to Morocco
Veils Suite: to Morocco
etching 60 x 44 cm.
A variation of Veils Suite: After Penn’s Guedras
by Marja-Leena
by Marja-Leena January blues
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies.
– John Keats: “Ode on Melancholy”
It’s foggy and raining heavily, the snow’s washed away, and I nurse my January blues with many cups of tea and reading by my little indoor garden. Soon, soon, I wish for energy and the desire to get back to my artmaking.
UPDATE: While I’m cosy at home, I don’t realize what’s happening beyond. The evening TV news has reported that this monsoon on top of the recent snow is creating a lot of flooding in many areas of the city and around southwestern BC. Our backyard like elsewhere is a swamp because the ground is still frozen and can’t absorb the melted snow along with the huge amount of rain coming down, with lots more in the forecast for several days. Records are breaking again. In the meantime the Maritimes are having a blizzard. Enough reasons for January blues!
by Marja-Leena ArtsNow for Olympics 2010
The monthly Opus Visual Arts Newsletter (in print and online) provides useful information for artists such as calls for submissions, some arts news and, my favourite part, an always thoughtful and well-written editorial by arts advocate Chris Tyrell. Sometimes this newsletter seems to be the only source of some of the arts news in our province!
In this month’s editorial New Money for the Arts, Chris Tyrell details the cultural funding program that is now in place for Olympics 2010 being held in BC. Of special relevance to artists and particularly arts organizations is ArtsNow whose “mission statement is as follows: To strengthen and enhance the creative capacity of individuals, organizations and communities throughout the province.[…]They seek to fund projects that create lasting change for a better arts sector and/or community.” Please read the newsletter and the ArtsNow website for all the details.
Tyrell finishes: “This good news is timely. As I wrote in last month’s editorial, Opus has offered to host an artists’ forum later this month on what kind of collective action the visual arts community might take to coincide with the Olympic Games. Now when we meet, we will know that there are new funding opportunities for us should we decide to do something innovative. The meeting will also give the community the opportunity to discuss Artropolis, a tradition in need of help.
Opus’ public forum is on Wednesday, January 26th at 7:00pm in the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre (the Planetarium), 1100 Chestnut Street in Vancouver. The forum will determine if there is interest in a visual arts Olympic celebration, different models of showcasing visual art and about the future of Artropolis. It will be an interesting meeting, so please plan to attend and, as space is limited, please RSVP to my e-address below.” (ctyrell at shaw.ca)
Related link: Artropolis
by Marja-Leena Ethno-Techno photos & review
James K-M, curator of the Ethno-Techno exhibition of last October in which I participated, sent a note today that the installation photos of that show are now up on the Digitalis site. Please have a look. If you are new to my blog, you may wish to read my earlier post about this exhibition.
The site also includes a thoughtful article (pdf) written by Dave Watson in the Georgia Straight newspaper Nov.18.2004 about the use of technology by artists, such as in this exhibition. He writes:
the breadth of artistic expression using technology was really underscored for me by the New Forms Festival, held here in October with the theme of ‘Technography: Experiments With Technology to Explore Our World’. Artists are taking to the digital realm and using it to do grandly ambitious things that consistently surprise and amaze me.
Watson interviews James K-M:
As a curator, K-M established the annual Digitalis exhibition of digital print, which was presented this year in collaboration with New Forms. He focuses on work whose digital component isn’t blatantly obvious once the computers are removed. The printout (or other output method) stands on its own, framed and mounted. Perhaps because K-M’s background, precomputer, was as a painter, his interests lie more with the message of a given work than with the electronic gear that created it. He wants art that says something about human consciousness and that isn’t just a means to decorate a wall. When we’re looking at sculpture, painting, or digital art, he says, the important question is, What are the ideas? You can look at the technique afterwards. With Digitalis, he aims to present works that couldn’t have been created without computers yet that don’t necessarily look like they were. With this work the technology disappears, because the artists are pretty good at using the software. It’s a medium just like any other. When you’re pushing paint on canvas it’s no different than on a computer, where you’re pushing the medium within its structural limitations.
(Hyperlinks added by me.)
by Marja-Leena after Penn’s Guedras
Veils Suite: after Penn’s Guedras
etching & drypoint 60 x 44 cm
I was working on my Veils Suite series of prints about wrapped and veiled figures, when in some magazine now long forgotten, I came across Irving Penn’s photographs of the guedras of Morocco. They inspired several pieces; the first is this one – Veils Suite: after Penn’s Guedras. I will post some of the others over the next week or two.
I was recently reminded again of Irving Penn by Joerg at conscientous* who offers links to some bios and examples of Penn’s photographic works. My favourites are his African photographs and of course this one* that so inspired me. I also found this similar compelling and disturbing one of three rissani women which I don’t think I have seen before.
* expired links, removed
by Marja-Leena Head Dress
Veils Suite: Head Dress
collagraph 66 x 52 cm.
by Marja-Leena Blogging and Art
A few days ago I made a short reference to the PEW study about artists and the internet. Ivan Pope has also linked to it, and continued to blog about how the web is creating a generation of Pro-Am (Professional Amateur) artists, and about the ‘Long Tail’ of Contemporary Art. He concludes: “Now we can see that the combination of blogging and online galleries may give rise to a new ecosystem of art. The Long Tail of art may be about to be exposed.”
Good reading! What do you think of the Long Tail of Art, is it happening?
UPDATE Jan.11.05: There’s more today on starting an experiment and more to follow. Keep your eyes on this and if you are an artist blogger, consider some kind of participation…hmmm?
by Marja-Leena Prints from Newfoundland
Guide and Protector of All the Children (detail), Jerry Evans, lithograph, 2000
(scanned from Burnaby Art Gallery invitation)
The Burnaby Art Gallery has been featuring quite a few print exhibitions this past year and this one sounds the most exciting yet: The Power of Place – 30 Years of Printmaking in Newfoundland is on from January 14-February 27, 2005.
This exhibition includes 50 prints and one artist’s book by 13 artists selected from the archives of the St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It is curated by Patricia Grattan, director of the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador and organized and circulated by that gallery.
The Printshop’s spring 2003 newsletter on their website states:
The Power of Place opened at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador on March 14 to explore the role that St. Michael’s Printshop has played in the development of Canadian printmaking practice and to mark its 30th Anniversary. In attempt to select the work for the exhibition from the over 2000 works in the printshop archives, curator Patricia Grattan “chose to focus on individual artists from Newfoundland and elsewhere.” She wanted to show “artists whose work and art practice have been shaped by St. Michael’s, or artists who have helped to shape its operations and objectives (and the influence often has gone both ways). They include its primary founders, visiting master printers, Newfoundland artists who have gone on to earn their master printer chops, artists who also served as shop co-ordinators, board members, and some who are acknowledged as leading Canadian printmakers and print innovators.
… (from Patricia Grattan’s curatorial text.)
St. Michael’s Printshop has played an important role in the development of printmaking in Canada. It was founded in 1972 by artists Heidi Oberheide and Don Wright. At the time, there were no accredited art teaching programs in St. John’s and the studio quickly became, and continues to be, and important element in the development of professional and experimental artists.
The Visiting Artist program is internationally well-known and sought out, and some of my printmaker friends on the Westcoast have taken that opportunity, such as Taiga Chiba and Manuel Lau in 2003.
I am really looking forward to viewing the works of these important printmakers who live or have worked for a while in Newfoundland, on the very far away opposite coast of Canada. For my away-from-Vancouver readers, I’ve found links for all the artists so that you can see some examples of their work, since the exhibit itself, sadly, has no web page and the Burnaby Art Gallery’s listing is very minimal. if you are interested in learning more about printmaking and the history of St. Michael’s Printshop, do visit their website.
The artists: Anne Meredith Barry, Sylvia Bendzsa, Jerry Evans, Helen Gregory, Don Holman, Harold Klunder, Christine Koch, Heidi Oberheide, Sharon Puddester, William B. Ritchie, Otis Tamasauskas, David Umholtz and Don Wright
ADDED: Please see my post with photos about our visit to this show
by Marja-Leena Tomoyo Ihaya
Art Beatus is presenting Fountain, a special collection of prints and mixed media works by Tomoyo Ihaya from January 14 to March 11, 2005. The opening reception is on Friday, January 14th from 3 to 6 pm. in the Nelson Square Tower at 108 – 808 Nelson Street, Vancouver.
Tomoyo and I met and became friends some years ago at the Art Institute, Printmaking at Capilano College. Later she went on to do her Masters in printmaking at one of the best printmaking schools in Canada, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Tomoyo has won many awards for her work, including the Ernst & Young Great Canadian Printmaking Competition. To see more of her work, have a look at this award-winning piece (pdf). If you are in Vancouver, I hope to see you at the opening!
UPDATE Jan.15.05: I did make it to the opening yesterday afternoon and was glad I went. Tomoyo’s work is always appealing and poetic. Her venture into a new medium with the “little people” installations succesfully melded thematically with her works on paper. Lots of people there. Congratulations, Tomoyo!
by Marja-Leena snow!
What a thrill to wake up to the first snowfall this winter in the Vancouver area, below the mountains that is! I went snap happy with the digital camera, knowing how fleeting this can be. Already as I’m writing this in the afternoon, it has stopped snowing and it’s melting a bit. The forecast calls for more over the next few days, so we hope it stays a bit, though Vancouver drivers get in such a flurry (pun intended).
These photos were taken around home while it was snowing and the sky was heavy and grey, so the results are almost black and white – rather interesting, wouldn’t you say?
Below is a photo taken looking out a window with a white paper cutout snowflake appearing in dark silhouette against the bright outdoors. Youngest daughter Erika has made these unique Christmas decorations for many years, and they are always the last to be taken down in the New Year.
