directly to the work I’ve been doing in the studio: we have been co-writing a poem … and we just finished it! The piece is 50o lines long … yup, TWO zeroes there … 250 lines each, alternating, for almost a year. The idea for this project came from Catherine’s discovery that it can take up to 500 trips for a bird to find the material it needs to complete a nest. So, from this “500 lines about Childhood –  or  - It Can Take One Bird Up to 500 Trips to Complete a Nest” was born. It is by turns funny, quirky, eccentric, painful … all the things childhood is and can be – and has been – for both of us. An incredibly powerful experience to write this with Cath, and I am very grateful to her for suggesting it – and for being such a great support and inspiration throughout.  The work in its entirety will be incorporated into a sculpture I am presenting next month.  Images to follow … just not yet!

I’ve also been working with Catherine on another poetry project that will see the light of day at the October exhibition of NEST – we are producing a chapbook of Catherine’s poems and my block prints! NEST {types} is the title of this little book, and it includes a selection of nest poems written by Catherine Owen, and a limited edition series of hand carved block prints of different nest types created by yours truly. I am really excited about this chapbook – both  the writing and the prints – and am having a delightful time putting it all together.

Some pictures  - not the best – but to give you a hint of what’s in store when it all comes together:

The cover of the Chapbook, featuring a block print of a magpie nest, created and photographed for the book

The set of seven block prints that will accompany the nest poems. The nests you see represented here are the following Birds: Eagle, Blackbird, Grosbeak, Marsh Wren, European Bee Eater, and Weaver.

 

Carving the blocks for this project was a wondrous experience for me – a lovely combination of the things I love best: drawing, sculpture, and printing (which I haven’t done in any concerted way since printshop class in high school – which I loved!). And to be honest, I just love working with my hands – the making of doing this was so incredibly satisfying. And at the end of the day, being able to see this set of 350 prints (7 prints, 50 copies of the chapbook being created), finished and ready to be bound into the chapbook, was one of the most satisfying moments I think I’ve ever had.

More to come … soon!

 

Curiosities, Sketching with Words – AND – Catalysts, Part 2 … on the road!

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Feel like I’ve been flying lately … not flying dreams, unfortunately!

So much going on:

- Had a fantastic time with Shawna Lemay co-faciliating the Sketching with Words workshop at Harcourt House for the Edmonton Poetry Festival last weekend! It was an amazing afternoon of writing and drawing and thinking and talking about all the connections between those lines on the page: the ones we write and the ones we draw, both to capture wheat we experience of the world as we know it. I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Shawna, and such a great group of eager, talented people!

- Almost finished a mixed media assemblage for the fast& dirty collective’s upcoming po-up exhibition called Curiosities which will be coming to Edmonton streets the first weekend in June …

The curators have this to say about the project:

Curiosities: a fast & dirty project is an exploration of the politics of furniture. The project is a collaboration between five Edmonton curators: Jennifer Rae Forsyth, Robert Harpin, Kristen Hutchinson, Carolyn Jervis, and Kyla Tichkowsky and twenty artists: Matt Arrigo, Jeff Bai, Marnie Blair, Blair Brennan, Raylene Campbell, Sherri Chaba, Olivia Chow, Jennifer Rae Forsyth, Robert Harpin, Nickelas Johnson, Kristen Hutchinson, Adriean Koleric, Sydney Lancaster, Dawn Saunders Dahl, Sergio Serrano, Tyler Sherard, Alex Stewart, Claire Uhlick, and Ryan Wolters. Each curator has chosen a chest of drawers to accommodate artworks based on five different themes: intimacy, line, collections, landscape, and family. Each artist will be given a single drawer from one of these dressers to create a site-specific artwork.

Curiosities will be exhibited in a rental van from June 1-June 3 2012 in three different locations in Edmonton. The project asks artists and viewers to think about each dresser as a cabinet of curiosities and to consider each drawer as a small laboratory for investigation and experimentation. Drawers are intensely private spaces; they contain everything from the most precious, personal objects to everyday detritus that we just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of. After all, who knows what’s really hidden underneath that neatly folded sweater?

... and more to come, in short order!

I fly to Toronto tomorrow for a couple of dates on the next leg of the Catalysts tour (and then am back east for a couple of weeks mid May)… so the last couple of weeks (since the Edmonton launch), has been a hurry-up-go-faster-get-stuff-DONE time … hence my brevity and silence here.

The launch in Edmonton went well – a nice crowd, some lovely familiar faces that I hadn’t seen in a while, and some new ones, which is always a treat. So amazing to actually see the book, for real … paper, cover, pages, text … words!! Words we wrote. Wow. Not sure I’ll ever get used to that – which is a great thing, I think.

So … the next leg looks like this:

May 1st – Toronto @ the Magpie (831 Dundas Street W) with Oana A, Paul Vermeersch and Moez Surani. Catherine will be reading solo, and  we will read together as well, excerpts from our co-written essay.

May 2nd -Toronto @ Pivot Reading Series at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street W.) Catherine Owen with Gabe Foreman, Steven Price & Claire Tacon. I’ll be there too :).

- I head back to Edmonton after this – to do a talk on another project  I’m developing with Marian Switzer called YORK, for the Edmonton Arts Council Transitory Art Program  …

One of the rooms in the (now demolished) York hotel ...

… but Catherine keeps travelling and taking us into the world. She will be reading:

May 3rd – Hamilton @ Victoria Park/The Staircase Theatre! With John Terpstra as well as TO authors listed above!

May 5th – St Catharines w/Gregory Betts

May 8th – Ottawa @Tree with guests

May 17th – Vancouver @Robson Reading Series with Waubgeshig Rice (Midnight Sweatlodge)

May 25th – Victoria @ Planet Earth with guests.

So … now, to finish packing, panic that I’ve forgotten something crucial at least three times … and board that flight in the morning!

More news to follow – not doubt!

Markers

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Midnight brought the first real Spring rain to my corner of the world. This seems utterly fitting: rain that means new growing things, melting of the last snows, the washing clean of everything to start over. This is new, and old at once. Old in the way that each wheel’s turn reminds us that it has been this way for a very long time – and we are a part of that (if we choose to pay attention). New in the shape and character of this particular rain: its nature contradicts experience of this place, raises questions, reminds of other times and places.

Prairie born and raised – and now marking my first half-century on this day – I know what Spring Rain is in this place (or should be): coming out of nowhere, cloudburst, pummelling and drenching everything … and gone before I had time to get out the rain gear, leaving everything chilled and soaked to the bone and wondering what just happened.

But this rain isn’t like that.

This rain is steady, softly insistent and insidious. The stuff of coastal climes, oceanside, northern rain forest. The kind of rain that would have me hunting massive beds of moss in Goldstream Park on Vancouver Island, or walking the shore of Point Pleasant Park or the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Such a rain should make me wistful – nostalgic even – for these places that I love so much, that are part of the beating in my blood. But today … for some reason, today this rain makes me feel forward not back: quiet anticipation, the slow building of excitement for what will come, in every way.

Already, the shift has begun – the first marker of change: the buds on the May tree outside my house have burst open overnight to reveal the crisp green points of leaves. This first hesitant dusting will open over the next few days, proclaiming colour and promising scent from blossoms still latent, not yet formed.

Building things, growing things, changing: it feels as though these states, the active modes of being, are the shape of my life and work. What has lead to this moment in time … and what will shape the days to come.

And so much coming into being, and so soon:

The Catalysts Launch is this Sunday, April 15… and the books are coming by courier to my door today! Can’t wait to see them, and share that moment with my friend and collaborator Catherine, and then send the work out into the world with her.

This volume contains an essay co-written by yours truly!
This event is taking place in Edmonton, AB, Canada. Hope to see you there!

The Poetry Festival is coming soon, and with it the Sketching with Words workshop – which will be great fun to facilitate with Shawna Lemay.

Then Toronto, to Launch Catalysts there May 1 & 2.

I’m working on a little sculptural installation for the Fast & Dirty Collective too, for their show Curiosities, which will travel to various places in Edmonton on the weekend of May 11- 13.

And in between times, the work on NEST continues, as does work for on a particular aspect of the project in advance of the Harcourt House Open Studio event on June 21st.

It looks like a to-do list … but what I am really doing is counting blessings today, for all that I am doing, and for all of the magnificent people in my life that inspire me and make it all possible. A remarkable, humbling thing, this life.

The Love Affair Else-where, Part II: Humans and Nests

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The specific spark for the body of work I am developing over the course of my Residency at Harcourt House dates back well over a year now, to two conversations I had in quick succession, with two of my favourite poets: Catherine Owen and Jannie Edwards. Turns out, both of them had been re-reading Gaston Bachelard’s amazing work The Poetics of Space … and I had been reading some of Roger-Pol Droit‘s delightful explorations of phenomenology in his books How are Things? and 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life. I had let Bachelard’s book slip from my awareness a bit, and so after great talks with Cath and Jannie, I dug into The Poetics of Space once more, after a many-years absence. The reward was great and immediate – as it had been the first time I read his words.

Bachelard has this to say about nests:

A nest, like any other image of rest and quiet, is immediately associated with the image of a simple house.

And further:

A nest-house is never young … . For not only do we come back to it, but we dream of coming back to it, the way a bird comes back to its nest, or a lamb to the fold. This sign of return marks an infinite number of daydreams, for the reason that human returning takes place in the great rhythm of human life, a rhythm that reaches back across the years, and through the dream, combats all absence.

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1994,pp.98-99)

 So here we are at the intersection of the object, memory, emotion, and space: the confluence of the human beings’ relationship to things. But there’s more to this than meets the eye, if for no other reason than this is a human response to a non-human structure. A certain amount of species-centric thinking here, to be sure, but this is a discussion of human responses and ideas, after all.

And there’s no small set of contradictions in the human response to the bird nest – the ambivalence and ambiguity of which hooked me immediately – and simply required that I do something with it. Because, as Bachelard points out quite clearly, a “nest – and this we understand right away – is a precarious thing, and yet it sets us to daydreaming of security. Why does this obvious precariousness not arrest daydreams of this kind? (pp. 102-103)

Two nests I found within days of each other this past autumn. Hardly representative of the haven and security we seek.

There’s so much in the nest-as-object that screams insecurity, loss (potential or real), absence, ephemerality. And yet … and yet. They are also objects emblematic of ingenuity (be it hard-wired genetically or not), of a certain stick-with-it-ness in the face of any number of possible negative outcomes. Perhaps it is these things to which we respond so strongly. The idea of endurance, and the security that it brings … the longevity of memory that allows room for a return or two; the capacity to “use the available materials” (my thanks here to poet Louise Gluck) to craft a place that says “safe” that says “haven” … against all odds.