Tag: community

Up from Under …

The dearth of posts here of late has been due in large part to being a bit (ok, a lot) snowed with work … the usual “I need to clone myself” thing I get into on occasion. In this particular instance, it’s been a combination of being out of the studio due to travel, coupled with several projects coming due all at once. It’s been a very busy, hectic spring any which way I look at it … Catalysts coming out and the launch here and trip to Toronto for that, the talk to the Dirt City, Dream City group of artists, the Curiosities exhibition work, dropping work at my Calgary gallery for a group show that opens at the end of June, grant writing, ongoing work for the Residency … and of course there’s always so much more that goes on ‘behind the scenes’ – reading, research, and (gee, who know??) life-related things like spending a bit of time with family and friends, the more prosaic things like laundry and (very) occasional sleep.

The  real push for the last three weeks or so has been associated with the upcoming  annual Harcourt House Member’s Show and Open House. This opening and events related to it coincide with the start of the 10-day-long Works Art & Design Festival here in Edmonton.

The Harcourt House event is on June 21st:

Once a year, Harcourt House Artist Run Centre invites its diverse membership to exhibit in this non-juried, salon-style exhibition, which always boasts a fabulously eclectic range of art and disciplines. Photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, mixed and new media; this is the gallery where you can see it all, and show your support by purchasing that perfect piece of original artwork.
Opening night:
Open Studios
Free Model Session
Unveiling of the 2012 Annex Mural plan
2011/2012 Artist in Residence
Gel Transfer Demo
AIR “Meet and Greet”
A special surprise on the Annex… Its a bird, its a plane, its… its….
Front Yard BBQ and Beer Gardens: Cash only, 6:30 – 10pm
In the Annex Building: Annual Naked Show Exhibition
In the Harcourt House Gallery: Annual Membership Exhibition

I will be throwing my studio doors open for the evening, and inviting people in to see the work so far; I’ll be doing a demonstration of gel-transfer printmaking, and I have some new mixed media assemblage work in the Member’s Show in the main gallery at Harcourt House as well.

I have been working rather furiously on one component of the NEST project that will be launched on the 21st … photos to come, once the work is up and the event on the 21st takes place!

It’s been an exciting time  – tiring, but worth every second of lost sleep.

I hope to see some of you there on the 21st!~

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Curiosities, part 2

Really enjoyed popping in and visiting with everyone over the June  1 – 3 weekend at the various locations in which Curiosities was exhibited.  There was some really great work in the show – I was quite blown away by some of it!

I am still in the process of … well, processing all the photos I took of the work that weekend … so in a little while, there will be a ‘part 3’ post with a selection of those pictures. There’s about 100 photos to go through and edit, so bear with me – thanks for your patience.

In the mean time – I do have a couple of images of the work I made for this exhibition, so I thought I’d share them with you now … The theme of the dresser I was curated into was ‘landscape’ …

A ‘top-down’ view of the dresser drawer, showing the placement of various found and made objects.

Yes, that really is a bird’s wing mounted to the dresser wall …

A view of the drawer interior, showing some of the found and made objects added to the space; the drawer is lined with old topographic maps of the Rocky Mountains

I was really quite pleased that one of the maps I was using was titled “Surprise Lake” … seemed only appropriate to snare that first word for the piece, since part of the focus of the project as a whole was the idea of the secret and the hidden … the surprises one finds in the bottom drawer of an old dresser (which – happily – was the drawer curator Kristen Hutchinson had me work with!)

An shot of the drawer interior, showing the hand mounted on the wall, holding a tiny bird’s nest. The hand is my own, cast in raw beeswax.

Casting my own hand for this had its own set of challenges! It seemed a rather “Mr. Bean tempts the fates” thing to do on my own … but fortunately there were no accidents or misadventures while I had my hand stuck in a container full of alginate!

This was a really fun and challenging little project, and I am very glad I was asked to participate in it.  Home-grown initiatives like this that take contemporary work out of the ‘white cube’ and into the street are really important.

More thoughts on the exhibition soon … well past my bedtime.

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Curiosities

I am very excited about an exhibition coming up in Edmonton this weekend, curated by the fast & dirty collective:

Design: Alex Stewart

I will have two pieces in this moving/movable art feast: I have the entire bottom drawer of Kristen Hutchinson’s dresser, and I’ve also contributed a little curiosity to a collaborative installation in the bottom drawer of Carolyn Jervis’ dresser.

Very much looking forward to seeing the other work in this creative feast!

Image: Alex Stewart

There are a great many things I like about this project as a whole: the idea of bringing the work out of the gallery and into the street, for one. Another is the sense of play and imagination inherent in the notion of finding art in a dresser drawer: these are conventionally private spaces, places where people keep more than just clothing … there are secrets and stories hidden behind the facade.

Hoping to get some photos of the event and the work … and hope to see lots of people too!

Check out the Latitude 53 blog for additional thoughts. There’s also a Facebook page.

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Catalysts

Well, it’s almost here: the tour for Catalysts is coming next month!

I have had the pleasure and honour of collaborating with poet/musician/photographer/mayhem-maker Catherine Owen for a number of years now, and am delighted to see the fruits of this ongoing labour take yet another form. Catalysts: Confrontations with the Muse is a collection of essays and prose memoirs, published this spring by Wolsak & Wynn … and most happily for me, the two of us have co-written an essay included in this collection of her work!

“Engaging Space: Collaborations on the Berm with Sydney Lancaster” is a collaborative essay discussing our several-years work (and ongoing process with) the Archives of Absence Project that Catherine and I officially launched April 2011 at the Edmonton Poetry Festival. What makes this all the more exciting for me personally is that visual art from the Archives of Absence project is on the cover of the book. It’s quite amazing to see all these intersections  play out tangibly … to see the very real connections between the writing and the art come together in new ways.

The cover of the new book, showing a series of gel transfer prints I created from photographs taken by both of us for Archives of Absence

I’m also extremely excited about the upcoming tour for this book. We will be launching Catalysts in Edmonton AB at Latitude 53 on April 15, and then it’s ‘leaving on a jet plane’ time a couple of weeks later, to join the fray in Toronto and Hamilton!

Catalysts tour dates look like this so far:

April 15th – Edmonton @ Latitude 53 (10248 – 106 St) w/ Mark McCawley & musician Dale Ladouceur w/special appearance/reading/visuals by Sydney Lancaster

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. Sydney Lancaster in attendance.

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.

All in all, a good way to greet the Spring – with the birthing of new projects into the world.

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The Speed of Life

One of the most interesting things about living on the Prairies is the way in which we – collectively – respond to the shift in seasons. As the world outside my window slowly wakes up from winter sleep, the realm of human activity (and creative activity in particular) seems to have gone into overdrive, overnight. So many new projects appearing, new exhibitions opening … it seems we take celebrating the coming thaw very seriously out here! NOT a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it does make for a hectic pace.

Or perhaps it’s just me, becoming conscious of the number of things to be accomplished in the calendar over the next few months … likely a bit of both! Still, it is good to feel the blood moving, be surrounded by things to see and do … to really get going now that winter seems to be leaving us behind for another turn of the wheel.

To that end – I’m happy to say that I spent a lovely evening last week at the opening of Love Letters to Feminism at The Works International Visual Arts Society. LLTF is an international mail art project curated by Carolyn Jervis; Carolyn started the project in 2009, and this first iteration was exhibited through the Women’s Studies program at the University of Alberta. Since then, it’s traveled to Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa … and has gathered submissions from artists and writers from all over the world.

Exhibition View, Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton

Exhibition View, Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton

One of the best things about this project, to my mind, is the dynamic nature of the entire thing: each piece is part of an ongoing dialogue, and the exhibition is a conversation in progress which will continue to grow and change as more work is added. It’s not about having answers, it’s about asking questions of ourselves and of the cultures in which we all continue to find our way in and through.

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Kristen Hutchinson

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Kristen Hutchinson

It’s been an interesting personal journey too: I submitted my first piece for this show in 2009, when I was living in Halifax for a year, and the second work I did was submitted for this particular iteration of the exhibition three years later. In many respects, the two ‘letters’ couldn’t be more different from one another, including tone and approach to the subject.

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My first letter, 2009
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My second letter, 2012

That in itself has been an incredibly valuable thing to me as an artist – to see the concrete manifestation of a shift in perspective through my work. To be faced with such a tangible marker of change – at such a moment of transition in the year – seems fitting: it’s a clear reminder that both the work and the individual are always in process. The only constant is transformation, is change … and hopefully growth.

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Marian Switzer

This ever-changing body of work reminds me that there are innumerable ways to explore any subject, that it is in the exploration and the manifestation of those ideas that we discover not ‘the answer’ … but that there are only answers: in the ongoing work of really seeing as many sides of a subject as possible, and digging into each one in turn to find out what remains to be discovered. There is always more.

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Shifting gears for a few days …

I spent a lovely three days out in Victoria BC this past week/end, working with my friend and collaborator Catherine Owen. This was a great time on many levels:

  • First, Catherine and I have been collaborating for several years, and so there is a subtle rhythm of understanding between us in relation to our work; we work in similar ways, share a great many of the same theoretical and philosophical concerns, so those aspects of working together are ‘understood’ in a sense – and we can just get on to the business of doing and making. It was deeply satisfying to discover that although we have been working on NEST in two (mostly) discrete bodies of work up to this point, we are captivated by the same issues and ideas overall, so that when we eventually begin bringing the two halves together, there will already be a solid and consistent framework in place. Very exciting to see how much has developed already – and how much more we can both do with this! So far: at least 50 MS pages, over 400 photographs, 50 drawings, 30 gel transfer prints (in progress), and several sculptures in the works. Not bad, so far.
  • Second, this little trip was a welcome change of context. I find it’s terribly important to get some physical distance from a project now and again. The separation in space and time allows for renewed vision, critical assessment, and the opportunity to return to the work at hand with fresh eyes and mind. I have been missing the Ocean greatly – being landlocked on the Prairie has that disadvantage! I found being out on the shore faced with that immensity again, and the powerful persistence of the tide and crashing waves allowed a clarity and simplicity of thought – a cleaning house, as it were.

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  • Third, it was really interesting to explore elements of the NEST project in a completely different environment. Finding and understanding nests here in Edmonton is one thing for me, based on many years here, my understanding and familiarity with the landscape and its details … but to be an active seeker in another urban space, with a completely different climate, was quite another. This was an excellent object-lesson in itself regarding the necessity of both patience and active seeing. We found only a few nests in our various jaunts, and although time limitations had a great deal to do with that, I cannot ignore the reality that I don’t know the land and its denizens out there as I do here. Tough to find things when you don’t really know where to look, beyond the obvious.

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We also had some adventures! Catherine had also arranged some work with photographer Paul Saturley, which resulted in a great shoot on China Beach … in the pouring rain. Of course. I was both pleased and honoured to be a part of that work – schlepper, umbrella and flash holder, and model tormentor.

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So, I’m back here – and back in the studio … and feeling excited and energized by the work at hand. Oh, and looking forward to spring. Just sayin’.

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Working in Community

One of the really terrific things about the artistic community in this city (and beyond!) is its willingness to support and engage with the work of its members. I feel a deep and ongoing gratitude for this – making art in such an environment allows individuals (and their creative practice) to thrive, to be supported, and to gain valuable feedback and insight into their work on an ongoing basis.

A little while ago, I posted a request for materials for a series of sculptures I will be creating as part of the NEST project for my Residency. To my great delight, people are responding, in really great ways!

I had a contribution from Beth  – all the way from Calgary(!) – Paddy has lots of goodies he’s bringing to Harcourt over the next while, Kim has started a collection of plastic strapping at her shop, Marc donated an amazing wooden frame that will likely be part of an installation, and Brittney has bags of shredded paper for me that I am figuring out how to best use as well.

I am so thankful to everyone who has contributed so far – and I’m looking forward to seeing what else comes my way in the next while … and what will be made from all of these disparate materials.

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An Ongoing Dialogue …

One of the most remarkable things about making art for me has always been the opportunities this mad existence has offered to meet – and work with – some truly exceptional human beings.

I have been gifted with several such ongoing encounters, one of which I’d like to share today …

I have worked on (and continue to work on) a collaborative project entitled Archives of Absence with  Catherine Owen, a terrific poet from Vancouver. We launched a chapbook, a miscellany, and the visual art from this meeting of minds in April 2011 at the Edmonton Poetry Festival, and I blogged about it here.

Catherine and I also wrote about our experience of working together on this project in an essay entitled “Engaging Space” … and that essay has (happily!!) just been published by Radius – you can find it here.

It is an amazing thing to me – as someone who has ‘shifted gears’ over the years from written to visual modes of expression to see this (very) visual project described and made real in words … another iteration, and other way of seeing all that we have seen as individuals, and as a collaborative team. This collaboration has been all the richer too, in that it has provoked a re-kindling of my desire to work with words again in an active way – to write, as well as make visual art – and that is a tremendous gift, beyond the telling.

The work on Archives of Absence continues … I continue to make work for this project, returning to it as a place which distills many of the ideas that permeate both my work and Catherine’s on an ongoing basis. Each foray in brings something new: a new way of seeing the land, the city, the work already made … the way I work and why I do what I do.

Collaboration keeps people honest and open, keeps the ego checked at the door, and and makes one just unsettled enough to keep the work continually fresh. For these things and so many others, I am always grateful.

Engaging Space will be released this spring by Wolsak & Wynn, in a collection of essays and prose memoirs entitled Catalysts – featuring visual art from the Archives of Absence project on the cover.

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A Call for Input!

I am looking for input from people on two related subjects:

1.  Do you have a favourite nest, and if so, where is it?

If it’s in Edmonton AB or Halifax NS (and area) – I’d be most appreciative if you’d let me know the nest’s location.

My goal is to hunt down your favourite nests and photograph them, as part of my Residency project.

2. Do you have plastic that could be used to build nests?

If so, please get in touch and let me know what you’ve got. I’m looking for things like flexible plastic tubing, pipe wrap, offcuts from plastic banner production, offcuts from plastics manufacturing, plastic strapping used to hold pallets of goods together … that kind of thing. The material should be in long strips/lengths, suitable for weaving into a bird’s nest shape; it needs to be fairly sturdy, but flexible enough that I can manipulate it with my hands. Bright colours would be fantastic, but not essential. Ideally, you’d be in Edmonton AB so we can connect personally and I can get this material from you.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide!

Leave any input in the comments below, and I will get back to you.

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