27, June 2009
Retro-active: Two Decades of Sculpture by Lou Lynn
Grand Forks Art Gallery, June 13 – August 15, 2009
By Simone Keiran
Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region Magazine, Summer 2009. Ed., Shelley Ackerman
Lou Lynn, Sculptor (Photo by Janet Dwyer)
Hand-tools have always fascinated artist, Lou Lynn, particularly the union between a succinct form, such as the semi-circular sweep of a prehistoric ulu whose handle runs parallel to its blade, to a specific practical function: a knife which was not used to stab but—depending on how the handle was held—to slice or scrape with a rocking stroke of the wrist. Her metal and glass sculptures suggest implements such as the ulu, auger, chisel, trowels, rasps and other forms.
“I’m not actually inspired by tools,” she emphasizes. “The form is more important, how shape determines how tools came to be used.” Keep reading →
5, June 2009
The Grand Forks Art Gallery and Boundary Museum Saga
The City of Grand Forks got a shiny new art gallery, the Boundary Museum acquired a fine pair of historical sites, and after the Furies finished running amok, everyone settled down to mend fences and ponder the true purpose of community museums and galleries.
By Simone Keiran
The New Grand Forks Art Gallery
Grand Forks is the largest urban center in the Boundary region of British Columbia’s south-central interior. As such, a showcase building for its heritage and visual arts community seemed in order. Unfortunately, few transitions could have been as fraught with difficulty as when the Old Courthouse on Central Avenue, an attractive brick Palladian-style landmark built in 1911, was transformed into a civic cultural centrepiece. Collections were seized, wrecking crews were called in, the City was taken to court, and it was mischief for everybody involved.
Keep reading →
30, January 2009
Oxygen: The Vital Element
This artist-run gallery in Nelson, BC, Canada is all about community.
by Simone Keiran
Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region
Winter 2008/2009 Issue, ed., Shelley Ackermann.
Nicola Harwood, Artist-in-Residence, manning the phones at Oxygen Artist-Run Centre, Nelson, BC, Canada
“It is important not to give into divisive political tactics, or it becomes too easy to lose courage.”
Nicola Harwood, director and founding member of the artist-run Oxygen art Centre in Nelson, spoke about the misconception of artists as elitists—people who siphon off public funding, while criticizing those who provide it.
Keep reading →
Filed under Art Appreciation and Criticism, Education and Learning
Tags: 21st Century Modernism, art, art galleries, art history, conceptual art, curators, installations, multidisciplinary art venues, multimedia art, museums, Nelson BC Canada
26, November 2008
A Vast Inland Freshwater Passage:
David Thompson’s Exploration of the Columbia River
By Simone Keiran
Published December 2008,
Resolution, Magazine for the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.
Astrolab used to measure distance between celestial bodies and earth for navigation.
Never had mountain ranges been more underrated than when David Thompson first broached the Great Divide in his search for a route to the Pacific Ocean. Maps of the period distorted the reality and minimized the difficulties, showing a single line of mountains as opposed to dozens of ranges, highlands and plateaus. The NW Passage had lured explorers for centuries, drawing many deep into Canada’s wilderness—and many an explorer’s underwriters deep into their wallets—hoping to discover a network of easily navigable waterways such as the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes to transport loot cheaply across the continent. The Northwest Trading Company (NWTC), Thompson’s employer, didn’t hope too much, though, at least not enough to finance a proper one-time expedition by Thompson to find the river that emptied into the Pacific at the present-day Port of Astoria—first claimed by Captain Vancouver in the name of the British Crown in 1792—and to explore and chart its length from its source in the Rocky Mountains to its mouth. This was the Columbia River, the British Empire’s last great hope for a North West Passage. Thompson mapped the great western river in fits and starts over the course of 11 years, delayed by impassable winter terrain, arms disputes between the Blackfoot and Flathead nations, the necessity of pursuing the fur trade along the way, moderate interest from financiers, and even a lack of game to feed the expedition.
Keep reading →
22, October 2008
It’s out of the kiln and onto the Western Canadian stage for twelve of the Kootenay School of Art’s best clay artists at the prestigious Gallery of BC Ceramics on Granville Island.
By Simone Keiran
Published ARTiculate, Fall/Winter 2008
Tanis Saxby, Shadow Line Four
The Kootenay School of Art has produced excellent clay sculptors, ceramic artists and potters since the program’s inception in 1990. They’ve travelled across the globe to exhibit, teach, and demonstrate their artistry. They’ve won awards at international juried exhibitions. They’ve expanded the possibilities for how clay can serve families and communities. They’ve bridged the cerebral domain of museums and conceptual clay art with the simple, practical level of everyday service and use. This is why three accomplished clay instructors at KSA, Pamela Nagley Stevenson, David Lawson and Garry Graham, held no reservations about sharing their group show at BC’s most respected clay art gallery, the Gallery of BC Ceramics, on Granville Island, this September, with nine select successful graduates.
Keep reading →
30, September 2008
John Cooper’s spontaneous art, a fixture of the Kootenay Lake region of British Columbia for the past forty years, is an individual compendium of 20th-century art movements.
John Cooper at his home in Queens Bay Townsite, Kootenay Lake, BC, Canada (19th September, 2008)
Stories about John Cooper are as abundant and provocative as his paintings. Like Toad Rock or Mount Loki—the monumental landscape icons he likes to paint around Queen’s Bay, the tiny benchland community just past Balfour on Kootenay Lake where he lives—certain themes reoccur, steady as a pulse. These are rooted in Expressionism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, all the early modern art movements, which are also the themes of his life.
Keep reading →
18, August 2008
A Look at the Visual Appeal and Attraction of Carnival Art
“The gaudy, bawdy art of carnival rides hooks thrill-seekers with sensational fantasies from soft porn to invincibility, which mask its roots in Classical Antiquity.”
Crazy Beach: A ride that really has nothing to do with the beach.
This short photo-essay and review of the commercial art and design used to entice customers at PNE Playland in Hastings Park, Vancouver, BC, which traces the roots of carnival past Medieval festivals thrown in defiance of the black plague to Greco-Roman Mystery Schools and the Cult of Dionysius, has just been published at Suite101.com. Copyright restrictions prevent me from posting it here, but please click on the link if you’re interested in reading it.
16, August 2008
Catalogue of the Paintings and Writings of Artist, Alf Crossley
Exhibition September 26 – October 9, 2008
Kootenay Gallery of Art, History and Science
Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada
Misty Morning, Slocan Lake; Oil on Canvas, en plein air.
Since the 1970’s, Alf Crossley has painted En Plein Air throughout the Kootenays and western Canada.
His paintings and drawings incline toward abstract expressionism but have no direct antecedents. Impressionism, perhaps closest to Sisley or Pisarro, is indicated with flecks of transient light and colours which seem to gently flicker before the eyes; Post-impressionism, especially along the line of Cézanne, is inferred from object surfaces that break into planes of colour, but Crossley departs from all but the loosest assimilation of form: the shoulder of an unknown mountain, the line of a shore, the patterns of bird tracks or of branches and leaves. The imprint of American Expressionism through De Koonig and Gorky sometimes emerges in his bold lines and vibrant colours, yet Crossley does not remove natural representation entirely: a mountain is usually identifiable as a mountain; the reflection of a cloud-filled sky in water is the image of what it appears to be. Even his forays into pure abstraction always present some form of horizon, some connection to the natural world to root the viewer within physical reality. Some similarities are shared with another Canadian abstract-expressionist landscape painter, Paul-Émile Borduas, especially with the use of thick impasto, or the occasional almost geometrical arrangements of saturated colour, or in other renditions, the spare, almost Japanese style of airy arrangements that emerge in Tony Onley’s scenes of ocean beaches.
Keep reading →
7, August 2008
Chinese Lantern Festival: Lighting Up Fantasy Gardens in Richmond, BC, my review on the 46 lantern sets exhibited across acres of parkland on the old Fantasy Gardens site in Richmond, BC, has been published on Suite 101.
The show highlights scenes from Chinese mythology, history, and popular culture, and is designed for multicultural awareness.
The article includes photos from some incredibly clever and original lantern sets. Copyright restrictions prevent me from re-posting them or the article here, but click the link to find out about this festival and fascinating art form.
