IDSwest

by Farrah Olegario Nazareth

Images courtesy of IDSwest Press Department 

IDSwest (Interior Design Show West) is happening this month, next week! September 19-22 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. 

IDSwest was launched in 2004 and rebranded in the past few years to be the West Coast version of the already established IDS (Interior Design Show) held in Toronto. The show has been coming to Vancouver for almost a decade, exhibiting interior design in conjunction with industrial design. Interior designers present their latest projects and budding ventures while industrial designers, and high end accessory and furniture stores showcase their latest products. IDS has become a hub for industry professionals to mingle, for presenters to speak about their passion, and for exhibitors to inform designers and consumers of the latest products in the market. 

Over the span of four days, the show attracts a mix of designers, architects, buyers, builders/developers, industry professionals and avid decorators. This year’s esteemed presenters are comprised of award-winning Toronto based design consultancy The Design Agency; award-winning residential designer Brian Gluckstein, the Creative Director of Hudson Bay’s Home collection, Arren Williams and the popular Kelly Deck, from HGTV’s “Take it Outside,” and Tommy Smythe, co-host and designer on HGTV’s “Sarah 101”.

For students an exhilarating aspect of the show is the Future Masters showcase (run in partnership with Artsy-Dartsy.com). The young design talent is featured upon entrance of IDSwest and includes a careful selection of innovative designs, some of which have emerged from none other than Emily Carr University of Art + Design. 

To further draw in and involve young designers, the Woo team has worked its magic in acquiring a special discount code for all Emily Carr students. The offer is available online and is valid for entrance to the show on Trade Day, Friday, September 20th, from 10am and until 4pm. Emily Carr students are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to mingle with other students and designers and be in the now of what products and magazines are up and coming in the industry. 

Your Emily Carr ID will be asked for entrance to the show, your special discount code is stu13.

Location:

Vancouver Convention Centre West
1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, B.C.
Located at the foot of Burrard Street, North of Cordova

Watch Out #1: Audiovisual Media Events September 2013

By Omar Linares

In this (hopefully the first of many) series of blogs we’ll  mention some of the event highlights for the animation, film, and interactive media community at ECU. 
This month presents us with some events of interest, in chronological order:

Spark Animation ‘13 Vancouver’s Animation Conference & Festival

September 11-15

Hosted by the Spark CG Society and having among its sponsors and participants many Vancouver-based  CG (Computer Graphics) groups & companies, Spark includes presentations, screenings and networking events (like a job fair 13-14) with some of the industry professionals in Vancouver.

A full event schedule can be found at Spark’s website: http://sparkfx.ca/festivals/information.php?SPARKANI13

Vancouver International Film Festival

September 26 to October 11

As every year, since 1982, the Greater Vancouver International Film FestivalSociety (VIFF) hosts the festival of the same name. With more than 300 films organized by series it offers something for every taste. Here is a link to the festival’s schedule: http://www.viff.org/festival/2013/schedule

Monitor 10: New South Asian Short Film+Video

September 30

Deadline for submissions for Monitor 10: New South Asian Short Film+Video screening series of “short films and videos by/and/or about South Asians from Canada and around the world”, operated by the Toronto based SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre); selected pieces will be screened in April 2014 in Toronto. Guidelines for submissions can be found at the SAVAC website: http://www.savac.net/m10-submissions.html

Any other suggestions please contact Omar Linares at olinares@ecuad.ca

LUXSTAR 'Innergalaktik'

By Areum Kim

            Hot Art Wet City (HAWC) is a gallery/shop to keep an eye on. Rubbing against the grain of the institutional art framework, HAWC keeps its focus on the “low-brow” cultural scene of Vancouver. The project has persisted for about a decade as pop-up events, and now HAWC has found a permanent location on Main Street where it is possible to put on exhibitions regularly.  Owned and operated by Christ Bentzen, a freelance graphic designer, HAWC focuses on graphic art, illustration, and pop culture, and aims for “fun and accessible art” that won’t entail lengthy artist statements.

            The current show is called LUXSTAR ‘Innergalaktik’ and hosts two graphic designer-cum-illustrators: “Dacosta!” and Frazer Adams. These artists create paintings of cosmic landscapes, geological formations, and robotic characters; images with roots in popular culture and that are treated with the streamlined qualities of vector art as also show unmistakable links to graffiti and its subculture. Definitely, the subject matter and the visual language reside outside the art-world’s central spotlight.

            For instance, the bright crisp colour planes and whimsical lines of “Dacosta!”’s images suit his robotic characters well, characters reminiscent of Takashi Murakami, the Japanese pop-art guru creator of Superflat imagery. Indeed, “Dacosta!” acknowledges the influence of Japanese pop art and even incorporates Japanese language as visual elements in his paintings .

            For his part, Frazer Adams’s galaxy-scapes amaze the viewer. Although similar to the clichéd designs printed on shirts, Adams embraces the imagery of galaxy-scapes fully and reproduces it on canvas. Graffiti texts turn into organic forms that swim through the space or the crystalline geological mass floating in a cosmic background, Adams transforms galaxy-scapes into rich and attractive compositions. When isolated, the galaxy-scape is alluring and dazzling. For people who relate back to the space-frenzy of the 90’s, they are quite nostalgic as well.

            Nonetheless, these works don’t pretend to be laden with layers of meaning, attitudes, nor passive sarcasm of institutional pop art. While Takashi Murakami directs his work towards the Western art institution, playing with the notion of the essence of Japanese culture (his robotic characters supposedly embody traumatized mutations); these Vancouver artists simply formalize “low-brow” popular culture visually by drawing from its well of imagery. They create a fantastical vision of robotic frenzy and galactic lore. Ultimately, they stand outside any conceptual framework; they simply work as they are. Sometimes art does not need to lean on a theoretical ledge.

LUXSTAR ‘Innergalaktik’ will exhibit until September 28th.

HOT ART WET CITY Gallery & Shop

2206 Main Street (@ 6th Ave)

Vancouver BC Canada V5T 3C7

Getting Your Work Out There

By Jessica Molcan

The semester has started with a bang, and for some of the transfer and foundation students the atmosphere at Emily Carr can take some adjusting to. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and into the groove of producing a body of work, you might want to have your best pieces seen by the juggernauts of the art world: curators, collectors and critics. There are quite a few opportunities out there for beginning artists to apply for shows or submit to printed publications — such as the WOO.

 The WOO puts out a quarterly publication to showcase the best and brightest that Emily Carr has to offer. We’re currently accepting submissions for the fall issue until September 20th, 2013; all the requirements along with the submission form can be found below the post, or you can just click here.

The Emily Carr Connect blog posts calls for artists, for instance the recent dutil. Denim show to pay homage to the legacy of the artist/denim relationship. The deadline for applying is September 15, 2013 (see links at the end of the post).

Outside of Emily Carr, the Alliance for Arts and Culture has a frequently updated list of call for artists of all disciplines. These shows are typically juried and generally have an application fee between $10 to $20. Acceptance into a juried show not only helps you build your curriculum vitae (CV), but also comes in handy when applying for grants or graduate programs in the future. Are you still in foundation? It’s never too early to start building a strong CV.

However, if you’re just looking to make some cultural waves with your artwork, there are movements such as Free Art Friday. While not necessarily occurring on Friday, the concept of Free Art Friday is to lift the constraints of the artist and collector relationship by producing snippets of work with no strings attached. These works are generally left in public spaces to be discovered by an unsuspecting passerby. It’s liberating and also makes an interesting project to document. 

Documentation of your artwork is generally required for calls for artists — which you are hopefully all in the habit of doing— but it’s much easier to provide a sleek website URL for your portfolio. Check out some of the free options for showcasing your work online such as Behance and Carbonmade; both sites provide an easy way to display your work without having to fiddle around with HTML.

Below you’ll find the links to the mentioned call for artists, the Free Art Friday movement, and the portfolio sites for displaying your work.

Calls to Artists

Emily Carr Connect Blog: http://blogs.eciad.ca/emilycarrconnect/

dutil. Denim show: http://blog.dutildenim.com/tag/art-show/

Alliance for Arts and Culture: http://www.allianceforarts.com/call-for-artists

 Free Art Friday Movement

https://www.facebook.com/FreeArtFriday

http://freeartfriday.blogspot.ca/

Portfolio Sites

Behance: http://www.behance.net/

Carbonmade: http://carbonmade.com/

The Charles H. Scott Gallery invites YOU to a… 
BACK TO SCHOOL PARTY!

Friday September 6, 2013 | Doors open at 8pm

with

HUMANS

http://dashumans.com

regularfantasy

https://www.facebook.com/regularfantasy

Derek Dee

https://soundcloud.com/derekduncan

Leif Hall

http://www.liefhall.com/

Charles H. Scott

http://chscott.ecuad.ca

READ

https://www.facebook.com/READ.Books.ECU

Tickets $5 at READ Books

Tickets redeemable at READ for $5 off any purchase at READ!

Profile article of Justin Ng, illustrator

By Omar Linares

Justin Ng’s own life seems embedded in the aesthetics his images lean to; the white walls and furniture frames him in a manner not unlike those of his graphite illustrations and subtle toned photography. Not only his aesthetic but also much of his subject matter reflects the influence of the fashion industry amidst which he grew up, as his imagery features jewelry and decorative designs but also portraiture. Although Justin currently explores the possibilities of vector art, as for instance in his piece “Madam Butterfly,” the light tone and minimalism of form of many of his images employ graphite and color washes; this choice of media partly influenced by the fashion illustrations of David Downton. Still, Justin doesn’t think of himself as a fine artist, “…when I do my work I’m not necessarily as conceptual as some of the other people in our school…”

Indeed, during his time at the Illustration major at Emily Carr, he has experienced this division between the conceptual prominence of fine art and the more commercial applied illustration, as class critics with fine art students majors have shown him. However, this rift does not prevent him from engaging in formal explorations of “unexpected colour combinations that look kind of awkward…” or on the “juxtaposition between hard and soft” subject matter like pop culture elements and masculine portraits.

The focus on theme and aesthetics is part of his plans to develop as an editorial fashion illustrator; while exploring local job openings and submitting to art exhibitions, Justin is conscious of the need “…to focus on one style, that’s what I’ve learned in the last two years…you don’t want people to not know what to expect from you.”

Justin’s work can be found at his blog: http://justin-ng.net/illustration/

Photos by - Geoff Campbell + Sami Barker 

Ali Bruce’s Chinatown Studio

Photo’s by Geoff Campbell - WOO Media Director 

The Suspense was killing us! Finally here is the photo feature on Ali Bruce’s Chinatown Studio. The studio is a loft like space equipped with its own DIY Darkroom/bathroom.

Go to: http://www.alibruce.com/

Photos by - Geoff Campbell 

For More on our visit at Ali’s Studio stay tuned!  

Photos from the “Hey Loser” opening at Hot Art Wet City!

Brief Review of "Hey Loser" show at "Hot Art Wet City"

by O.Linares

Facing street by-passers, the Beavis and Butthead cartoon greets the visitor and at seven pm “Hot Art Wet City” gallery opens its doors, yet it is only until an hour later that a sizeable crowd of young people gathers for the opening of “Hey Loser.” Curated by Ali Bruce, the show features work by herself and artists Brandon Cotter, Daniel Tatterton, Victoria Sieczka, Hamish Olding, and Tylor MacMillan; a first look at the artwork makes it “hard to tell the difference”¹ between each artists work. Indeed, most of the works share the spontaneous variety of line and form, the sketch like quality that make them seem somewhat improvised, and a palette of bright colors that always include black; likewise the subject matter appears similar in all works: humorous, grotesque, and vulgar themes on mundane subjects; often ironically framed in the manner of “high art.”

According to Bruce, the show gathers a “low brow” aesthetic that is not necessarily constrained by a conceptual framework nor by the demands of commercial illustration; rather the style of the works aim at a synthesis of “low-brow” culture.²

As for the stylistic cohesion in display, Bruce speaks of it as corresponding to a “collective vibe,” to a license to “just let go,” to be able to use vulgarity, and to create “things that are funny”; thus mood is the ultimate unifier of the show where similar techniques and styles make it “hard to tell the difference.”³

Despite this aesthetic unity, particular moods, interests, and subject matter drive the creation of these works and are subtly identifiable; an example of this divergence can be found in the work of Brandon Cotter. In his work, Cotter exhibits a set of concepts and a driving mythology in the use of type, symbols, and portrayal of social types⁴. On this last, such typology is done in caricature that constitute an “abstraction of the realism” that Cotter would like to create but doesn’t feel the need to; it is an abstraction that could be said to perform the critical functions of aesthetic realism.⁵

Cotter graduated from ECUAD’s design department, and it is partly from this formation as a designer that some of his works aim “to translate…to make comprehensible to the people” the “hidden languages” and symbols in culture and society.⁶ This cognitive attitude is present also in the planning of his works, where the entanglement of this symbolism and poetic phrases are hidden within the spontaneous quality of his illustrations; images which, according to the artist, are nonetheless more organic and dependant on his “reacting”mood.⁷

At around ten thirty the Sun Spuns begin diving into the night and the majority of the crowd revolves within the orbit of their tunes, thus making it difficult to interview the rest of the artists to hear more on the particular drives of their work; and yet, the humour, grotesqueness, unpolished quality, and technique shared at “Hey Loser” indeed exude what Bruce calls a “collective vibe.”⁸

1,2,3,8- Ali Bruce, interview by Omar Linares. Vancouver: 20.07.2013

^{4-7- Brandon Cotter, interview by Omar Linares. Vancouver: 20.07.2013}