Silent Messengers: Hoodoos II
Silent Messengers: Hoodoos II
Inkjet & collagraph on paper, inkjet on clear mylar layer
91.5 x 58.3 cm.
Please see Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I for more information about this series.
by Marja-Leena
by Marja-Leena Champuru
This just arrived in my inbox courtesy of a Japanese artist friend (thanks Tomoyo!) and it sounds like a fascinating exhibition, both culturally and historically:
CENTRE A presents
CHAMPURU : CONTEMPORARY ART IN OKINAWA
IE Ryujin
MAEDA Hiroya
HANASHIRO Ikuko
Presented in partnership with the Okinawa Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition: June 4 – 25, 2005
Opening: Friday, June 3, 8pm
Location: Tinseltown, 88 W. Pender Street
Symposium: Saturday, June 4, 10 am – 5 pm
featuring Okinawan food, music and dance, and sumi painting workshop
Location: Vancouver Japanese Language School, 475 Alexander Street
Curated by Hank Bull
Okinawa is a group if semi-tropical islands located between Japan and Taiwan. Although a province of Japan, Okinawa maintains its own distinct culture. Over centuries of trade with China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands, Okinawa has developed a unique cultural mix, popularly called “champuru”, which is reflected in its exquisite textiles, ceramics, music and lacquer. Okinawa also has strong local traditions that include matriarchal shamanism, cuisine, a close connection with nature and the world’s best longevity statistics.
It is a tragic counterpoint to this alluring image that in 1945 Okinawa was the site of the longest pitched battle in history, one which took an awful toll on the civilian population, and that the presence of huge US military bases remains today a highly unpopular fact of life. Okinawa has been a staging ground for the Korean war, the Vietnam war and both wars in Iraq and constitutes a bastion of US foreign policy in Asia.
The exhibition, the first of its kind to take place in North America, will present examples of contemporary collage, sculpture and installation art.
The symposium will begin with a discussion of planning for the Okinawa Museum of Contemporary Art, slated to open in 2007. The afternoon session will feature performances of Okinawan music and dance, karate, and a sumi painting workshop.
Three artist/curators associated with the Okinawa Museum of Contemporary Art will attend the exhibition and symposium. Many years in the planning, this museum project raises questions about the role of the museum in the construction of national identity and offers an opportunity for comparison with Centre A’s own development plans. Experiencing Okinawan contemporary art will offer insights into neo-colonialism, globalization and trans-culturality.
The Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the BC Gaming Branch and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.
Media Contact: Hank Bull, 604-683-8326; centrea@centrea.org
ADDENDUM: Please read about our visit to this exhibition.
by Marja-Leena Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I
Silent Messengers: Hoodoos I
Inkjet & collagraph on paper, inkjet on clear mylar layer
91.5 x 58.3 cm.
The two layers are attached together with three small grommets at top, allowing layers to hang loosely and without frames. Note some reflection off the clear shiny mylar.
This is the first in my new “Silent Messengers” series of prints, the culmination of two years of experiments and research into combining traditional and digital printmaking techniques on paper and mylar. My explorations into materials suitable for layering will continue in order to exploit the effect of layering transparent materials to embody a concept of time.
This inquiry is 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 modern human’s use of new technologies in image making.
by Marja-Leena Canada’s visual artists
Statistics Canada reports 15,000 artists in Canada.
The direct impact of culture on GDP was $40 billion.
78% of BC artists earn less than $10,000 per year making art.
There were 2400 applicants for 220 creation grants last year.
The visual arts section of the Canada Council has the smallest budget (3.5 million/ 150 million).
Post secondary institutions are graduating 8000 fine arts students per year (double 5 years ago).
These shocking numbers are excerpted from BC president Femke van Delft’s front page article in Visual Arts Voice, newsletter of CARFAC BC, Spring 2005 issue, concerning Canada Council’s proposed changes to grants. Unfortunately it’s not online.
This was published just before Canada Council for the Arts announced their new program.
Links for further reading:
– The story on CBC
– Chris of Zeke’s Gallery keeps on top of all this and has put together a bunch of links on the subject.
– CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation)
– CARFAC BC affiliate (sadly not updated)
– my older post about CARFAC
by Marja-Leena weather
When you can’t muster a post about anything else, there’s always the weather!
Yule Heibel, who lives in Victoria, over the water southeast of Vancouver, beat me to it, that is, a discussion of our unusual Westcoast weather. She’s said everything I wanted to say and better than I could, even mentioning Winnipeg, where I grew up.
All I can add is that around 3:00 pm today our outside thermometer was 32C (about 90 F), which is a July heatwave, usually lasting about two weeks. Doing the spring gardening has been tough, with very cool and wet weather last week (more than Victoria as usual), and this week I have to be outside very early, while the dew is heavy on the lawn and do what I can before the heat. By this time the house is also hot, so my brain is fried trying to work at the computer or anything else. If this is a sign that we are in for three or four months of hot weather, you will be looking at one miserable person – I wilt and turn into a cranky, headachy, non-functioning vegetable. My northern blood may start telling me it’s time to move to the Arctic, hah!
Talking about climate change, in today’s Vancouver Sun (link will be short-lived), the front page headline is “Climate change threatens future of B.C.’s famed red cedars: Warmer, drier summers lead to tree fatigue”. Our trees have certainly been dropping their mess a lot more than usual the past two years, and end up blown into flower beds, eavestroughs and decks.
On a lighter note, go to the last page (courtesy of Finnish artist blogger Cholegh).
Oh, and to my American friends and family, have a great Memorial Day long weekend!
by Marja-Leena Edward Burtynsky revisited
Edward Burtynsky: Nickel Tailings No. 32
Sudbury, Ontario 1996
About a year ago I wrote a bit about the achievements of Canadian photo-artist Edward Burtynsky (unfortunately the link to the news article has since expired). This year he has won a TED prize of US$100,000! But, wait, go read his website on where the money is going, and have a look at his beautiful yet disturbing works. He exhibits widely, presently in San Diego and later this year in New York.
I like what Tyler Green has written in an interesting review of his work at Modern Art Notes. I’m fascinated in how Burtynsky’s life experience with the deathly effects of oil has informed the subject matter of his photographic works, and how he is using his success to further the environmental cause. Do visit Tyler’s blog post and the many related links.
UPDATE:
More at News Grist and some multimedia at Cybermuse
by Marja-Leena Finland Diary
Wow, did I receive a lovely surprise on this morning’s check on ionarts. In Blogging Finland, Charles Downey wrote:
Thanks to The Cranky Professor, I learned about one of the Washington Post blogs, Robert G. Kaiser’s Finland Diary, for which the blogger and a photographer are traveling around Finland, “the world’s most interesting country that Americans know least about.” Given our admiration for the musical life of the Finns, I have a feeling it will become a regular read. Does Marja-Leena know about it yet?
I’ve spent the last hour (I’m supposed to be working!) reading the “diary”, really amazed and proud of my birth country’s success. Most of it is not really new to me, it’s the details that really fascinate me. It’s interesting also to hear about places I know such as Kuopio which is in my “home” province in beautiful eastern Finland, and the lively university and arts town of Jyväskylä, and of course Helsinki.
That city mayors are hired, not elected, into permanent positions is news to me. Government by consensus, even in coalition governments, we know about and often bring up in discussions here in Canada, with our presently embattled federal minority government, and in British Columbia where we’ve just had a referendum on changing to a proportional representation voting system (which exists in Finland).
Finland’s high taxes are often brought up but we’ve found from personal discussions with relatives that they are really no more than what we pay in Canada, when you add all our various taxes and user fees, but they receive more for their money. Finns generally see taxes as a fair price to pay for a society that provides equal opportunities, and because everyone benefits directly from our public services. Everyone has been educated in public schools and universities. Everyone has used the public health services. These aren’t just services for the poor. If you don’t allow your democratically-elected government to tax the economy to provide equal opportunities in life for everyone, no one else can do it. But comparing tax bites as a percentage of GDP is misleading. To compare yourselves to Finland, Americans should add to the 25% you pay in taxes all the costs of health insurance and health care, higher education, savings for pensions and so on–in other words, all the expenses that Finns don’t have to pay, once they’ve paid their taxes.
Finland’s excellent education system has received a lot of attention. I’m pleased to have confirmation of a suspicion that credit goes to the high status given to the vocation of teaching. Teachers are required to have a great deal more education than generally here in North America.
Many thanks, Charles, for sharing this link – I do look forward to a “regular read” of Finland Diary.
UPDATE: The word is out in Finland at Finnish blog Pinseri!
by Marja-Leena Portrait of Aaron V
Portrait of Aaron V
etching, engraving & drypoint
76 x 56.5 cm.
by Marja-Leena a long weekend
Looking back to last year’s entry of this diary, er blog, I see that I’ve already written about Canada’s Victoria Day long weekend, so if you are interested, do visit that post. This year it’s a wet long weekend here. After a very early and warm spring, even a heat wave in April, we’ve been having a spell of cool and very wet weather with heavy thundershowers battering flowers. That’s a rather typical pattern on the westcoast, though earlier this year.
Everything is very lush and overgrown in our garden now, calling for pruning, weeding and deadheading, and tying up rain flattened tall perennials. Yesterday we were able to work outside for a few hours before showers returned. Today, it’s an indoors day tidying up and cooking a dinner for good friends coming here for the evening. Tomorrow, if it rains we may head out for some shopping which we haven’t done for a long time. Back to the kitchen now!
by Marja-Leena Lalla Essaydi
Lalla Essaydi Converging Territories # 30, 2004
47 x 57 1/2″ chromogenic print
I’ve just been looking at and getting excited by Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi’s Converging Territories, a series of large-format colour portraits of women and children in Morocco, now showing in New York.
These are very compelling images because the photographer revisits the house she used to be confined in, and “creates a mysterious and timeless space with a cloth background, entirely covered with Islamic calligraphy that she herself has written in henna. She then painstakingly covers the women and children with henna before photographing them in front of the cloth.” She has also wrapped them in the same cloth, so walls, floor and figures are equally covered in her “stream-of-consciousness diary”.
These works blew me away and spun me back to the time when I was working on my Veils Suite series of prints, which frequently portray wrapped figures. Another interesting connection is that one of my works was based on an Irving Penn photograph of Guedra women in Morocco.
Thanks to another artist-blogger, Gregg Chadwick of Speed of Life for bringing Lalla Essaydi’s work to my attention. Do read his observations and quotes for more about her.
UPDATE 26th May: There’s a short but good review also at Modern Kicks, with a mention of yours truly, thank you!