Colour: A Personal Response Exhibition Gets Hung in ArtSea Gallery Tulista Park, Sidney BC

Sarah unwraps her artwork.

The first task once we got access to the gallery at 6:00 Sunday evening was to set up tables to work from.

We laid sheets on the floor along all of the walls we were planning to hang on.

We did a check to see if it would all fit in the space.

While Sarah and I did a rough hang of the work Ron sorted out all of the hanging cables and placed what was needed above each work.

While Ron and I got each artwork leveled, at the right height and spaced from its neighbour, Sarah set up different colour centers. 

Here are the Fabric Colour Cards in their individual racks on rotating stands. We are selling individual cards and have complete sets of 24 cards packaged up as well.

On the wall is one of each colour card mounted in a frame by our fabulous framer Jane Conner in the Mat Shop. She framed all of the works in the exhibition and gave us lots of good advice along the way.

Another colour centre is in a quieter space in the back alcove of the gallery. I made 24 little colour books and am asking people to pick any book and write in it how they feel about the colour.

Another colour centre has 36 colour books set up in racks. 

Sarah is going through a book with Isobel Jones, an early visitor to the exhibition the morning it opened.

I'll show a better shot of this centre in a  later post.

Sarah has chosen not to sell her original works at this stage but has made prints and cards of individual works to sell.

Speaking of selling - here is Ron programming my Square in preparation for sales.

We worked until after 10 last night and were back in the gallery early this morning to do all of the remaining tasks before officially opening. The gallery committee support person, Dale MacEwan, was in the gallery last night and first thing this morning to explain all the gallery systems to us. Thank you, Dale, for all of your support.

The gallery is open. The exhibition is on!

Colour: A Personal Response Exhibition - getting ready to hang

For the past 2 years, Sarah McLaren and I have been producing bodies of work based on how we feel about specific colours.

I have produced 24 works, each one exploring the energy I feel from a specific colour.

Sarah has explored each colour through the works of one of her favourite artists.

Here is her 'Modigliani in magenta' and my 'Synesthesia #5 Green'.

Earlier in the year, we set up a little taster of our exhibition in the gallery where we will be exhibiting next week - ArtSea Gallery at Tulista Park, Sidney BC, September 18th to 24th.

We both made colour cards in 24 different hues with shades, tints and tones in fabric on one side and paint on the other. We are busy packaging these up in sets to sell.

 We both made colour books, one to match each of our fibre works.

Here are my books laid out flat while the matte medium layer dries.

 I also made a second set of smaller books. 

The rack cards and poster have been designed, printed and distributed.

Many thanks to Sarah's daughter, Margo for all of the work she has done to promote the exhibition. 

In these last few days, we are working through our checklists of all those tasks that need to be done to mount an exhibition. Labels - check, print stickers - check, pick up cards - check, .....

Sunday evening we begin hanging. Sarah and I are very excited to see for the first time how our work looks together. I'll keep you posted.

'Colour: A Personal Response' 

September 18th to 24th, 2017

Artsea Gallery, Tulista Park, 9565 Fifth Street, Sidney BC

Open 10am to 4pm daily

Opening Reception September 19th, 2017 from 4 to 6pm

VISDA Current Threads 2017 Exhibition in Ladysmith BC

The annual Vancouver Island Surface Design Association Currents Threads exhibition will open on April 15 and run until April 30, 2017.

This year the group is returning to the Ladysmith Waterfront Gallery, Ladysmith. 

All of the work will have been completed in the last 3 years and has not been shown in any Current Threads exhibition before.

We are anticipating another successful exhibition with many visitors.

The Artist Reception is on April 22, from 2:00 until 4:00 pm. I do hope many of you can attend to enjoy the work and talk to the artists in attendance.

Artists will be sitting the gallery every day from 11 am until 4 pm.

During Ladysmith's Spring Art Tour on April 21st until 23rd, the gallery hours are extended from 10 am until 5 pm.

This annual exhibition is a survey of the most recent work by fibre artists who live on Vancouver Island and many of the smaller offshore islands.

You are all invited to attend.

Textile Society of America Symposium 2016

Textile Society of America Symposium 2016

The Textile Society of America 15th biennial symposium was held in Savannah Georgia in 2016.

The co-hosts were the Savannah College of Art and Design and Art Rise Savannah.

Ingrid lincoln and I attended the symposium this year.

We caught one of the pre-symposium tours opting to have a group of enthusiastic, knowledgeable students take us on a tour of their university - Savannah College of Art and Design.

The Savannah campus is spread over 80 buildings most of them restored historic buildings in old downtown Savanah, all within walking distance of each other.

The first stop on the tour was the student centre. The beautiful building was filled with art. See the fireplace above.

Pencil drawings on planks of wood.

Next Stop: The Fibers Department, one of 42 disciplines offered.

The entrance art installation - light shining through fibres trapped between acrylic panels on the walls and ceiling.

The dyeing studio.

It looks small but that is because the class sizes are small and only a few students would work in here at any one time. All of the studios are open 24 hours, 7 days a week so students are free to work as their muse strikes or as close to deadlines as they like to.

Induction heating surfaces, steamers and pressurised vat.

SCAD offers 3 fibers degrees - B.F.A., M.A., M.F.A. link here.

Articulation's 2016 Study Session in Gimli

First stop out of Winnipeg on the way to Gimli was at Arnason's Icelandic Horse Farm.

One of the few places in the world outside Iceland where these distinctive horses can be found.

For more about these unique horses visit Articulation's blog here

Rock Art - Boat - Gimli

The reason why Articulation went to Gimli was to study Icelandic culture.

Gimli (New Iceland) is the largest Icelandic settlement outside Iceland. Back in 1875 and 1876 more than 1,000 Icelandic immigrants settled on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg on land the Canadian government gave them to govern independently. 

We found Icelandic textiles old (as above in the Gimli museum) and new in the local shops.

A Whitefish boat up on the hard. 

Evidence of the early dependence on fishing in Lake Winnipeg was found in many places up and down the western shore.

Hecla historic home

The Icelandic immigrants brought with them their architecture and woodworking skills.

Pickeral and wild rice

We sampled Canadian/Icelandic food whenever we came across it.

For more about Articulation's time in and around Gimli, check their  blog  here.

Articulation's 2016 Study Session

This year Articulation members collected in Winnipeg Manitoba to begin their annual 2016 Study Session.

Winnipeg has wonderful artwork on its buildings - old and new.

View from the rooftop of Mandy's studio building.

This rooftop building has stories to tell.

Descending

Wendy, Mandy, Donna

Go to the Articulation's blog  link here to see more of what we got up to.

Sprinkle Dyeing and Sun Printing at VISA, Victoria

During a Mark Makers' summer residency at the Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA) website we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and have a dyeing day outside.

We set up tables and brought out buckets of water to the backyard of the school.

I set up my sophisticated system for working with dye powder safely and gave a quick demo on how to fill salt shaker-type containers with dye powder.

While the air was still we explored different sprinkle dye techniques using Procion MX. 

Wet soda-soaked natural fabrics were folded, rolled and scrunched before sprinkling dye powder over them.

Eileen sprinkles dye on flat fabric.

Brenda sprinkles dye on a linen fabric already cut to shape for a garment.

This is a great way to use up old batches of dye powder. It works best with dyes made up from a mix of colours. The different colours separate out and migrate through the damp fabric at different rates.

After lunch, Dale gave us a demo of sun printing using transparent fabric paints on damp cloth. She showed us how many different resists will work to leave an impression.

With the sun overhead, we all got clear impressions of the resists. Brenda is using plastic shapes she has cut out and leaves as a resist on linen fabric she has painted with fabric paint. Others used flowers, grasses, bubble wrap, paper and cotton doilies as resisits. 

The dyed cloth was covered with plastic and taken home to batch before being rinsed and ironed.

Fun with Fibre...Cloth & Wood - An Annual Art Group Exhibition at Tulista Gallery

Dale MacEwan

email - dalemac@telus.net

Each year, around June, a group of 5 local artists install an exhibition in the Community Art Council of the Saanich Peninsula (CACSP) gallery in Tulista Park, Sidney.

Dale makes pieced and quilted compositions reflecting micro views of the landscape she lives in. She often incorporates her photographs printed on cloth and fabrics she has built up with texture using printing, stencilling, and stamping, all in her distinctive warm pallet.

Heather Corbitt

email - khcorbitt@gmail.com

I am going around the gallery to show you how each artist has set up a mini studio to work at during the exhibition. 

Heather makes wearable art garments and landscapes by building up very small pieces of fabric to produce multi-layered textured cloth. Her fabric of choice is dupionni silk.

Maya Brouwer

Brouwertree 

This setup offers the viewer a unique opportunity to talk to each artist about their work or to just watch them at work.

Maya makes large pictorial art quilts. Many of the fabrics she uses she has herself dyed, discharged, and added surface design elements to.

Kathy Demchuk

website

Each artist sets up a display of their work around their work area. Most of the works are for sale.

One of Kathy's techniques is to draw a resist on the ground fabric before dyeing it. Her signature style is to tell humorous stories that make the viewer chuckle. Kathy also makes jewellery using beach glass she has collected from local beaches.

Peter Demchuck

website

I have heard some viewers ask for special finishing requests, place orders, and commission new work.

While Kathy is beachcombing for glass, Peter collects driftwood. To quote from Peter's website, Besides giraffes, I carve bowls, make yard birds from driftwood, and do some wood sculptures, mostly of fish.

It is interesting to visit the gallery several times over the week to see how work is progressing.

And to sample Kathy's daily fresh batch of cookies.