Dizzy, Highs, Native Other at Moustache Club - photos by Mirjana Simeunovich
100 chances to get one of a kind art works at Visual Arts Centre
100 small paintings show & sale opens Nov 18 at 7 p.m.
All works are for sale with 100% of the sale price going directly to the artist. This is an opportunity to get those unique one of kind art pieces so treasured by everyone after the fact. Get them now.
Details here ->
Jay Dart, Now Entering Beyawnder, 2015. Drawing; courtesy of the artist
Wandering beyond the frame with Jay Dart and Shannon Findlay
The wall is a relic. The container burst open. Information wants to be free and artists all over the world are opening up their frames and releasing the idea. Even here in Durham Region. Wander over to the Oshawa-born Berlin-based Shannon Finlay's exhibition, Interference at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. FIndlay's paintings spread past the frame, going viral, spreading along the floors, the ceiling, the walls of the gallery like a virus, breeding expanding breathing, an organism growing out and into the great wide beyawnder beyond the box, the dish, the base, the seed.
Shannon Findlay, Interference, (via Facebook)
Jay Dart too has broken past the frame and his exhibit ‘Greeting From Yawnder’ at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery spreads and grows beyond the page invading the gallery, invading the architecture but spreading its seed by way of the catalogue, the book is the carrier for this idea, and the Yawnderer is released when the book is opened. The work also rests in tree stumps on the gallery floor, and in glass jars, the container of the apothecary and the alchemist.
The art is installation is environment. It begins on the page, with one Jiggs who becomes many, brightly coloured bearded gents wander over ‘Yawnder and Elseswheres’, building, creating, growing, making. Trees become pencils, a nod perhaps to Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design OCADU building in Toronto, but the coloured pencils of Dart don’t support the tiled mosaic of Alsop but blurry clouds, canopies perhaps.
The men wander the world of Yawnder, across rivers and mountains, hills and forests and its curious that the Forest has its own inhabitant, but not the Windigo of Canadian Lumberjack lore but a giant, a woman. It seems that in this new environment that is leaking from the gallery, from the idea place out into the world has revealed its secret, the most powerful figure in this new world being created by our artists is not the Big Man of old but the Big Woman.
The world beyond our own will be watched over by a woman. Jay Dart’s exhibit will close but the seed has been planted and the journey continues.
Jay Dart Out There 44" x 30", 2016 graphite & watercolour (via website)
Jessica Thalmann Pleats Of Matter, Curtis Lecture Hall
Take a picture at the RMG Exposed Fine Art Photography Auction Nov 12
All is not what it seems at the 2016 RMG Exposed Fine Art Photography Auction. Charlotte Hale, chair of the event, says this year’s offerings in the Silent and Live Auctions have a common theme of a distorted reality, a departure from the camera’s usual role as documentarian.
“Art reflects Life, and photographers show us our world through a lens. The running visual theme that I am picking up on is a distorted reality. I am always so impressed by photographers who present mundane or everyday objects or scenes to us and make them compelling by their own imagination and fine ability to compose. You will see incredible work in both auctions that speaks to this and is a reflection of how these photographers see the world. It is fun and super inspirational,” says Hale, an artist, photographer and collector in her own right.
Steve Stober, Untitled , Dominion Square, Montreal (1971)
Hale, who just closed up her own photography art gallery in Mirvish Village, Toronto, says the greatest challenge in her new role, has been connecting the McLaughlin in downtown Oshawa with the art community of TO.
“We really wanted to bring guests from Toronto, students, collectors and photographers but the common response was that it was difficult to get to and many people are not driving now. I was looking for a very special sponsor to fund the cost of renting a 28 seat bus and the Bau-xi Gallery stepped up! We are so pleased to now offer friends and gallery supporters a free bus trip with their ticket purchase to the auction,” she says.
Two of the Silent Auction jurors are however from Toronto; Blake Fitzpatrick, Dean of the School of Image Arts at Ryerson, Natalie Spagnol, Curator at Ryerson Image Centre. The third juror, Mary Ellen McQuay is a Durham-based art photographer.
Hale curated the Live Auction with a selection of established and emerging artists including Steve Stober, JIm Allen, Kamelia Pezeshki and Gerald Pisarzowski. There will be contemporary and vintage images available.
Lilly Koltun, Place Glass Lens 3
Hale says photographs are not just worth a thousand words. They have become highly collectible with major art galleries and museums adding lens-based works to their catalogue. The relative inexpensive art form is also an easy entry point for the new collector who may be just beginning to start buying original art. Hale says the answer for those wanting to know what is art and what isn’t, is simple, “Ultimately, I believe that if you love it, it is Art. Buy it. Hang it in your space and enjoy it!”
So love it, bid it and take a picture. All funds go towards educating the next generation of artists/ photographers in Durham Region.
Gerald Pisarzowski, Double Arches, Arches NP, Utah, 2013