by Marja-Leena A superb collection of portraits of women from about the past 500 years. I love how the expressions melt from one face to another, set to the lovely cello music. I recognize many of the famous faces. Well done!
Thanks to Dave Bonta for this wonderful tip!
Update Nov. 19th, 2008: A list of the artists and paintings
Check out the Male Self-Portraits by the same creator, Philip Scott Johnson.
by Marja-Leena 
One of the more splendid events in the merry month of May is graduation. This year we join many proud parents of sons and daughters who are graduating this month from institutes of higher education. Our daughter Erika has completed four years of study at Emily Carr Institute. On Saturday, May 5th we will be watching her receive her Bachelor’s in Communication Design. Congratulations, Erika, we are so very proud of you!
ECI has a huge graduating class from their many programs, so it will be a long afternoon of speeches, honours, cheering, clapping and a few sentimental tears at the Chan Centre at UBC. Then Erika’s family in Vancouver will celebrate over dinner in her favourite restaurant. The evening will see a very lively party scene at ECI with the opening of the grad exhibition.
Here’s what Erika wrote on her blog:
My project AfterTASTE is exhibiting in the design part of the Undergraduate Exhibition at Emily Carr Institute! I’m also on the design team for the show’s website, which showcases about 240 students’ work, so I technically get two exhibits 😉 The website will be displayed at computer kiosks throughout the two buildings. The show runs for two weeks so I hope you can come check it out! Grad catalogues will also be available. Please pass on this info and enjoy!
Undergraduate Exhibition 2007
Emily Carr Institute
1399 Johnston Street, Vancouver BC
Exhibition May 6-21st
Open daily 10am-6pm
Opening Night May 5, 7-11pm
More info: 604-844-3075 grad2007.eciad.ca
I noticed that the exhibition website has its online exhibition coming May 5th. If you can’t make it to Vancouver for the show, do view all the best work by this year’s graduating class on their website.
UPDATE May 5th: The grad website is launched! Please check out thirteen cent pinball for more details.
by Marja-Leena 
Connecting with D’Amico #2
Yippee! Our collaborative project In Its Four Voices – Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #2 has been published on Qarrtsiluni, the online literary and visual art zine! Go see and LISTEN to it! Then come back….
I must tell you the story behind this international collaboration. First about the image. Artist Karen D’Amico** of London, UK, and I met and corresponded through our respective artist blogs. She mailed me about a dozen close-up photographs of rocks that she had taken, and offered these to use in my work as I wished. I chose five of them to create the prints called Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #1-5. Thus it became ‘a borderless collaboration of sorts’, as Karen commented.
Sometime earlier this year, blog friend and prolific writer and poet Tom Montag of Wisconsin, USA, expressed an interest in writing a poem inspired by one of my Silent Messenger pieces. Tom wrote a fairly long and thrilling piece based on his choice, Connecting with D’Amico #2.
I am still astounded and awed that my work inspired this. In turn, I felt excited and inspired to find a way to make this into some kind of performance piece. With no experience in this and with the three of us in three different countries, a voice recording seemed the best possibility.
Around the same time Qarrtsiluni’s editors decided that the theme for March and April would be Ekphrasis – ‘poetry in dialogue with visual art’. Perfect…. except for the restriction to far fewer lines than Tom’s poem has. We checked with the editors to see if they would consider an audio file. Yes, they replied and so, we pushed on.
I roped in my clever daughter Erika who had some experience with digital music recording. The challenge was to find four readers and capture their voices into one recording. My husband got drawn into this, a bit reluctantly, heh, to read the first voice. As Karen was too busy to participate at this time, Erika took her place as the second voice. And I read the third voice, that of the artist/marker, of course. Recording our voices here at home was physically easy enough, but Tom is in Wisconsin, you know. After a few trials, the best recording of Tom’s reading of the fourth voice was over his phone into our computer with the aid of some special software and Skype (thanks to my husband’s expertise here). Then Erika did all the intricate editing work on all the voices using Apple’s Garage Band, not exactly the most professional program but giving us reasonably good results we think.
As Tom said, this is ‘a collaboration of a collaboration across three countries and three media’. This project has been an exciting new venture for me, and for all of us, and I’m so thrilled with it. A huge thank you to Tom for the fabulous poem and his reading, to Karen again for the photos that inspired my work, to my husband for his voice and technical help, and to Erika for her voice, advice and skillful editing work! And a big thank you to all the editors of Qarrtsiluni for their excellent editing suggestions and for publishing this.
We hope you like it…
(Tom is away on vacation right now, but I hope he will write a few words about his poem on his blog when he gets back. I’ll update with the link here when it happens.)
** Reedited March 15th, 2013 during a blog tidy-up: Karen has not been at this blog address for some years, so link has been removed. I have now quite accidentally found her new eponymous website: Karen Ay
by Marja-Leena I feel very humble and honoured that my new blog-friend Tall Girl felt inspired by a pair of my etchings Nexus IX and X.
She wrote mark in response to my work as well as to the challenge of Qarrstsiluni’s current theme of ekphrasis, “poetry in dialogue with visual art”. It’s been accepted and is now posted at Qarrstsiluni, so do please go read it and congratulate Tall Girl on her thoughtful and moving poem. Many warm thanks, Tall Girl, and all the wonderful editors of this fabulous literary and visual art e-zine!
by Marja-Leena 
Don’t miss the opportunity to own work from the next generation of great Canadian artists and designers at the 14th Annual Grad Art Auction at Emily Carr Institute.
AUCTION: Saturday, March 31, 2007
TIME: 7:00pm
REGISTRATION: 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Over 300 works in an impressive assortment of mediums are available to bid on at a wide range of price points. Proceeds from the auction support the 2007 Graduation Catalogue. Absentee bids can be made during the preview. Admission is free – everyone is welcome!
PREVIEW: March 28 to 30, 10am to 6pm; March 31, 10am to 3pm
WHERE: ECI Concourse Gallery, Emily Carr Institute, 1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island, Vancouver, BC
MORE INFO
(** Passed on to me by daughter Erika, one of these fine grads!)
by Marja-Leena 
Wow, this artist is busy! Not long ago, I wrote about sculptor Benjamin Phillips and his exhibition at the Access Gallery, which has just finished.
Now he’s having a show at Capilano College* in North Vancouver. If you are in the Vancouver area, don’t miss this! See you there.
*now University
by Marja-Leena 
Many printmakers may be aware that there is a call for entries to The 14th Tallinn Print Triennial in Estonia. The exhibition will be held 17 October – 27 November 2007.
The deadline for the first stage of jurying is April 2, 2007. Please check out the regulations and the theme:
The organisers of the 14th Tallinn Print Triennial invite artists to address two themes: Political and Poetical, that may at first seem mutually antagonistic, but which are important (or essential) aspects of the graphic arts. Throughout their history the graphic arts have been employed in both the social/political and the personal/poetic spheres. They have offered the mechanism for the mass promotion of political ideas and created conditions in which personal and liberal self-expression can flourish.
This year’s print triennial is a particularly exciting one because it’s being held in conjunction with The Impact 5 International Printmaking Conference:
Impact 5 will take place simultaneously with the 14th Tallinn Print Triennial (on the exhibition ground of Kumu), that has its own history reaching back to 1968. Today it is an international event in the world of printmaking, with participants from all over the world. The Impact conference is an international forum for printmakers, curators, critics, collectors and suppliers of art printing materials and presses.
The conference is held every second year in the autumn. The first Impact Conference was held at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of West England in Bristol, England in September 1999. The 2001 Conference (Impact 2) was held in Helsinki, Finland. The 2003 Conference (Impact 3) took place in Cape Town, South Africa and the 2005 Conference (Impact 4) in Berlin, Germany and Poznan, Poland.
The main building of the Art Museum of Estonia – Kumu Art Museum.
Architect: Pekka Vapaavuori. Photo: Kaido Haagen
Very interesting for me was to learn that the Kumu Art Museum (photo above), which includes a conference centre, was designed by the Finnish architect Pekka Vapaavuori and opened just over a year ago.
Tallinn has a special place in my heart. Newer readers may not know that in 2002 I had an exhibition in Finland with two other Canadian artists and friends. We travelled to and around Finland and also Tallinn on the other side of the Gulf of Finland. We fell in love with Tallinn where we met and became friends with artists Loit and Virge Joekalda (whom I’ve mentioned a few times elsewhere on this blog). The Estonians are close cousins to Finns, as part of the Finno-Ugrian group of peoples, so it was thrilling for me to see Loit’s exhibition of frottages and photos from his expeditions to sites of rock art by Finno-Ugrians in Karelia. And now Loit is one of the organizers of this conference! Small world! How I wish I could go to this triennial and conference.
by Marja-Leena 
Torill Kove, a Norwegian-Canadian animator with Canada’s NFB (National Film Board) won an Oscar this year for Best Animated Short Film. Her film, The Danish Poet, is a “charming 15-minute meditation on life’s peculiar coincidences, based loosely on a tale her father told her about how he met the woman who would become his wife and her mother. It is narrated by Liv Ullmann, the legendary Norwegian-born actress and director and Ingmar Bergman muse.” – from the Montreal Gazette.
Now I’ve just discovered that the film can be viewed in its entirety on the NFB website! You can also read more about this Canada-Norway Co-production, view an interview of Torill, short clips of the film and order a copy on its own website. I hope you enjoy this delightful animation as much as I did!
UPDATE Feb.28th, 7 p.m.: Some readers may be interested to know that Art Daily has short excerpts of the winners at the Academy Awards, including The Danish Poet.
UPDATE March 5th: It’s come to my attention that the full-length feature is no longer available on this site. It seems that it was up for the duration of the contest, which has ended. I think I struck it lucky finding it just before. Time to either buy it or rent it!
UPDATE Dec. 2013: It is available to subscribers or to buy the DVD.
UPDATE March 2014: Quite by accident I discovered it may be viewed for free at Open Culture.
by Marja-Leena 
I’m pleased to introduce Benjamin Phillips, a young artist who has been working in Capilano University’s Art Institute, first in the sculpture area and now in printmaking. I first met him last year when he presented his sculptures at the Studio Art Gallery. His amazing work and his talk left a most powerful impression on me and many others. Now he is showing some of those sculptures in a gallery in Vancouver, and I hope readers in the area will come out to see his work. Here is the press release:
Chthonian* Dialogue
Opening February 23rd, 2007
Access Artist Run Centre’s Project Room
Are men becoming more feminine in society today?
Are men and women now afraid of acting too masculine or too feminine?
Benjamin Phillips, a 33-year-old Vancouver based sculptor is asking these questions in a solo show at the Access Artist Run Centre’s Project Room at 206 Carrall Street, Vancouver.
Mr. Phillips has degrees in art and comparative religions from the University of Victoria and Acadia University. Over the past three years he has been developing a body of bronze sculptures that draw heavily from references to Greek mythology.
The sculptures reflect his interest in quietly subverting the idealistic traditions we have grown accustomed to in traditional figurative bronze art. “Bronze’s natural permanency,” he states, “suits my interest in recording insights into this subject as an enduring record and as a stimulus for dialogue.”
By using a classical sculptural material, bronze, and drawing heavily from references to Greek mythology, Mr. Phillips challenges traditional representations of male and female forms by reversing our gender-specific stereotypes. “For example, fortitude and self assertion are trademark symbols in art history for masculine expression, while surrender and repose are often reserved for female expression”, he explains. By exchanging these stereotypes, a new context is exposed for inquiry into both the stereotype and the form.
“I realize these can be sensitive, even controversial topics to be addressing, but to not inquire would seem to be denying a very basic aspect of human nature” he states.
The show is called Chthonian Dialogue and opens February 23rd at the Access Artist Run Centre on Carrall Street. It runs until March 15.
*Chthonian is a Greek word associated with a place of spirits and primal emotions deep under the earth, somewhat like our subconscious dreamscapes.
For more information about the artist, please go to priapiculture
by Marja-Leena We’ve just spent a pleasant Sunday at the apartment of our daughter, Erika, and her boyfriend. Her father tried to help her with some computer problems, while Erika and I chatted about possible layouts for the artist’s website that she is designing for me. I’ve been eagerly looking forward to this, as I feel that I need a more professional site as a supplement to this blog. I trust Erika’s eye for design and her skill with web design work, the latter of which eludes me.
Then we talked about the grad project she is working on in this, her final semester, of the Communication Design degree program at Emily Carr Institute, here in Vancouver. I’m rather tickled and proud that she has chosen to explore the Finnish half of her ancestry! I’ve passed on to her many books and links to websites and now I’m sharing some information about her project with you, my dear readers, because she is asking for a little help.
Erika is calling her design project Coffee and Pulla, and is asking for mentors (family not allowed):
I’m designing a book about Finland, explored through family stories and comparisons to Canada. As a requirement, I need a mentor. Very little contact is expected by my instructor — 2 or 3 times over the semester, which ends in mid-April — so it may only require an hour or two of your time over the course of a couple months.
I’m looking for any combination of:
a) a Finn who immigrated to Canada (or at least lived here for some length of time) OR
b) a Canadian who immigrated to Finland (or at least lived there for some length of time)
c) a (graphic) designer, particularly if one of the above
d) a writer
e) a photographer
Read more about it on her blog, and if you are interested in helping her out, please contact her directly. Thank you!