McMullen Gallery - Urban Textures

I will take you around the McMullen Gallery where Articulation currently has an exhibition of work called Urban Textures. you can see a person walking past the glass outer wall of the gallery. Inside work hangs on the panels.

Gloria S. Daly and Donna Clement's work.

Around the corner and along the back wall. Ingrid Lincoln & Linda MacKay's work with one of the 'contemplation' chairs that are very comforting to sit in.

The left-hand side of the back wall. More of Linda & Gloria's work with Donna checking levels.

McMullen Gallery Artists' Reception

Donna and I had a slow trip through snow this morning when we travelled from Calgary to Edmonton for a couple of functions to do with Articulation's exhibition in the McMullen Gallery.

This is the view of the gallery space when you walk through the front door.

Vickie Newington's work on panels.

2 of my 'Nana's Garden' works. My little camera couldn't handle the lighting conditions so these are not good images of the works.

Graffiti and Art

While walking through a park I came across another example of graffiti being used to speak out. North of this park there was a gas station for many years. When it was torn down it was found the underground tanks of fuel had been leaking through the soil into the neighbouring residential area. A big clean up of the polluted soil is underway. The above image is of the temporary station set up to 'vacuum clean' the contaminated soil. The company put up white visual screens on the fence surrounding the 'blend-in green' buildings.
These white screens were obviously begging to be painted and sure enough it wasn't long before they were.
The graffiti artist cleverly chose to write one letter on each screen, a word with the same number of letters as screens: VOLTRON
I wonder what the artist's message is in this word?

And yesterday more art was put up for public viewing. In this case, not only in a socially acceptable place to have a voice but in a special place to speak as an artist, the McMullen Gallery in the University of Alberta Hospital. Here is Diana Young Kennedy, Gallery & Collection Administrator, hanging Articulation's latest body of work, Urban Textures.
Vickie Newington and I travelled up to Edmonton to hang the work. I didn't take photos of the exhibition because when we left at 5:00 to return to Calgary, the lights had not been adjusted and the labels still had to be put up. Next week when we go up for the opening and to run a workshop, I'll photograph it all.
On April 23rd there will be a workshop from 2 to 4 and the opening will be from 6 to 9 pm.

After My Banff Residency

People have been asking me about my month-long residency experience. When they are looking for the short version tell them about the thrill of having my bed made every day, my room cleaned and tidied every day and my breakfast & lunch prepared for me with no cleaning up for me afterwards. It was bliss. My mind was free to focus on my work - you would think.
The longer version of the experience is all about how much I grew as an artist, how our group, Articulation, matured, and how much stimulus there was all the time all around the campus.

But, now I have been shot out of that time warp and I am in catch-up mode here in my studio.

The above image was taken at the Calgary airport when I took Ingrid to catch her plane back to Winnipeg. It is the luggage of Calgary's ice hockey team, the Flames. They obviously have an away game. The regular season has finished and the Flames made it to the playoffs. Calgary gets very excited when this happens. The first playoff game is Thursday "Go Flames Go" There are avid Flames fans in my household.

'A Soup of Chefs' or is it 'A Stew of Chefs'
I love the symmetry in this shot taken on the campus of SAIT, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, well
known for the quality of training the Culinary Arts students receive.
I often see great moments like this when walking through the campus to shop at Calorie Counter, where the students sell the meals & meat they have prepared in class that morning. I also shop at their book store, stop in their numerous coffee shops and attend events. It is a great place to visit.



This is a work I successfully bid on during the ACAD Miniature Silent Auction. It was hand stitched in varying weights of black thread by Nauma Reigo (I hope I have her name right). I love watching people's reactions to the fur she strategically placed on the work, very provocative.

ACAD Students Decompressing -Graffiti, Gum, Cigarettes, Coffee

More about the ACAD students' graffiti stairwell where they go for decompression time. At the bottom of the stairwell you go through a heavy door and pop outside...

.

...to see this - another place for the students to decompress...

and make art.

ACAD Graffiti Stairwell

Here are some more views of the ACAD graffiti stairwell. I am fascinated by the place. The atmosphere is so palatable.

It isn't sinister, just loud/noisy. It feels like a place where the students let off steam. A place where they can say and do things to see what it feels like, without being committed to the results. They can be anonymous in the crowd. It must be quite the opposite experience to being in a studio or a small class of students where expectations are so high.

I love this knitted graffiti. It is so ironic to put such a slow process amongst the results of speedy painting process. How does the knit graffiti artist not get caught?

Alberta College of Art + Design

On the last day of our residency in The Banff Centre, we all drove back to Calgary in the morning. Ingrid & ReBecca weren't flying home until the next day so once we had unpacked the cars, we walked over to the Alberta College of Art + Design campus. Fortunately we caught the Fibre Department's Fibre Fort-Night Exhibition. There we ran into Annamaria Zutko who is a final year fibre student. She had set up a loom for a community weaving project she had initiated. ReBecca, above, is an experienced weaver so she had no difficulty in adding to the cloth. Donna & I had never woven before so Annamaria had to give us a lesson before we could produce anything.

As we left the campus we went via the graffiti stairwell. This is the sign on the door before one enters 'The Stairwell'.

And this is what it looks like. It is a fascinating trip down the stairs.

Banff Dyeing Days

While in residency at The Banff Centre, Donna Clement & I got to know a new type of dye Donna had bought, called Alter Ego. Some very clever chemist has developed these dyes to work on cellulose (cotton, rayon, tencel, bamboo) fibres & protein (silk, wool, soy) at the same time, in the same dye pot & produce different colours. Amazing & exciting. I made 10 stitched samples of 40 different fabrics & threads. Here are the first batch simmering away.

These are the results of our sampling. Each sample of white/unbleached fabric & thread was put into a pot with a different combination of the 5 dyes we had to work with. In each sample the protein fibres & cellulose fibres came out different colours. Wow.


Donna dyed a bunch of devore scarves, which is what the dyes were developed for. Our experimenting gave us lots of ideas for using the dyes in other ways.

Happenings at Banff

The person next to ReBecca is Jorie Adams. She is a special person. While she was heading up the music & sound department at The Centre, she suggested Articulation apply for a residency & gave us all of the information & contacts required. So we owe her a great deal. She has since retired & is enjoying working a few days a week in a quilt store while she pursues her textile passion. We invited her to have lunch with us one day and showed her our studios & our work up in the Other Gallery. One of Articulation's strengths is the active support from people such as Jorie.


We all attended Flossie Peitsch's Staged Four where she had modified parts of her installation in the Other Gallery & her studio was open for viewing. Darren Miller had composed music from the sounds pieces in the installation made when struck. Chris Chafe played the celletto & this was added to the music that was played over speakers placed around the gallery. Flossie used a soft mallet to keep suspended fluorescent tubes & strips of plastic moving & so making moving reflections on to the wall. She called it All Things Temporary Time-Lapse Installation and Soundscape.

I enjoyed the informal, graffiti-like dialogue that went on on a flip chart kept outside a meeting room. This week's one was a battle between the different art disciplines.
This was typical of the stimulation found throughout The Banff Centre. There was so much to see, do & hear; so many people to talk to and learn from; so many services & support to enable the artist to work on her own thing -time management turned out to be a much bigger issue than I had planned on having to deal with for the month while in residence.

Banff Memories

This is Erika Lincoln, an artist who works with electronic media, who was also in-residence for the month. She was part of a large group in a directed residency called Liminal Screen, where each artist worked on their own project but all focused on getting the electronic image off the 2D screen.

One afternoon, all of the Liminal Screen artists with most of the self-directed artists in residence at the time, opened up their studios. It was a unique opportunity to talk to and see the innovative work of so many artists in one place at one time.
Erika had a number of the parts of her complex installation available for us to see: a number of birds that moved & sang when one went near them, movement also activated a computer program to build a nest on the screen, a nest building machine one could operate (see image above).
Erika is one of those electronic gurus & she helped us out several times over the month when we got stuck, such as the time when we were all set to watch a movie on our studio computer, the popcorn was hot & we couldn't get the DVD to play. She came to our rescue.
The other special thing about Erika is she is Ingrid Lincoln's daughter. Neither of them knew they would be in The Banff Centre together, until they were getting ready to go.

We all went to so many concerts, performances, lectures and exhibitions during our month in Banff. This performance by Catherine Thompson was particularly memorable. She offered us hot Douglas Fir tea as we walked in to a small lounge with a fire in the grate & candles burning on floor-stand candelabras. Catherine sang & recited her own poetry while playing on musical instruments she has made. The evening was a look into her very interesting Skuld project.

Banff Mountain Building

I caught this mountain man on his way back from his coffee break. Just look at all of the safety equipment he has to wear. He looks like a mountain climber.

I zoomed right in with my little point 'n' shoot camera (so not a good quality image) to get a closer look at conditions on top of the mountain they are building. The billowing orange tarpaulins indicate how strong the wind is, which would drop the actual temperature the body felt. The low wind chill factor means exposed flesh freezes in seconds. Whatever the conditions, whenever I looked up to the top of this mountain, I saw these men working. Sometimes I couldn't see them very well because it was snowing so hard but they were still working.

Banff Memories

+Quality time together so Articulation was able to move to the next level as a successful textile arts cooperative.

+Time to share & learn from each other while we all speak the same language.

+Experiencing life in the mountains as contemporary women
+Developing empathy for the women who came to this place before us

+Appreciating The Banff Centre & its staff for all that it offered us

This is the new Creativity & Innovation Centre under construction. Every day I marvelled at the people who worked in all weathers to make this building. They looked as though they were mountain building, inspired by the one behind them.