by Marja-Leena Zinken posted about a report on the fascinating Creswell Crags, which I have been reading about with great interest for some time, and which led me to the newly returned Art Daily – thanks!
I wrote with some sadness about their closing two months ago, so now I’m pleased to welcome Art Daily back!
by Marja-Leena Lenny writes an interesting art blog at Washington, DC Art News. Today he writes about how he came to chosen to be the curator for the upcoming “Homage to Frida Kahlo” exhibition. (The call for artists will be announced soon by Art.com.)
Lenny writes about seeing Frida Kahlo’s work for the first time in 1975 in Mexico:
I remember walking into the museum salon where the Two Fridas hung. It was love, or more like witchcraft, at first sight. This large, spectacular painting swallowed my visual senses and attention as no work of art would do again until…
He became “obsessed'” by her work, and in 1997, together with the Mexican Cultural Institute he curated a highly successful exhibition of Kahlo’s work in Washington, DC. He writes that The love affair then produced in 2002 a show of my own work titled “Passion for Frida: 27 Years of Frida Kahlo Artwork. With this obvious passion for and knowledge of her work, he was thus invited to be curator for this new exhibition.
Now I love Frida Kahlo’s work, which I saw two years ago at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but what particularly struck me about this story, is the EXPERIENCE of seeing art that draws a powerful response within the viewer.
A new blogger, Stacy Oborn wrote about this experience recently:
…when you encounter work that, to borrow van gogh’s language, ‘hits the yellow high note’, it is at once made known to you that what you are responding to is an articulation of your aesthetic that you had yet to realize, something within that you are confronted with, and that once confronted you know that your task is to find a way to wrench it from your being and put it out in front of you. like that which you are looking at, but to have it come from you.
by Marja-Leena Eliane at Sellotape Files pointed to Bezembinder who has featured a gorgeous online version of Le Brun’s System on Physiognomy by Morel d’Arleux (after Charles Le Brun).
“The present exhibition concerns a rare and astonishing album of engravings first published in 1806, finely reproducing the set of Charles Le Brun’s physiognomies – comparative drawings of human and animal faces – that had been made over 135 years earlier.”
Hope you enjoy these as much as I do! (thanks, Eliane)
by Marja-Leena 
Here are a few installation views taken of my 1998 solo exhibition of the Meta-morphosis series at the Seymour Art Gallery in North Vancouver, BC.
Installation photos are always a challenge with the various lights, reflections and distractions (like the dark plinths), but they do give some overall view of the exhibition.
This bottom photo shows a display of the deeply-etched copperplate that was used in printing the adjacent Meta-morphosis X prints.
by Marja-Leena September is almost here and I am looking at some of the upcoming fall events in Vancouver. This one sounds very interesting:
New Forms Festival 2004, a celebration of International Media Arts.
The New Forms Festival is an annual festival forum highlighting emerging forms at the junction of art, culture and technology. This year’s theme is ‘TECHNOGRAPHY’ – a hybrid word denoting the inscriptions of culture in technology. NFF04: TECHNOGRAPHY will examine the relationship of culture and technology: how culture writes technology and how technology writes culture. It will bring together practitioners and theorists from across grassroots, gallery and academic contexts and provide platforms for conversations among the diverse voices of contemporary digital regionalism.”
It will be held in Vancouver, B. C. from October 14, 2004 until October 28, 2004. There is lots of interesting reading about the events on their website. In conjunction with the festival, several exhibitions are also being organized.
One of these is “DIGITALIS 3.5: ETHNO-TECHNO: An Exhibition of Digital Print”:
The “theme Ethno-Techno refers to the convergence of ethnology and technology, or the expression of ethnicity or ethnicities in the form of digital print. Artists are encouraged to play in their own ethnicity or in the ethnicity of other cultures. Subject matter can be related to racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background. Images submitted must have been manipulated in some way by the computer.”
Organized by the Digitalis Digital Art Society, this international exhibition of original digital prints will be on public display at the Electra building, 989 Nelson Street, and the Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, B. C. from October 14, 2004 until October 28, 2004.
I was invited to submit some work for the jurying and am pleased to have one of my recent digital prints selected for this show. In fact, in the spring I wrote about one exhibition put together by Digitalis. Perhaps this is how I came to be invited to apply. It should be a very interesting and educational event!
by Marja-Leena For the first time ever, the work of an artist is featured on a Canadian currency note. The new twenty-dollar bill with anti-counterfeiting features, still has the Queen on one side, and the other illustrates the art of Bill Reid, the late Canadian artist who revitalized the West Coast Haida culture of his mother.
Most prominent of the four works represented are the monumental sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, one of which is at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, and The raven and the first man, the Haida story of human creation, located at the The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. (I wrote about MOA recently.) The other two are Xhuwaji – Haida Grizzly Bear and Mythic messengers.
“Also on that side, in the country’s two official languages, is a poignant question from the late Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy : ‘Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?'”
**From the article “Haida icon’s art on flip side of Queen” by Glenn Bohn, in yesterday’s
Vancouver Sun (Aug.26.04). Also the Globe and Mail (Aug.25.04)
(**Registration may be required for both newspapers, sorry, but try BugMeNot, recommended by mirabilis)
by Marja-Leena Last week I wrote about Smithson’s Spiral Jetty re-emerging and about Todd Gibson’s visits there. Hope you have had a look at his series of articles and photos at From the Floor.
Today he came across some photos at While Seated that were taken ten weeks earlier! Have a look at these gorgeous photos and see the difference in the water levels: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6.
Thanks Todd for finding them and sharing.
by Marja-Leena I have been having an interesting email correspondence with Vyacheslav Mizin, a Russian in St. Petersburg who found my site and wrote to me about his interests and research into Arctic stone cultures. His research trips around the St. Petersburg region, Murmansk region and Karelia are the subject of a report he is preparing for the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg and for a book he is writing. Vyacheslav sees many parallels between the northern European Saami and Canada’s Inuit and hopes to put together a website on this.
He has kindly allowed me to share some of his writing and photos here in the hope that these Russian Arctic megaliths will be of interest outside Russia. (By his request, I have edited the English, but only minimally and I hope correctly.)
“Flying stones of Lapland”: Northern megaliths of Russian Arctic Region.
In the Karelia and the Murmansk region of north-west Russia are many ancient places of power with sacred stones from pre-historic ages. The Saami (Lapps), who are the most ancient Finno-Ugric people of northern Europe, named these stones “seidas”. Their weight can be up to 20 tons, some lie singly, some are in complexes of hundreds of stones. One of the riddles concerning seidas is their similarity with dolmens of Western Europe, Canada and Korea. If these stones were not in the Arctic but instead in England, they would be named dolmens. Near seidas there are often other megalithic forms – stone circles, stone heaps, square “altars”.
In Russia the known seida complexes are on Mount Vottovaara, in the national park of Paanajarvi in the Kuzova Islands in the White Sea. On the mountain seidas were put on other rocks, on marked tracks and in water, and in some places are in lines and circles. Some are located among contorted dead trees and this place is a “place of power”, the centre of an ancient earthquake and with a bad reputation.
Lapland has legends that seidas could fly – that has given it the second name Laplandia – “country of a flying stone”. Another Saami legend is when the spirit departs from a stone, the stone shatters.
Photos by Vyacheslav Mizin:
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left: Note the delicate balance where the top stone actually keeps the lower ones from falling.
centre: A plateau of seidas in the hundreds in the Murmansk region
right: This Vottovaara seida weighs more than 10 tons.
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left: UFO-like seida in the Murmansk region
centre: Vottovaara trees, a Karelian place of power
right: Line of seidas in the Karelian woods on Vottovaara
I also have thought about these connections between the seidas of the Sami in NW Russia & Finland and the inuksuit in northern Canada. I was surprised that Korea was mentioned so he has provided this Korean site. The expression “places of power” seems to be common in discussions of the sacred rock art of the north!
Related to this is an earlier post I wrote on Karelia’s rock art, which has a page on seidas, including these Vottovaara photos (the top right photo here is Vyacheslav’s).
Visit Vyacheslav Mizin’s interesting site which has more photos, but unfortunately for now has little English and is very slow to download, and this site. Thank you for sharing!
Addendum Aug.28.04. Vyacheslav has just sent this newly translated page on Russian places of power.
Addendum Sept.17.04. Still more English pages on arctic megaliths.
(thanks Erika for helping me with the photo placement! )
by Marja-Leena A fascinating collaboration between two internationally well-known printmakers has been happening in the printmaking studios at Capilano University, North Vancouver. Japanese artist, Michiko Suzuki of Tokyo, Japan became the University’s first artist-in-residence in the fall of 2003 and also began a collaboration with Wayne Eastcott, printmaking faculty of Studio Art.
As a member of the Art Institute (Printmaking) at Capilano University**, I was fortunate to observe Michiko’s interesting demonstrations and seminars on her use of Japanese papers (washi) and her unique technique of toner etching. Most exciting was watching Wayne & Michiko’s development of their collaborative works.
This ongoing series of print media works is called INTERCONNECTION. Some of the earliest of these were presented in an exhibition held in Capilano University’s Studio Art Gallery in December 2003. Read their exhibition statement (pdf) describing how their project developed, and what is “yobitsugi.”
Michiko has been here again this summer so both have been working hard to complete their project. They have allowed me to reproduce some of their work here (their copyright).
Interconnection 2 – Yobitsugi 1 2003
inkjet, silkscreen, etching, chine collé & metallic pigment
78 x 113.5 cm.
Interconnection 2 – Yobitsugi 2 2003
inkjet, silkscreen, etching, chine collé & metallic pigment
78 x 113.5 cm.
Interconnection 3 (Recall 1) 2004
inkjet, silkscreen & metallic pigment
80 x 108 cm.
Michiko and Wayne in the printmaking studio at Capilano University
More about Wayne Eastcott including images of earlier works:
– Represented by Elliot Louis Gallery*, Vancouver
– **UPDATE: now represented by Bellevue Gallery in West Vancouver
– Grand Forks Art Gallery exhibition*
– Capilano University faculty web gallery*
– More images via Google Images
More about Michiko Suzuki, including some images:
– a review
– TrueNorth SNAP International Print Biennial 2002 2nd prize
– Lessedra (Bulgaria) World Art Print Annual 2004 participant
– Bimpe III Triennial First Prize
– Gallery 219 in Tokyo, Japan, will be showing Michiko’s personal work Oct.5-Oct. 20, 2004
* UPDATE January 2012: Some links have been updated or removed if expired.
Edited January 16th, 2013 to show larger images.
** UPDATE summer 2013: This program is no longer offered at Capilano University so link is gone
by Marja-Leena It’s now raining hard in Vancouver at long last after a hot dry summer and instead of outside work, I suddenly have some free time to blog.
Malaspina Printmakers is the subject of a review: Freedom Of The Press by Robin Laurence in the Straight. Laurence views the summer group show in the newly expanded gallery and also the printshop facilities. There are some interesting comments about the closure of the printmaking program at University of Victoria, but the rumoured closing at Emily Carr Institute is fortunately only rumour.
As you will have read in the review, Malaspina is an artist run printmakers’ workshop with a gallery space. Dundarave Print Workshop is another one, and both are located on Granville Island near downtown Vancouver. The “island” is a lively place with a colourful public market, numerous art and craft studios and shops, theatres, restaurants and the art school, Emily Carr Institute. Granville Island is a very popular tourist destination and is a wonderful example of how the arts, business and tourism can thrive together.
We took our European visitors there recently and they were quite enthusiastic also about the colourful and funky houseboats behind the art school, sailboats coming and going, the crowds feeding the seagulls while listening to buskers outside the market and eating takeout food from the variety of stands, all with the city’s sleek highrise condominiums in the background across the water glimmering in the sunshine.