Twilight Hour, an inspiring conversation with Allyson Clay

by Jamie Chen

Sight of Allyson Clay’s One Possible Arrangement exhibition at Katzman Contemporary, February 20 to March 22, 2014. (Image source: Katzman Contemporary’s website)

Twilight Hour has become a traditional artist talk of the Painting Department. Artists are invited to share their inspiring thoughts and talk about their working process, which is very helpful to art students still exploring answers to their own art practices.

During the talk, the artist’s presentation always focuses on things like “How to develop ones’ own style?”, “How to find one’s style?”, and “What transition an artist sharing a similar style has been through?”, among other questions. These considerations are crucial in the development of an art student; as their experiences provide valuable information. Our minds are opened by different ways of thinking or unusual manners in which a material has been used. These conversations evoke reflection in our own works. As students, we are forced to think in a larger picture and learn to direct our career toward being an independent artist rather than just finishing one project.

This week, Canadian artist Allyson Clay was invited to join this conversation and share her inspiring art practice with us. Allyson Clay has a BFA in Painting from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a MFA in Painting from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her art practice covers several mediums, including photography, video, and painting. She has also exhibited internationally.

The style of Clay’s works tends mainly towards the conceptual and abstraction. The concept of the work is given greater attention than the end result, which leads to simplification of its visual enjoyment. A process of knowing and thinking is attached to the experience of reading the art piece rather than just the immediate sensory experience. I find this process is more like reading and learning, which has a chronicle impact on the viewer. In her work, Clay always involves text or books, which represents logical thinking and rationality. During her talk, she revealed her passion for reading philosophy, poetry, and writing, and so she always includes written elements in her work, which is inventive in drawn and painted work.

Groundsplatpink, her most recent series of paintings, is another successful example of the combination of text and image. There she brings together painting’s and writing’s creative processes, and combines their most effective functions in art practice. Through her text paintings she brings abstraction out of its awkward conversation with the viewer, providing more communicative elements in the work. It makes the abstract work more efficient as visual communication.

Clay has found a perfect balance between sensation and the conceptual, the visual and the abstract. She uses color combinations and visual elements together with abstract elements, like geometric graphs and texts, to create a mixture of sensory and rational experience. Her Mazes painting series is a good example of this balance in her work.

Clay’s endless experimentation and exploration of the possibilities of abstract art is worth looking up to. Just like designers search for better solutions for product design, artists also search for better solutions for communication, either in an abstract or realistic style.

Talking Radio

Rosalie Mills (left) and Julie Mills (right) from the Folk N’ Rap Show.

By Jennifer Dickieson

Student radio is an acute reflection of interest and talent within the student body, and RadioEmily, online at www.radioemily.ca/listen, has plenty to offer for both listeners and DJs alike. RadioEmily allows student DJs the opportunity to share their selected audio and to create following, interest, and community around them.

Last week I sat down with DJs Julie Mills and Rosalie Edwards to talk about The Folk N’ Rap Show - a culmination of two tastes that create a great dialogue.

So who are the personalities of the Folk N’ Rap Show Julie, the ‘folk’ contributor, confesses herself as a CBC Radio fan girl. A 2^nd year VIAR student, she says that the CBC is how her interest in radio began, noting that Laurie Brown (host of The Signal on CBC Radio 2) is a personal hero. While Rosalie, the ‘rap’ counterpart of the duo, is a 2^nd year illustrator who regularly participates in the ‘Comic-Carr’ guild and publication. When I ask Rosalie about her extra curricular radio interests, she cites surrealist podcast “Welcome to Night Vale”—an inception-like radio drama about a small-town DJ hosting a show in a desert community. Bringing Julie and Rosalie’s interests together, different, but rooted in the community of the radio, makes the Folk N’ Rap Show an interesting diversion.

What won’t we hear on the high contrast show? “…Mongolian throat singing” says Julie; after a moment, Rosalie cuts in—“…maybe I could find a cool remix.” Sharing a playful banter, the pair prove they have the attitude for sharing and discovering music, and are making their show at RadioEmily as a genuine exploration.

RadioEmily is an important stage where students can share and bond over interests other than their discipline, and it creates and promotes a school identity. With RadioEmily’s recent acceptance into the National Campus Radio Association and an increase in student interest, more funding for better equipment and a designated space in the new school could be obtained. With better space and equipment, RadioEmily would have more opportunities for DJs and musically inclined students to produce exciting shows and include live performances.

When I talk with Kate Brooks, 2^nd year VIAR student and DJ of SubSpark Radio at the RadioEmily studio, she comments about having a place to share her interests and openly trace through the roots of music. Her studio time is spent sharing her discoveries. One of the most recent artists you can hear on SubSpark, Jai Paul, known for his elusiveness, is enigmatic to Kate. “Everybody loves a mystery” She says, as she trolls the internet, looking for more information to share with listeners. For Kate, the importance of the medium falls into her passion for music, equal to her work in visual arts. Representing Bass Coast Electronic Music and Arts Festival and scheduled to interview Philadelphia based band The War on Drugs on March 29, Kate’s connection to the music scene makes her radio program an informed hour of diverse electronic tunes. 

Also on the roster at RadioEmily, is Brett Barmby, a 4^th year painter and DJ of One Foot 5.0 Thumpin’. Sitting in his shared studio space on the second floor of the south building he explainsto me the name for the show. “It’s a one foot grind with a boom-box balanced on the guys shoulder…” a skateboarding move, and it comes from the video game Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 1. Brett explains that the music he plays on the show stems from the soundtrack of the video game, which holds sway on his musical taste.  The way he puts it, the soundtrack is “gate-way punk” and is related to a lot of punk sub-genres you’ll hear on his show.  Brett picks a theme for each show, which range from more formal categories like ‘female-fronted groups’ and ‘bands from Calgary’ to what Brett describes as the “…shining moment of the show” where the theme was ‘pizza’. This comic scenario sets up the wisdom he passes on to future DJs of RadioEmily: “You’ll expand your library…I discovered more than I thought I would.”

In listening to the discoveries and musical exploration of DJs at RadioEmily, it’s hard not to stumble on something you’ll like; nonetheless, if you find the programming lacking your taste, RadioEmily invites students to fill the niche themselves. To take part in RadioEmily as a listener or as a DJ, check out RadioEmily’s page at www.radioemily.ca/; there you’ll find information about how to propose your own show. (New to radio as a medium? Don’t panic, orientations for the equipment and studio use are provided.) You can also find the live stream under www.radioemily.ca/listen, a full schedule of shows by the week, and check out DJs’ personal profiles and links to pages.

Julie Mills and Rosalie Edwards of the Folk N’ Rap Show can be contacted with requests and general inquiries through their Facebook page. Their show is broadcasted on Thursdays @ 4-5:30pm. https://www.facebook.com/TheFolknRapShow?fref=ts

Kate Brooks of SubSpark Radio updates the show’s Facebook page throughout the week and during her show on Wednesday @ 4-5:30pm.  https://www.facebook.com/SubSparkRadio?fref=ts

Brett Barmby of One Foot 5.0 Thumpin’ can be heard Tuesdays @ 9-10:30pm and can be otherwise found in his studio space on the second floor of the south building, where he and studio-mate Andrew Oliver run “Studio Brew”- a barter coffee project.

The Just A Sec’ Exhibition: Comments from the Curator

by Katherine Neil

Exploring ideas surrounding ‘a moment in time’ and translation, the Just A Sec’ exhibition was a collaboration by students at Emily Carr University with varied art and critical theory practices: Ashlea Conway, Scott Kemp, Jacek Porowski, Olivia Qiu, Sonja Ratkay + Angela Smailes.

The Just A Sec’ exhibition came about as the result of a request that I curate a show for a group of artists who had already agreed to participate. This was unusual in that typically a curator selects artists whose work she thinks will go well together and add something to an existing dialogue, or create a new conversation.  In this case, the challenge was to identify the connections and relationships among the practices of a disparate group of artists. 

The idea that what comes before and what comes after affects the ‘now’ is illustrated by German philosopher Walter Benjamin in his essay entitled The Task of the Translator[1], which was a catalyst for the process through which I developed the conceit of the exhibition. A translation suggests an ‘original’; an original, like a photograph, can be viewed as a time capsule for a particular moment. What surrounds that moment is an ever-shifting context of time and space.

The Just A Sec’ exhibition highlighted the work of artists interested in studying and challenging the idea of a ‘moment’. Can any moment be truly autonomous, distinguishable from all those before it, and those to come? What is the result when ‘we’ consider a work of art, something that has traditionally been understood as a replete gesture, in a shifting context? The artists in this exhibition addressed the effect of time and space on an art object, and additionally, the implications of imagining space: physical space, historical space, conceptual space, as the ‘object’ itself.

Primarily sculpture students, Conway, Kemp, Porowski, Qiu, Ratkay and Smailes’ work for the show ranged from drawing to painting, to light and scent-based installation. Despite their material differences, the pieces in the exhibition manifested interesting connections:

Upon entering the gallery, the two works to the viewer’s immediate left and right were Olivia Qiu’s painting entitled one million years, and Ashley Conway’s untitled mixed media work. one million years depicts a glass enclosure inside a room with high ceilings and large windows, a scene that recalls On Kawara’s piece of the same name, which also addresses the passage and marking of time[2]. In Qiu’s painting, the floor of the glass enclosure forms a brown, two-dimensional rhombus, which mirrors the mahogany plinth that is part of Conway’s three-dimensional piece. Both Qiu and Conway’s artworks suggest a ‘proposed space’, with infinite possibilities. I think of the art exhibition as a similar kind of space.

While Qiu’s painting directly references Kawara’s earlier work, it also presents something new. In her work the transparent sides of the enclosure from Kawara’s piece collapse further into the two-dimensional surface of the painting, emphasizing a lack of definition between inside and outside, illusion and reality.

On the back wall of the Concourse Gallery, invisible at a distance, appearing only as the viewer approaches, Scott Kemp’s acrylic sculpture also challenges the distinction between inside and outside, and illusion and reality. The reflective surface of Kemp’s piece, suggestive of commercial display devices, echoes the reflective surface of Conway’s Plexi-covered plinth, and the suggested reflectivity of the enclosure in Qiu’s painting. All three artists’ work could be interpreted as making reference to museum displays (vitrines, for example), which have their own connotations related to time, and the preservation of material matter.

In the center of the gallery Angela Smailes’ work combined art historical elements with humor. Her assemblages, which she refers to as “3D sketches”, suggest a fleeting moment or movement; the draped plinths on which they stand are reminiscent of the history of still life painting and photography, and, like some of the aforementioned works, various modes of display. Meanwhile Sonja Ratkay’s projected images broach the movement of light through a camera and the technical aspects of capturing life on film, as well as the atmospheric effects of lighting used in stage production. The interaction of her work with the other works in the Just A Sec’ exhibition, including Smailes’ assemblages, transformed the gallery space into a surrealist set, disorienting in a way similar to the proposed scenes in Conway’s and Qiu’s pieces.

The shrine-like devotion to the past in museum displays is evoked in Jacek Porowski’s triptych entitled it sinks beneath our wisdom like a stone. Constructed out of found wood and depicting a series of hand gestures, re-contextualized from well-known images from the Renaissance to the Russian Revolution, Porowski’s three panels pay homage to significant periods in human history. While their display in a gallery setting seems to signal their metaphorical ‘death’, it is also the moment at which the viewer is invited to translate and interpret the work, and therefore the beginning of its stage of continued life[3].

Despite some unusual challenges encountered during the process, the Just A Sec’ exhibition establishes that unconventional beginnings can lead to a successful collaboration amongst different cultural practitioners.

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[1] Benjamin Walter, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 71

[2]  unknown, unknown. David Zwirner art gallery, “For immediate release: On Kawara - One Million Years.” Accessed March 3, 2014. http://www.davidzwirner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2009-OK-DZ-press-release.pdf.

[3] “For a translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of [art] never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life.”

Benjamin Walter, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 71.

Art Revolution: A Walkthrough

by Jessica Molcan

The Concourse Gallery here at ECUAD has been revolutionized. In an overnight flurry of spray paint, the Concourse has been transformed by an anti-establishment invasion. The immersive environment is influenced by street art and features a wide variety of disciplines ranging from sculpture, photography, painting, video projections, installation pieces, and performance works. The show is curated by Benji Staempfli and exhibits work by artists including Stephan Anastasiades, Patrick James Bravo, Nathaniel Ferguson, Jonathan Hodges, Lawrence Le Lam, Eric Miranda, Amanda Smart, Ray Tse, Staempfli himself, and more.

The front entrance to the Concourse Gallery displays balloons hung like streamers that prompt you to walk through them. Upon entering the show, “Art Revolution” is spray painted on the wall and you’re greeted by a small television, abandoned spray paint cans, and large colourful murals. As you step around the corner into the rest of the space, you are engulfed in graffiti, colours and the immersive world you’re standing in.

The pieces are varied in style and medium, but all interact well with one another. This can be credited to Staempfli’s curating of the show, presenting it as a unified collaboration rather than as separate works on stark white walls. Each piece demands attention, and the viewer is able to absorb each work individually as well as the show as a whole.

 

In addition to the anti-establishment style artwork, no traditional title tags hang about, nor artist statements, and no wall is left untouched. Art Revolution has already become the buzz on campus, with students asking one another if they’ve been to the Concourse Gallery this week.

The exhibition opens officially on Thursday, February 27^th, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Find the Facebook event here. 

Draw Something More

by Jennifer Dickieson
Drawing, Untitled, by Juan Cisneros

 With more to offer than acting as a bridge to other disciplines or as preparatory sketches, drawing as a practice can often be an idea that flies under the radar of students. Trained in a traditional line of thought, students commonly come out of seemingly endless marathons of still life, model and technical drawing sessions with the idea that drawing belongs in the past. However, this couldn’t be less true. In Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing, curator and critic, Emma Dexter defines drawing as a universal endeavor and proposes drawing as new territory in contemporary art: “Why is drawing’s time now? Because drawing offers artists freedom, as an under-regarded and under-theorized backwater, to explore hitherto overlooked or repressed aspects of creativity.”[1] When revisiting drawing’s role in contemporary art practice, a new ground has been discovered. 

The role of drawing in the art world has progressively transcended boundaries between disciplines. Bernice Rose, whose curated exhibition of drawings titled “Drawing Now” in 1976 at MOMA in New York, featured a collection of drawings spanning from the renaissance to the mid 1970’s.[2] It is an excellent starting point to trace the consistently improving view of drawing, which is gaining acknowledgement as having equal gravity as paintings or sculptures. Today, as artists push the boundaries of drawing, curators and critics attempt to analyze the direction and value of a revalued discipline. In Drawing Now: eight propositions, (a clear nod to Rose’s curatorial project at MOMA), curator and critic, Laura Hoptman proposes the disposal of drawing as a verb, she proposes that in the last decade artists have delivered drawing as a noun, as a mean to its own end.[3] Featuring artists from all over the world, including Julie Mehretu, Mark Manders, and the trio-collective Los Carpinteros, Hoptman demonstrates the diversity and conviction of drawing as a discipline.

 With the new discussions and reevaluation of drawing, it’s easy to make the case for new artists to explore the practice. Drawing materials are generally less expensive and much more open-ended and artists beginning their practice have the opportunity to explore experimental and conceptual territory at lower financial risk. Drawings can be developed in vast numbers, be stored more easily and take-up less precious studio space than their heavier, bulkier gallery neighbors. 

In Walk the Line: The Art of Drawing, a densely packed volume of drawings, Marc Valli calls his introductory essay ‘Drawing Year Zero’.[4] In this title Valli asserts that drawing is being born differently, that its time starts now, and with so many interesting artists and critics pointing to this development it’s worth taking notice of. If the last decade speaks to the current projection of contemporary art it shows that it is valuable to invest interest and research in drawing practice, and that in exploring drawing as a contemporary practice, there is something more to be discovered.

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[1] Emma Dexter, Vitamin D: New Perspectives for Drawing (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2005), pp. 8-10.

[2] Bernice Rose,A Preview of “Drawing Now”. Museum of Modern Art, 1975-1976. pp. 1-2.Accessed Through JStor, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4380644

[3] Laura Hoptman, Drawing Now: eight propositions (New York: Museum of Modern Art 2002), pp. 8-9, 167.

[4] Marc Valli & Ana Ibarra, Walk the Line: The Art of Drawing (London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2013), pp. 7.

A Close Reading of Erin McSavaney’s Painting Show: MOVING:STILL

 

Image of Estella by Erin McSavaney, source: 
Equinoxgallery.com[i]

Equinox Gallery, 525 Great Northern Way
February 15 to March 15, 2014

By Jamie Chen

Equinox Gallery is currently presenting the fourth solo show of Vancouver based artist Erin McSavaney. The show is titled: MOVING: STILL. A painting series focused on the idea of images captured from a moving vehicle, which draws on the experience of travel and the concept of stop motion animation.  

McSavaney’s acrylic paintings are like photos taken by a tourist from a moving vehicle. His paintings always contain visual elements like a window frame or lighting trails to remind the viewer of the experience of seeing from a car’s window. The moving feature captured in the painting creates a moment of stopped time, and the viewer gets a chance to investigate closely this ‘moving stillness’.

Combined with the visual content of the painting, a surreal conversation has been created. In the paintings, McSavaney always illustrates a special area occupied with a volume of greens. Trees or grassland are the main visual focus of the paintings and demonstrate a space of peaceful vacancy, which is in high contrast to the overly crowded streets and busy life of a modern city.

Although the elements in McSavaney’s exhibition will remind viewers of landscape paintings, his work demonstrates a strong abstract impressionist influence. All paintings are broken into simplified colored shapes or dots. Two-dimensional elements like color stripes and paint marks provide a graphic quality, breaking the illusion of three-dimensional representation. The surface of the painting has similarities with printmaking, the brush marks are hardly recognized. But the trees, as central subjects in the paintings, are presented with obsessive details. Paint is applied to the canvas in translucent layers revealing a handmade quality. This feature, in conjunction with the subject of the painting, reflects a sense of the natural and casual.

Some of McSavaney’s paintings have a white uneven margin on the edges that easily blends the work into the white walls of the gallery. The indefinite expansion of the gallery space enlarges the surreal vacancy the painting evokes.

A graduate from the Graphic Design and Illustration Program at Capilano University, McSavaney’s paintings are made with exquisite details, a considered choice of frame-size, and specific color combinations, all of which reflect the method of a graphic designer. The fusion of design and painting is innovative and inspiring. McSavaney’s painting series is a successful experimentation for a new definition of abstract painting.

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[i] http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/erin-mcsavaney/art/23821

Getting Your Art Career Started

(image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/odetoeveryday/)

Getting Your Art Career Started

by Jessica Molcan 

Graduation is fast approaching and for those of us looking for a career as an artist, the task can be daunting. There is a preconception that to be a professional artist, you need to go through a period of destitution. Not true! To avoid the trap of believing the “starving artist” stereotype and if you want to make art your career, here are some foundations of success to keep in mind. Not all of these are applicable to every type of career, so pick and choose what fits your needs.

Note: For the purpose of this article, ‘artist’ is used to discuss any independent and creative job, including but not limited to visual artists, photographers, writers, and designers.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

I’m sure you’ve heard this before when people dissuade you against starting a career as an artist. However, there are many professional artists who hold day jobs. While teaching is generally the most popular choice among creatives, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you have the capacity to teach that something. If teaching isn’t for you, the best option is to find work that doesn’t distract you from your practice, has flexible hours, and allows you to live. Not just to get by, but to live. As long as a job doesn’t deplete your creativity, it will allow you to flourish as an artist.

Find Studio Space

Having a day job allows you to option to find studio space outside of your living space. Naturally, if external studio space is outside of your budget, then you will have to become more disciplined in your practice. Studio space is important. Don’t let the size of your studio dictate the size of the work that you make.

Treat Your Practice Like Work

Not to be a downer, but unless you take your practice seriously —like a job— you may find ways to avoid actually creating work. Home studios can be a hindrance to production if you aren’t disciplined enough. The best way to get work done is to schedule studio time just like you’d schedule work time. Not necessarily 9-to-5, but block out time each day in whichever way works for your creative process.

Taxes, Paperwork, and Inventory

I know, you didn’t go to art school to do lots of paper work! Unfortunately, it’s a necessity when building your practice. It’s a good habit to keep an inventory of all the work you create, keeping in mind the cost of production, the listing price and it’s current location, the buyer (if any), if it’s been shown, and any other details. This will make tax time easier and establishing any copyrights for your work.

Hopefully these tips help you start getting your practice established post-school. It can be daunting, but it can be done.