invitation
Just received this exhibition poster. See you there tomorrow afternoon!
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by Marja-Leena by Marja-Leena exhibition on Bowen
detail: ARKEO 2, Marja-Leena Rathje (may or may not be in exhibition)
You are invited to:
An exhibition of prints by the Art Institute Printmakers of Capilano University
at The Gallery at Artisan Square

589 Artisan Square, Bowen Island, BC
Artists’ Reception: Sunday, September 20th from 2-4 p.m. Open to everyone
Exhibition runs September 11th to 27th, 2009
Gallery hours: Friday – Sunday, Noon – 4 p.m.
The exhibiting artists are Wayne Eastcott, Bonnie Jordan, Michiko Suzuki, Peter Frey, Joan Smith, Hans-Christian Behm, Christel Kleinewillinghofer, Linda Robertson and Marja-Leena Rathje.
The Bowen Island Arts Council runs this gallery along with many cultural programs. This is a fascinating fact on their website:
Based on a recent national study of communities with a population of less than 50,000 people, Bowen Island was identified as the 4th most artistic community in Canada.
Bowen Island is a short 20 minute ferry ride from Horsehoe Bay, West Vancouver. Here is a map of the route to the gallery from the ferry landing at Snug Cove.
I’m looking forward to this special visit to Bowen Island and hope to meet a few readers there!
by Marja-Leena exhibit in Squamish
I’m pleased to announce that my friend Bonnie Jordan and I have a selection of our prints on exhibit in the new Artisan Gallery in the town of Squamish, north of Vancouver.
Here’s how the space is described in the Squamish Arts Council‘s newsletter:
For the past three years, Squamish Arts Council Directors have been working with the DOS [District of Squamish] and developer Talisman Homes to bring to life a District required amenity contribution art exhibition space at 1336 Main Street. The space is defined as a window gallery which is intended to be viewed form the outdoors 24 hours a day. The unexpected infusion of 80 feet of visual art enhances the downtown outdoor experience and ambience, and provides much need exhibit space for local and visiting artists. [This space] is particularly beautiful at night with the gallery lights, colors and shadows redefining Main Street.
The space is managed by Maciek Walentowicz and Susan Remnant, both artists and teachers. They were a wonderful help in hanging our works. Our thanks to them and the SAC for this opportunity to share our work with this community and to extend support to the efforts of the Arts Council.
Above is a glimpse of Bonnie’s work. Some readers may remember Bonnie’s name in these blog pages. She was one of the artists who exhibited with me in Vaasa, Finland in 2002, our most exciting one we’ve had I think, so please check out my micro-site Traces. And here is an article I did later of her work. The top and bottom works are in the Artisan too!
And here’s a look at my section. Our exhibit will be up for about three months, so if you are visiting or live in the Vancouver area and you are planning a trip up the Sea-to-Sky to Whistler, please stop in to Squamish and see our display.
Out of town readers may be interested to know that the town of Squamish sits on the north shore of beautiful Howe Sound next to the Sea-to-Sky Highway and the magestic Coast Mountains. It’s only about an hour’s drive north from Vancouver, so it has grown a lot in recent years as a bedroom community and as a popular recreation area as well as for being close to Whistler. It’s a mind-blowing gorgeous drive, but there’s some major reconstruction of the highway in preparation for the Winter Olympics in 2010 that astonished us with it’s immensity, but did not slow us too much.
by Marja-Leena Making an Impression
“Inertia” by Marie Price
I’m very pleased to announce that I’m participating in an invitational printmaking exhibition:
Making an Impression: Invitational Printmaking Exhibition
with Heather Aston, Marie Price, Rina Pita, William Steinberg, Ingunn Kemble, Marja-Leena Rathje, Patricia Baldwin, Valerie Metz, Susan Campbell, Arnold Shives, Jane Adams, Peter Kiss, Tania Gleave, Gillian Armitage, Michiko Suzuki, Wayne Eastcott, Ross Penhall, and Gordon Smith
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 11, 6 – 8 pm
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, September 15, 2 pm
Exhibition runs September 11 – 29, 2007
Gallery Hours 11am – 5pm, Tuesday – Sunday
Ferry Building Gallery
1414 Argyle Avenue, Ambleside Landing, West Vancouver, BC
I am honoured to be showing with this wonderful group of artists – it should be exciting. I’m looking forward to being at the Ferry Building again. It’s a lovely historic old building located on the oceanside next to Ambleside Park and the seawall walk.
If you are in the area, please come by. Hope to see you there!
by Marja-Leena Bharat Bhavan Biennial
Detail from Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I
Yesterday, while my thoughts were still freshly on international print shows after writing the post about the Krakow Print Triennial 2006, I heard the thud of letters and magazines dropping in through the mail slot. I was most excited to find among the bills and junk mail a letter from India – is it good news or bad?
It is good! I have had my printworks accepted into the SEVENTH BHARAT BHAVAN INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF PRINT – ART 2006 INDIA! I am particularly pleased because this is the first time I’ve entered a competition in India, and because the jury fee was very steep and the mailing not cheap.
The exhibition has already opened on February 13th at the Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts in Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, India. I think all three pieces that I submitted will be on exhibition there: Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I, Nexus/Blue I and Nexus/Blue II. I am looking forward to receiving the catalogue!
This place sounds interesting. Because they do not have a website, here are a few words from the submission brochure:
Inaugurated by the former prime minister of India Smt. Indira Gandhi on Feb.13, 1982, Bharat Bhavan is a multi-art complex, providing interactive proximity to the verbal, the visual and the performing arts. […] Roopankar is the only museum of fine arts in India which houses both contemporary urban and folk – tribal art. Attached to the museum is a fully equipped printmaking workshop, ceramic workshop, design unit, archival section and facilities for stone carving and bronze casting.
International Print Biennials have been held there since 1989 with distinguished jury invited from around the world.
by Marja-Leena an installation photo
Installation photo of Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #1-5 (left to right)
Well, I’ve spent many hours getting intimate with the digital camera and an external flash trying to get some decent installation photos of my work. As I’m no expert with the finer points of this technology, it’s been rather frustrating. The conditions in the gallery are difficult to overcome with its different types of lights, bright spots, dark spots, a ceiling that is grey and textured that won’t reflect a bounce flash, and the art work that has a shiny mylar layer. The colours keep coming up wrong, such as the walls which are really a greyish white in real life. So, I’ve resigned myself to offering this pitiful photo of the group of prints called Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #1-5 in addition to the other one I posted recently.
As I’ve mentioned before, artist Karen D’Amico** of London, UK, and I met and corresponded through our respective artist blogs. She mailed me about a dozen close-ups of rocks that she had photographed. Karen offered these to me to use in my work as I wished. I chose five of them to create Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #1-5. Thus it became “a borderless collaboration of sorts”, as Karen commented.
I am going to arrange a photo session in the audiovisual centre of the library with proper lights and a high-end digital camera, maybe with a polarizing filter, to take proper photos of each of the new works. Usually I take slides with a regular camera, but more and more galleries are finally accepting digital images on CDs. It will save the step of scanning slides when I need digital files, like for this blog.
All going well, these will get posted here soon and archived in my portfolio under Printworks at the top left. (Then you will get a better look though never as good as the real thing!) If you haven’t already seen them, check out the first three Silent Messengers there. The last ten Nexus series prints, some of which were the first experiments with layering and with full digital printmaking, are also in the show. These are rather scattered in the Nexus portfolio, having been posted in the infancy of my blog.
** Reedited March 15th, 2013: 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 Exhibition Photo & Statement
Installation of Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I to V (left to right)
Artist’s Exhibition Statement
For some years now, my work has been informed by and engaged with the contrasts and tension between connections in the ancient marks made by early humans, (particularly in the areas of my ethnic roots in northern Europe), in Nature’s own mark-making and shape-making (such as the Hoodoos), and in my own use, as a modern human, of new technologies in image making.
The “Silent Messengers” series of prints are the most recent works, the culmination of experiments and research into combining traditional and digital printmaking techniques on paper and mylar as evidenced in the “Nexus” prints also shown here. I have desired to exploit the effect of layering transparent materials to embody a concept of time and continuity of humans and nature.
Referencing ancient rock art in a modern way is my way of acknowledging this long thread of connection with those humans and artists of long ago.
Much of my research is by way of the internet and books, virtual travel in the comfort of my chair. One of many inspiring researchers for me has been Pekka Kivikäs, a keen documenter and author of books on Finnish rock art aimed at readers interested in the ancient culture of Finno-Ugric regions. Kivikäs considers rock art “the silent message of man from behind the thousands of years”. Recently rereading about him and his work, I was struck by that phrase, considering that my current print series is titled “Silent Messengers”.
Silent Messengers
Studio Art Gallery at Capilano College
North Vancouver, BC, Canada
November 16th – December 7th, 2005
Note: In the archives under PrintWorks – Silent Messengers, you may view closer photos of Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I, Silent Messengers: Hoodoos II and Silent Messengers: Hoodoos III. Proper photos of Hoodoos IV and V will be posted later when I’ve taken slides of all the latest new work.
by Marja-Leena opening night
Here are just a few photos of the opening of Silent Messengers, my exhibition of mixed media prints which opened on Wednesday evening, November 16th. (I’m the one in the red shirt!) Though many friends did not make it that night, there were quite a few nice surprises amongst those who did. It was exciting to meet in person several people whom I’d met through my blog like Jason, and blogger Jill with Nola, and Linda and Brian who gave me a tiny book Petroglyphs of Quadra Island by Joy Inglis, a reprint of part of The Spirit in the Stone. That book, that is my post on it, was how they found my blog and wrote me about their own visits to the petroglyphs, so thank you for that special gift and for your presence that night!!
It was also great to see Michael Boxall, former editor of Arts Alive, who had done a fabulous interview of Bonnie Jordan and me about our show that was going to Finland back in 2002. He spent a long time looking at the group Silent Messengers: Connecting with D’Amico #1-5, saying those were his favourites.
Thank you everyone for all the great questions and conversations about my work and the very positive feedback. A special thank you to Peter, a fellow artist, for helping me install my work earlier that day. As I wrote earlier it was a very exciting day in more ways than just this opening!
I know these photos don’t show much of my work at all, but I will post some installation shots soon, though I will have to reshoot some of them later.
By the way, if you are in the Vancouver area, haven’t yet seen the show yet and would like to visit it, the exhibition continues to December 7th. If need be, I may be able to open the gallery outside the posted hours if you let me know by email.
by Marja-Leena post-vernissage
Thanks again to everyone for the wonderful comments and emails these past days, I love hearing from you all! You have told me that you are eagerly awaiting photos of the opening, and I promise they are coming very soon. Life is hectic these days as an artist and as a mother and grandmother, in a happy way. I’m slow because I need to try to correct most of the opening night photos that came out a ghastly green because of the digital camera’s interpretation of the strange mix of incandescent and mercury vapour lights in the gallery. On Friday, I also took some installation photos and have to download and likely colour correct some of these too. I might even have to reshoot some of these.
In the meantime, do read this excellent argument of conceptualist versus sensualist written by Mark Wladika of Newmark Confidential, from the view of “the patrons and supporters of art”. “Our task, our joy is the pure sensual relation to art. We get to simply look and feel and experience, with our brain put somewhere in the background.”
I can strongly identify with this argument as an artist, too. If I get too involved in “thinking” about what my work is about before I do it, I can get stuck with being too analytical or self-critical and not make the work. The key for me is to maintain the emotions and excitement of finding connections in ideas and images, that is, keeping the brain in the background. Later comes the critical analysis of the work and placing it in the context of a greater theme, and finding the right words to describe it. I guess that means that I’m not a conceptual artist, one who begins with the idea and the words.
P.S. Hey Chris/Zeke, if you are reading this – my email reply to you is being rejected as spam!! I want to let you know that I’m not ignoring your email. I tried to write that I love the word “vernissage” much more than “opening”, and yes, it went well, thanks!
by Marja-Leena a birth day
Proudly announcing the birth of our second grandchild Niamh Eili, another grand-daughter, a little after midnight November 16th, 2005!
What an unforgettable day! A 12:45 am phone call announcing the birth added to my excitement level and lessened my sleep credit hours for the day ahead. The hanging of my show and having the opening in the evening had me running on adrenalin.
The opening went very well. I was excited to meet several new friends made through my blog, and our eldest daughter surprised us, coming from out-of-town and adding to the excitement.
Warmest thanks to everyone who came and everyone who sent me good wishes here and by email. I will write more about the opening once I’ve downloaded the pictures and gathered my thoughts in a coherent fashion.
Last but not least, of course after the opening we had to go and visit our tiniest, beautiful brand new family member. What a sense of regeneration and continuation I felt seeing her. Some years ago, I remember feeling a sense of loss as our family had shrunk with our parents gone. Now our daughters have partners and another generation is growing. Time to add another leaf to the dining room table this Christmas! Now I need a nap…
Addendum Nov.18th: Baby’s other granddad wrote this welcome!