The Art Collective

E-newsletter from The Art Collective for March 30:

Our next session is Friday March 31, 10 to 130 in VA 315. We’ll be working with our new materials, heavier and larger watercolour paper, a set of good quality pencil crayons and sets of brush markers. We’re also curating our latest work to see what we should include in our next show, which goes up April 9, including individual work. Fresh bagels and grape juice will be served.

The show goes up April 9 in the Visual Arts Building, on the ground floor, at the corner of Rene-Lévesque Blvd. and Crescent St. in downtown Montreal. The opening will be Tuesday April 11. As it’s the week before Easter, we will take down the show Thursday evening April 13 as the university is closed on Friday and many people will be away on Saturday.

If you wish to have individual work in the show, it must be brought on Sunday April 9 at noon to the Visual Arts building lobby and it must be picked up Thursday evening. Individual work to be included in the show must have a maximum size of three feet by three feet. Artists who have participated in the collective’s activities since January are invited to put work in this show. As we will put up labels with all work, we need to know by the end of this week if you plan to have work in the show, along with what the label information should say (materials, title, name, date).

The title of the show will include the word Strings, or perhaps just that word; this is to be finalized at Friday’s session. At our session last week, we discussed how to present the work and the theme of the show.

At the curating session with Montreal artist Holly King on Feb. 10, about 30 pieces were selected and arranged in “strands.” This led to the idea of having the work arranged in a formation that reflects the identity of the collective, or the collective’s DNA, which of course, can be seen as its individual members. Rather than dividing the exhibition space into individual and collaborative work, an arrangement pattern was conceived that involves the original strands of collaborative work with individual work placed in a regular pattern created by the placement of the collaborative work.

Holly King’s new show, Twisted Roots, opens Sunday at Université de Sherbrooke’s Galerie d’Art, and continues until June 4. Holly, whose work is featured in several museum collections, has curated work for the collective's next show.

In the News section of the site are excerpts from stories on a David Hockney retrospective, the Munch show at MOMA in New York and the legal aspects of street photography.

Here’s a story by collective member Robert Winters about Concordia artists using the empty fourth floor of the Visual Arts building:

Story

Robert Winters
Co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:49 AM | Permalink

Here are excerpts from an interesting story about the legality of street photography in the U.S.

New York Times
March 19, 2006
Art
The Theater of the Street, the Subject of the Photograph
By PHILIP GEFTER
IN 1999 Philip-Lorca diCorcia set up his camera on a tripod in Times Square, attached strobe lights to scaffolding across the street and, in the time-honored tradition of street photography, took a random series of pictures of strangers passing under his lights. The project continued for two years, culminating in an exhibition of photographs called "Heads" at Pace/MacGill Gallery in Chelsea. "Mr. diCorcia's pictures remind us, among other things, that we are each our own little universe of secrets, and vulnerable," Michael Kimmelman wrote, reviewing the show in The New York Times. "Good art makes you see the world differently, at least for a while, and after seeing Mr. diCorcia's new 'Heads,' for the next few hours you won't pass another person on the street in the same absent way." But not everyone was impressed.

When Erno Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew and retired diamond merchant from Union City, N.J., saw his picture last year in the exhibition catalog, he called his lawyer. And then he sued Mr. diCorcia and Pace for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and profiting from it financially. The suit sought an injunction to halt sales and publication of the photograph, as well as $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.
The suit was dismissed last month by a New York State Supreme Court judge who said that the photographer's right to artistic expression trumped the subject's privacy rights. But to many artists, the fact that the case went so far is significant.
The practice of street photography has a long tradition in the United States, with documentary and artistic strains, in big cities and small towns. Photographers usually must obtain permission to photograph on private property — including restaurants and hotel lobbies — but the freedom to photograph in public has long been taken for granted. And it has had a profound impact on the history of the medium. Without it, Lee Friedlander would not have roamed the streets of New York photographing strangers, and Walker Evans would never have produced his series of subway portraits in the 1940's.
Remarkably, this was the first case to directly challenge that right. Had it succeeded, "Subway Passenger, New York City," 1941, along with a vast number of other famous images taken on the sly, might no longer be able to be published or sold.
In his lawsuit, Mr. Nussenzweig argued that use of the photograph interfered with his constitutional right to practice his religion, which prohibits the use of graven images.
New York state right-to-privacy laws prohibit the unauthorized use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes, that is, for advertising or purposes of trade. But they do not apply if the likeness is considered art. So Mr. diCorcia's lawyer, Lawrence Barth, of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles, focused on the context in which the photograph appeared. "What was at issue in this case was a type of use that hadn't been tested against First Amendment principles before — exhibition in a gallery; sale of limited edition prints; and publication in an artist's monograph," he said in an e-mail message. "We tried to sensitize the court to the broad sweep of important and now famous expression that would be chilled over the past century under the rule urged by Nussenzweig." Among others, he mentioned Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous image of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day in 1945, when Allied forces announced the surrender of Japan.
Several previous cases were also cited in Mr. diCorcia's defense. In Hoepker v. Kruger (2002), a woman who had been photographed by Thomas Hoepker, a German photographer, sued Barbara Kruger for using the picture in a piece called "It's a Small World ... Unless You Have to Clean It." A New York federal court judge ruled in Ms. Kruger's favor, holding that, under state law and the First Amendment, the woman's image was not used for purposes of trade, but rather in a work of art.
Also cited was a 1982 ruling in which the New York Court of Appeals sided with The New York Times in a suit brought by Clarence Arrington, whose photograph, taken without his knowledge while he was walking in the Wall Street area, appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1978 to illustrate an article titled "The Black Middle Class: Making It." Mr. Arrington said the picture was published without his consent to represent a story he didn't agree with. The New York Court of Appeals held that The Times's First Amendment rights trumped Mr. Arrington's privacy rights.
In an affidavit submitted to the court on Mr. diCorcia's behalf, Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, said Mr. diCorcia's "Heads" fit into a tradition of street photography well defined by artists ranging from Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson to Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. "If the law were to forbid artists to exhibit and sell photographs made in public places without the consent of all who might appear in those photographs," Mr. Galassi wrote, "then artistic expression in the field of photography would suffer drastically. If such a ban were projected retroactively, it would rob the public of one of the most valuable traditions of our cultural inheritance."
Neale M. Albert, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, who represented Pace/MacGill, said the case surprised him: "I have always believed that the so-called street photographers do not need releases for art purposes. In over 30 years of representing photographers, this is the first time a person has raised a complaint against one of my clients by reason of such a photograph."
State Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische rejected Mr. Nussenzweig's claim that his privacy had been violated, ruling on First Amendment grounds that the possibility of such a photograph is simply the price every person must be prepared to pay for a society in which information and opinion freely flow. And she wrote in her decision that the photograph was indeed a work of art. "Defendant diCorcia has demonstrated his general reputation as a photographic artist in the international artistic community," she wrote.
But she indirectly suggested that other cases might be more challenging. "Even while recognizing art as exempted from the reach of New York's privacy laws, the problem of sorting out what may or may not legally be art remains a difficult one," she wrote. As for the religious claims, she said: "Clearly, plaintiff finds the use of the photograph bearing his likeness deeply and spiritually offensive. While sensitive to plaintiff's distress, it is not redressable in the courts of civil law."
Mr. diCorcia, whose book of photographs "Storybook Life" was published in 2004, said that in setting up his camera in Times Square in 1999: "I never really questioned the legality of what I was doing. I had been told by numerous editors I had worked for that it was legal. There is no way the images could have been made with the knowledge and cooperation of the subjects. The mutual exclusivity that conflict or tension, is part of what gives the work whatever quality it has."
Mr. Nussenzweig is appealing. Last month his lawyer Jay Goldberg told The New York Law Journal that his client "has lost control over his own image."
"It's a terrible invasion to me," Mr. Goldberg said. "The last thing a person has is his own dignity."
Photography professionals are watching — and claiming equally high moral stakes. Should the case proceed, said Howard Greenberg, of Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, "it would be a terrible thing, a travesty to those of us who have been educated and illuminated by great street photography of the past and, hopefully, the future, too."

Posted by Robert W at 12:25 AM | Permalink

Here are excerpts from a fascinating story about interpretations of Edvard Munch's work.

New York Times
March 19, 2006
Art
How to Spot the Kubrick in Edvard Munch
By ANNETTE GRANT
Is Edvard Munch a great painter? Is he over the top? Is he still relevant? Do we feel his pain? Or is he just weird? Those questions and more were discussed recently by six artists who took a tour of the Munch retrospective, "The Modern Life of the Soul," that opened last month at the Museum of Modern Art and continues through May 8. Their comments ranged from a riff on stealing paintings (a reference to the theft of "The Scream" in Oslo in 2004) to an examination of the relationship of Munch (1863-1944) to advertising and cinema, especially horror films.

The artists all live in New York, although only one was born here; their fields encompass drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, printmaking and performance. All have had gallery shows and four of them are in the 2006 Whitney Biennial; one was in the 2004 Biennial and another is represented in the print collection of the Modern. Starting in front of a landscape, "Spring in the Elm Forest III" (1923), the artists mused playfully on Munch's temperament and style and on why his work still resonates today. Here are excerpts. ANNETTE GRANT
JORDAN WOLFSON, 25, born in New York; makes videos, films and installations that refer to people, places and historical events. His early ambition was to be a comedian.
"Elm Forest" would be the easiest painting to steal, even though it's bolted to the wall. There's a straight shot through the door and down the escalator. Whereas "Metabolism," one of the largest and heaviest, would be very difficult to steal. There is a guard here and a camera in the ceiling.
I guess this all connects somehow to the work, because it is about the human experience, the modern experience. When I look at Munch I don't think much about the formal qualities. I'm not as interested in the paintings as in the cultural context. When I was in college I redubbed the entire film "Home Alone" in my own voice and replaced Macaulay Culkin's scream with a deep empty breath.
YURI MASNYJ, 29, born in Washington; expands drawings into sculptures, like drawing in space, with architectural overtones, graphic elements and references to modernist design.
Munch takes incredibly mundane subjects and infuses them with a tremendous amount of emotional energy. "Angst," of 1894, still reverberates with anxiety. You feel the artist is really tuned into it. He wasn't unschooled; he made the choice to paint as he did. What he was doing was new, not yet convention.
He worked in a way that was a real slap in the face of bourgeois taste, which is very difficult to do now because there is such a wide range of what is visually acceptable. To some extent Munch goes way too far, he's very heavy-handed in his gesture and in his concept, but it's nice that he pushed people to the limit, seduced them into understanding his idea.
Today you have many images of daily life in advertising, and the more normal people behave in commercials, the scarier they really look. I often think of Munch when I see them.
JUTTA KOETHER, 47, born in Germany; a writer, painter, performer and musician, she often makes site-specific installations.
For me "The Sun" of 1912 is a synthesis in Munch between highly symbolic content and other work in which he conducts an ongoing interrogation of his own existence. This painting brings back the drama of his earlier work. I've always been attracted to this kind of circular composition. It bursts open, going outside rather than inside. It's raw and it punches out.
He was a kind of pop star for a time and then he went out of favor after the war because he was liked by the Germans. Now his tradition has been reinvigorated. I've known him since I was a little kid. We had a reproduction of "Three Girls on a Bridge," which was my father's favorite painting, and "The Scream" of course.
HANNA LIDEN, 29, born in Stockholm; photographs spooky masked and hooded figures in landscapes.
The "Spring in the Elm Forest" is rather trippy, but I'm not particularly attracted to it the way I am to earlier work. I prefer the colder, darker melancholy fall landscapes that kind of sum up the Nordic sensibility.
I also like "Red Virginia Creeper," which relates to contemporary American cinema. The red vine on the cottage is like a wave of blood, like "The Shining," for example. It feels like panic. There is something wrong with the house, like it's bleeding from the inside.
NICOLA LÓPEZ, 30, born in Santa Fe, N.M.; produces exuberantly bleak landscapes and industrial wastelands in drawings, collages and prints.
There is some optimism here, but I can't get away from the anxiety and melancholy that is a large part of what is going on in this entire collection of Munch's work. It's easy to say they're heavy-handed and obvious, but they're also very honest.
There is also a lot of despair and angst going around these days, and I think we'd be silly to say there isn't an edge of desperation about where the world is going in general. The self-portraits are moving because they have intensity accessed through an internal rather than a predictable imagery. I think a lot of his work is very scary.
ERNESTO CAIVANO, 33, born in Madrid; has created his own mythology in minutely detailed mural-length ink drawings of mysterious love stories filled with flora and fauna, especially exotic birds.
I love landscape and will always stop to look at it. "Elm Forest" feels like a transitional painting, as if he had seen some other painters, like Bonnard. There seems in this work to be certain moves, like beads or melodies, that were popular for a while, so everyone had to try them out. But what I like in here is the subtlety; it's like liquid, or as seen through a distorting glass. Yet Munch can be rather corny and goofy. Some of his people look like actors who have never acted before, like in Bresson films; you catch a lot of awkward moments that way.
For me, "Between the Clock and the Bed," his last portrait, is the embodiment of all his work. This tells about his understanding with his practice. It's like a retrospective of all his introspection, which he executed as fast as he could and then left. The thing that gives the painting away to me is the head, which is the most worked area. It is sort of a diamond shape, reiterated throughout the painting. It's an appropriate piece to have at the end of the show.

Posted by Robert W at 12:17 AM | Permalink

Here is an excellent critical analysis of a retrospective show of Hockney's work
Excerpt from:
New York Times
March 17, 2006
Art Review | David Hockney
After a Half-Century, Taking a Census of Hockney's People
By KEN JOHNSON
BOSTON — Around 1966, when Pop, Minimalism and Color Field painting were the preferred options for a serious artist, the British painter and Los Angeles resident David Hockney embarked on a daring exploration of what was then thought irretrievably retrograde: realist painting. Over the next decade, he created full-figure portraits of people, alone or in couples, that were as intimate as they were monumental and as poetically thrilling as they were visually lucid. The best of them can still be counted among the most memorable artworks of the postmodernist era.

Three of those magical works highlight a rambling and uneven 50-year retrospective devoted to Mr. Hockney's extensive work in portraiture now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. One is the 1968 portrait of the art collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman standing outdoors with some of their sculptures; their still postures and fierce expressions comically echo a Northwest Indian totem pole rising in the background. There is the glamorous, melancholy portrait (1970-71) of Mr. Hockney's friend Celia Birtwell and the British fashion designer to whom she was briefly married, Ossie Clark, in a darkened room separated by a bright open door. And best of all is the famous 1969 picture of the curator Henry Geldzahler sitting like an enthroned king on an arch-backed purple sofa while his partner, a thin man in a trench coat, watches from the side like a royal retainer awaiting orders.
Organized by the museum here and the National Portrait Gallery in London, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibition does not isolate Mr. Hockney's realist period or elevate it above the rest of the show. It is folded into a continuous stream of more than 150 paintings and drawings that run from precociously skillful teenage drawings and paintings from the mid-1950's right up to pictures from last year — single figures and groups of figures painted with a loose, dry touch. This approach serves to portray Mr. Hockney — not always convincingly — as a fearless explorer of styles and techniques like his hero Picasso.
In his first mature work, produced in the late 50's and early 60's, Mr. Hockney painted antic narratives, often unabashedly featuring gay themes, in an expressionistic, faux-naïve style. Then came the first realist paintings — simplified, almost archaic paintings in bright California colors of, for example, Mr. Hockney's friend Peter Schlesinger emerging nude from a Los Angeles swimming pool.
In the 70's, Mr. Hockney's realism intensified, but it never looked overworked, and though he used photographs as references, it did not turn into Photorealism. Nor did it ever appear stuffy or old-fashioned. Looking at the paintings of this period, as well as at the extraordinarily prehensile linear drawings in ink and the gossamer colored-pencil drawings of friends, lovers and luminaries like Andy Warhol and W. H. Auden, you get the exhilarating feeling of an artist on a roll who can do no wrong.
Then, sometime after 1977, Mr. Hockney abandoned his time-consuming, painstaking commitments and, like a man recently divorced or released from prison, plunged into a period of restless promiscuity that has continued up to the present. The turning point is marked by a 1979 portrait of the transvestite actor Divine. Painting in garish colors with a wide brush, Mr. Hockney achieved a cheery Fauvist immediacy but left behind the hallucinatory illusionism of the realist paintings.
From this point on in the exhibition, everything Mr. Hockney does calls more attention to his bravura performance than to his subject matter. In his woozily distorted Cubist portraits and collages, made by assembling scores of snapshots into one faceted composition, he seems desperate to show he can be more than just a skillful realist: he can be an adventurously versatile modernist. But it is more the versatility of an illustrator or designer than of an artist driven to find new forms for new feelings.
Then there is the work relating to Mr. Hockney's briefly controversial effort to prove that photography directly influenced the development of Western art long before anyone had previously thought. In addition to publishing, in 2001, a thick, glossy book on the subject, Mr. Hockney created hundreds of pencil portraits using a camera lucida, a lens that projects a virtual image of an object onto a page so that it can be traced. Examples in this show look like clumsy imitations of Ingres's pencil portraits, and it is hard to see what, if anything, they prove.
Experimental excursions aside, Mr. Hockney mostly creates portraits that border on caricature in a cheerful, generously painterly style. When he concentrates, as in a group of compact pictures from 1988-89 that includes "Mum," a soulful image of his elderly blue-eyed mother, he can be persuasive. But often he seems hurried and distracted.
Many of his portraits call to mind those by Alice Neel. Rarely, however, do his have the sort of raw personal intimacy that the best of hers have. You get the feeling that people exist for Mr. Hockney not as individuals but as models to practice on, as though he were still a student.
Wall labels in the exhibition describe Mr. Hockney as an extremely sociable man, and say that he often entertains his many visitors by making portraits of them. But when viewing the work it is impossible to tell whether his subject is a longtime friend, a lover, a recent acquaintance or a professional associate. This half-focused attentiveness to people goes hand in hand with a certain insouciance about the process of painting itself.
In his most recent efforts, large pictures of one, two or three people in rooms, it appears that Mr. Hockney is thinking of reviving the ambitions of his 70's paintings. Like the earlier works, a recent picture called "The Photographer and His Daughter" owes much to Balthus. Its image of a standing girl in a short skirt watched by the older seated man in a sparsely furnished room is loaded with psychological potential, but the painting is so thinly realized that it leaves richer possibilities untapped.
One of his most beautiful paintings from the 70's, regrettably not in the show, is another portrait of Peter Schlesinger, this one of him fully clothed, standing at the edge of a swimming pool, looking down into its luminous depths at a figure swimming underwater. Not immediately obvious but striking when you think of it, is how the subject's meditative gaze at the ghostly swimmer implicitly mirrors the invisible painter's concentration on the dreamlike scene he is painting — both are looking into their souls.
"Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy," the early 1970's double portrait that is in the exhibition also mixes meditative stillness and tantalizing mystery. The man and woman, on either side of a narrow door that looks out to a brightly lighted courtyard, are like archetypal guardians of a sacred portal to cosmic illumination. (Notice how the outsize white cat — Percy, presumably — in the man's lap stares out the door as though to point the way.)
The difference between these works and the painting Mr. Hockney went on to do is deep. The early paintings make you feel you are on the threshold of a mystical awakening. The later work reduces painting to a more or less inventive but terrestrial play with materials, processes and style.
Mr. Hockney has done other things than make portraits over the past quarter century. He has designed sets for an opera and created ambitious cycles of landscape paintings. So a show devoted exclusively to portraiture may not do justice to his whole, extraordinarily productive career. Judging by this exhibition alone, however, it is difficult not to feel that some time at the end of the 1970's Mr. Hockney lost his way.

Posted by Robert W at 12:08 AM | Permalink

Newsletter from The Art Collective for March 22
We’re having a regular session this Friday March 23 from 10 a.m to 130 p.m. in room VA 315. We are expecting a couple of new people who are interested in joining us.
Our new materials I’m bringing include a package of 36 Castel-Faber pencil crayons, new watercolour paper that’s a bit thicker (113 pounds vs. 90 pounds) and a bit larger, also a few packages of studio brush markers, one with different size brushes with flesh colours.

We also will be working on large pieces for our show, which runs April 9 to 13 in the Visual Arts building’s lobby. The opening is set for Tuesday April 11. We will be putting up individual work as well as collaborative work from the curating session done by Montreal artist Holly King.
Finally, collective founding member David King made the good suggestion last week that we work on several large pieces for the show, so we plan to start these on Friday. I will be bringing in a fresh roll of stonehenge paper, provided for by the Fine Arts Student Alliance in its generous funding of The Art Collective.
Besides bagels and coffee, we will have a fresh bottle of a new juice we’ll try, made from peach, apple and passion fruit.
Individual work will be included in the show on the basis of participation in this semester’s sessions and activities, as space is limited.
Art Matters: Congratulations to everybody who participated in our events during Art Matters, they were very successful and helped raised awareness for what we’re doing. The major event we did on the ground floor of the new EV building was unique as no other art making has taken place in public spaces at the building. The symbolic first mark was made by Lynn Beavis, co-ordinator of the new Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery. Our event was in the Halle des Vernissages for the gallery, which is to open this summer.
Another Art Matters special event in the EV building was the interactive session we did in the lounge outside the reading room, with the help of festival special events co-ordinator Rebecca St. John, who put gesso on the collage/mixed media piece from the VAV Gallery session on March 7, and brought it to the reading room event the next day.
Rebecca also worked hard to organize our materials after the VAV Gallery event and to make sure the gallery was in great shape after we finished, a key consideration as the VAV had a major show going on at the time. Rebecca also helped guide the aesthetics of the mixed-media piece as it was completed at the reading room event. The VAV Gallery and its directors, Michelle Lacombe and Evita Karasek, also played a key role by letting us do the interactive event in the midst of their excellent French Kiss show with work from Concordia and UQAM students.
Judith helped set up for the VAV event and helped bring materials to the EV event and the UQAM event, as well as helping set up at both events. Stephanie Reynolds played a key co-ordinating role for the Interactive Wall No. 7 at the VAV Gallery, did collaborative work at UQAM’s Café des arts and worked on large-scale pieces at the EV event. Jessica Alfonso brought over two of the large scale pieces to the EV building that had been started by herself and Sonomi Tanaka. Stephanie started the third piece.
These pieces, done on a roll of stonehenge paper cut into pieces almost two metres long, were sketched out as a way of providing a starting point for a cohesive piece, rather than having to resolve numerous disparate elements placed on the large sheet of paper, as was done at previous interactive events. When this was evaluated at last Friday’s session, it was felt that this had been successful, especially when the original work wasn’t taken too far, allowing considerable latitude for the spontaneous art-making the day of the event.
David King played a key role in co-ordinating the large-scale painting and drawing piece at the VAV Gallery and in working on the piece begun by Sonomi at the EV building, along with Jarmila Kavena and Stephanie. François Morelli said after the event that he liked this piece, which has an element of fantasy in it. He was also pleased with the elaborate colouring that was done on many of his drawings that were coloured during the EV and VAV Gallery sessions. They will be included in a video with other drawings coloured at the Musée du Québec.
At the March 10 session, Jarmila worked on the piece done at Global television, touching it up before it was placed on display in the atrium of the EV building. It comes down on Friday.
Jessica also helped tidy up after the EV event and helped bring back the materials to the VA building after. She also worked on the large-scale piece she had begun, which has a political edge to it, including an image of a black woman as the statue of liberty.
Collective member Kyla Chevrier worked on large-scale pieces at the VAV and EV events, and also helped document the events by taking photos, as did Robert Winters. Judith and Robert also shot video at the VAV Gallery event, including of the performance piece done by Cassandra Wittome at the VAV.
The piece, which explored issues of advertising and self-esteem, related to the beauty industry, included Cassandra ingesting beauty products, in the form of food prepared to resemble these products. A photo of Cassandra’s performance can be viewed in the Photos gallery. Cassandra also helped with the counter drawing and colouring activity at the EV building, as did members Marisa Hoicka and Joanna Nawracaj. Marisa also worked on the large-scale painting and drawing piece at the VAV Gallery as did Sonomi Tanaka and Art Matters co-producers Emily Shanahan and Corina Kennedy, whose work can be seen in the current Concordia undergraduate show at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery.
Carina Phillips worked on the large-scale painting and drawing piece at the VAV Gallery, as did Jessica. Collective member Shawn Kuruneru also stopped by at the VAV event.
Monica Eckert, who played a key role at the Global Television event, worked on several pieces at last Friday’s session.
Our show at UQAM’s CEDx gallery has been rescheduled for May 13 to 20.
Finally, there’s a Fine Arts Alumni/Art Matters short film festival this Sunday afternoon at the DeSeve cinema, on ground floor of library building at 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
http://news.concordia.ca/entertainment/006549.shtml

Robert Winters
Co-ordinator, The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:36 AM | Permalink

The Art Collective's next show will be April 9 to 13, 2006, on the ground floor of the Visual Arts Building in downtown Montreal. The show will be a mix of individual work by members of the collective, collaborative work from the collective's regular sessions and five special large-scale pieces made especially for this show. The opening is Tuesday April 11.

Posted by Robert W at 12:30 AM | Permalink

Each Friday, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., The Art Collective holds its collaborative art making sessions in room VA 315 of the Visual Arts Building of Concordia University, at the corner of René-Lévesque Blvd. and Crescent St. in downtown Montreal. Fine Arts students, alumni and professional artists are welcome. For more information, please contact:
Robert Winters
co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:25 AM | Permalink

A piece of collaborative artwork done on live television during the March 3, 2006, CanWest Global show This Morning Live, has been placed on display until March 24 in the main atrium at Concordia University's new Engineering and Visual Arts Building, at 1515 Ste. Catherine St. W. The piece, which focuses on television and media, was done at the Global studio during the show to help mark the start of the 2006 Art Matters festival, Canada's largest student-run arts festival. To read a story in Concordia's The Journal about the Art Matters festival, please click here:
Story about Art Matters

The artwork was the first placed on this wall since the building opened in August 2005. To view a photo of the artwork and the atrium where it is hanging, please visit the Photos section of our website. The artwork was attached with hooks behind the metal panels on the wall by collective member Robert Winters with the assistance of Leigh Ann Pawliuk, a final-year Studio Arts student.

The piece was done by Art Matters co-producers Corina Kennedy and Emily Shanahan, Rebecca St. John, special events co-ordinator for the festival and Shawn Kuruneru, a collective member whose drawings are on all the Art Matters promotional material. Also working on the piece for The Art Collective were Monica Eckert and Stephanie Reynolds, who both have played co-ordination roles in large-scale drawing and painting interactive projects, and Robert Winters, co-ordinator of the collective. Emily and Corina were each interviewed during the show by host Tracey McKee, a Concordia graduate, who also spoke with Stephanie about the collective and the festival.

The Art Collective wishes to take this opportunity to offer its congratulations to Art Matters, Corina, Emily, Rebecca, Sean and all the other hard-working artists who raised the standard of excellence for this major event so high. These included painters Trevor Kiernander and Susan Westbrook, co-producers of the 2005 Art Matters festival, who returned to play key roles in this year's festival, Trevor with design and Susan with finance.

The collective also thanks Art Matters for helping make possible the interactive art making events the group co-ordinated during the festival.

Robert Winters
co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:35 AM | Permalink

E-newsletter from The Art Collective for March 9, 2006

Summary: We’re on a roll: After the strong Global TV event, we have drawn front-page coverage in Concordia’s The Journal of our successfully major event in the VAV Gallery last Tuesday, and now we’re heading for our second major event next Tuesday March 14, on the ground floor of the EV building, from noon to 5.

Our regular session is Friday March 10, VA 315, 10 to 130. Planning for EV event, touching up large-scale pieces to show next week. Discuss whether we should forget collage for this event. Do we need markers for the small-piece drawing table?

Strong Global event, We had a successful three-hour live art event in the studio of Global Television’s morning show on March 3, with collective members Monica Eckert, Stephanie Reynolds and Robert Winters working on a large-scale painting and drawing with Art Matters co-producers Corina Kennedy and Emily Shanahan, Special Events co-ordinator Rebecca St. John and high-profile artist Shawn Kuruneru, also a member of the collective, whose signature drawings can be seen on all of this year’s Art Matters promotional material.

Global’s This Morning Live show checked in on the progress of our drawing several times and host Tracey McKee interviewed Emily and Corina about Art Matters in separate segments and also talked to Stephanie about the collective and collaborative art making, as well as about the role of the Art Matters festival in helping young artists get their work known. News anchor Andrew Peplowski and Tracey were drawn into the piece, as was Al Dubois, who handles weather and sports, and Leta Polson, who reports on traffic. Tracey even added an artistic touch to the piece, while Andrew wondered about the anchor image near his face on the artwork. Al Dubois seemed to expect the umbrella that found its way onto the image, above his head. Leta also worked on the piece during breaks on the show.

Our VAV Gallery event went very well, thanks to the efforts of many members of The Art Collective, including key co-ordination roles played well by David King, with the large scale painting and drawing piece, and Stephanie Reynolds, with the small-piece drawing table and our Interactive Wall No. 7, which also featured colouring of special drawings by Montreal artist François Morelli that will be made into a video. Besides their artistic contributions, Judith Brisson, Angeliki Gketsou, Stephanie and David helped set up the event, a difficult task as it was a performance piece that had to respect and interact with the VAV Gallery’s exhibition. Collective members who contributed substantially to the large-scale piece included Sonomi Tanaka, Kyla Chevrier, Carina Phillips and Jessica Alfonso. Collective member Cassandra Witteman did an edgy performance piece that raised issues of ingestion and the beauty industry’s messages that can tend to undermine self-esteem.

Art Matters co-producers Emily Shanahan and Corina Kennedy helped start the large-scale painting and drawing piece rolling as did Jennifer Schuler, a festival volunteer for our event who had her sculpture exhibited at Bain Mathieu in the same show as Kyla Chevrier, which provides a commentary on the objectification of women. Shawn Kuruneru also dropped by the large-scale painting and drawing piece, as did Trevor Kiernander, co-producer of Art Matters last year and vice-president design for the Fine Arts Student Alliance, which provides major funding for The Art Collective’s materials.

The VAV Gallery collaborative event, made possible by the gallery’s co-directors, Michelle Lacombe and Evita Karasek, took place within the context of the excellent French Kiss exhibition put on in collaboration with UQAM’s CEDx gallery, the graduate students’ space, where we will be presenting a show from May 2 to 9.

Our VAV event received some good coverage in Concordia’s official newspaper, The Journal, which sent a photographer who shot hands working on our large scale painting and drawing piece. The photo, whose cutline mentions the VAV Gallery and The Art Collective, is featured on the cover of this week’s issue to accompany a story on the ambitious 6th annual Art Matters festival, the largest student run arts festival in Canada:

http://cjournal.concordia.ca/journalarchives/2006-07/mar_9/index.shtml

Art Party on ground floor of the EV building: Tuesday afternoon March 14, noon to 5 p.m.

We’re going to be planning this major event at our regular session on Friday March 10. We’ll also be touching up the large scale pieces we did at the VAV Gallery on Tuesday; the collage/mixed media one was continued at our Reading Room event on Wednesday and it is in quite good shape now. Rebecca St. John, special events co-ordinator for Art Matters, worked on the piece after the VAV event, putting gesso on key areas of the surface to prepare it for new layers to be placed the next day.

Our event Tuesday is in a very high profile space on the ground floor of the EV building, in the alcove at the entrance to the future Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery. We’ll be putting up work from Holly King’s curatorial session on Feb. 10 as well as large work such as the Art Machines piece. I am working on putting up the artwork done at Global in the main atrium of the EV building; I have permission, which is very unusual, and I just have to install the piece on the metal frames that make up the wall. I have requested a workman with a ladder and will try to put it up on Friday afternoon.

Robert Winters
Co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:50 AM | Permalink

News from The Art Collective for March 6, 2006

Art party in the VAV Gallery: Tuesday night March 7, 6 to 11 p.m.

We have a major interactive event Tuesday evening in the VAV Gallery, and we are using as much space as we need in the VAV, thanks to co-curators Michelle Lacombe and Evita Karasek, who have helped organize the excellent French Kiss show that’s on now, with work from Concordia and UQAM students.

This is an Art Matters Special Event and it should be a lot of fun, bring your friends and some music CDs. We will have:

1) a large scale painting and drawing piece being done
2) a large scale collage and mixed media piece
3) collaborative drawing and painting on 9 X 12 inch watercolour paper
4) colouring of special drawings by high-profile Montreal artist François Morelli that will be made into a video for our website (combined with the coloured drawings from a Musée de Québec event that François did.

Bring along any collage images you like, we’ll have movie posters and some magazines. We’ll have materials but any you can bring your own to use if you like.

The VAV gallery is also helping the collective through beer sales in the evening, so we will need some help during the evening selling beer. And bring something for the snack table if you can.

We might also have a short performance piece taking place during the evening (and if anyone is interested in doing a performance piece of their own, please let me know).

Wednesday March 8, 1 to 4 p.m., Interactive Drawing session at the reading room on 2nd floor of new EV building: interactive drawing at an Art Matters Special Event we are helping co-ordinate. Rebecca St. John, Special Events co-ordinator for Art Matters, will be at both events.
Our regular session will be Friday March 10, 10 to 130, in room VA 315. Last week’s session was excellent, with interesting conversation as we made some interesting work.
Global TV event: Our Global TV event with Art Matters went really well on Friday, the piece we did looked very good. Art Matters co-producers Corina Kennedy and Emily Shanahan were there and were interviewed by This Morning Live co-host Tracey McKee. Special Events co-ordinator Rebecca St. John also was there along with collective member Shawn Kuruneru, whose amazing drawings can be seen everywhere these days, on the Art Matters program, publicity materials and the great festival shirts that are becoming a collector’s item. Collective members Monica Eckert, Stephanie Reynolds and myself also were there and worked on the piece; Stephanie was interviewed about collaborative art making and the festival as well. The piece will go up in the atrium of the new EV building during the festival. Take a look at photos from this event on our website at:

http://gallery.theartcollective.net

Our show proposal for CEDx Gallery at UQAM was accepted for May 2 to 9. This is the graduate students’ gallery at UQAM and is a beautiful space at street level at the corner of St. Denis and Ste. Catherine Sts. We will have one or more major interactive events with UQAM and Concordia students as well as a show of work from our interactive events and our collaborative art making sessions.
New member Angeliki Gketsou showed us some of her work and drew and painted with us. Angeliki graduated from Concordia University in 2004 with a major in Design Art. She came to Montreal in 2000 from Greece where she studied visual arts, painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic arts between 1992 and 1999, including at the Vacalo School of Fine Arts in Athens. She obtained a higher diploma of education from Middlesex University in Britain, studied at the AKTO School of Applied Arts and the Campus School of Arts and Sciences.
Tuesday March 14, noon to 5 p.m., on ground floor of new EV building. This is an Art Matters Special Event we’re co-ordinating. This is a very high-profile interactive art making project plus a show of work curated by Montreal artist Holly King at a special curating session on Feb. 10 that will be shown at the CEDx Gallery. Holly, who has helped the collective with key advice, has work in several museum collections and was one of the first performance artists in Quebec.
Thursday March 16, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., come and draw with UQAM students at Café des arts at UQAM.
Friday March 17, 1 to 4 p.m. The collective will help with a special Art Matters/Fine Arts Alumni Association careers panel and portfolio feedback session. Panelists include Nicolas Baier, photographer who did the leaf images on the new EV building (Nicolas, who is represented by Galérie René Blouin, has a show coming at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in April; Michèle Thériault, director of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery; collective member Jarmila Kavena, who had a show in Chicago last summer; Anne Bertrand of SKOL; and Maria Torres, who teaches an art as a business course. Painter Tom Hopkins will be moderator.

Robert Winters, co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:04 AM | Permalink

Angeliki Gketsou graduated from Concordia University in 2004 with a major in Design Art. She came to Montreal in 2000 from Greece where she studied visual arts, painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic arts between 1992 and 1999, including at the Vacalo School of Fine Arts in Athens. She obtained a higher diploma of education from Middlesex University in Britain, studied at the AKTO School of Applied Arts and the Campus School of Arts and Sciences.

Posted by Robert W at 01:00 AM | Permalink

Our next meeting is Friday March 3, 1030 to 130, in VA 315. We are expecting a new artist to join us, Angeliki Gketsou, who recently graduated in design and is interested in what we are doing. Welcome Angeliki.

Global TV show: If you’re up early Friday, you can tune in to Global TV, between 6 and 9, as collective members Stephanie Reynolds, Monica Eckert and Robert Winters do a large scale collaborative piece with Art Matters co-producers Corina Kennedy and Emily Shanahan, and Rebecca St. John, who is working on special events for Art Matters, including the collective’s events. The producers of the show only wanted a very small number of artists to be on the small set and Art Matters will have three or four people there as the event is designed to promote the festival. Monica and Stephanie courageously volunteered to be at the studio at 5 a.m. to help with setup and to start the piece.

We also have some major Art Matters special events coming in the next few days and they are not-to-be missed occasions that should produce some interesting art. If you would like to play a co-ordination role at one or more of these activities, please let me know.

Tuesday March 7 at the VAV Gallery, 6 to 11 p.m.

There will be painting and drawing, and a separate collage piece as well as colouring of drawings by Montreal artist François Morelli that will be made into a video and put on our website and used for installations. UQAM students are also going to be coming as it’s the second week of the French Kiss show with art from the two schools. Setup will start at 5 p.m.

Wednesday March 8 at the Reading Room, 2nd floor of the EV building, from noon until 4. This is a smaller-scale event. We put up pieces done that day in the reading room, which stay up during Art Matters.

Tuesday March 14: ground floor of EV building, noon until 5 p.m., by entrance to future Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery. (This will be a major event, as with VAV event, and anybody that can make it will be needed, as it will be hard to keep things organized even though we will have Art Matters volunteers helping us out at this event and the VAV event.) We can put up our show on one wall of the space; this is the show that came out of the curating session that Montreal artist Holly King did on Feb. 10. We will put up our show starting at 11. There will also be an interactive wall area, where people can work on small pieces and put them up, and/or curate the wall.

We will have video cameras at the VAV and EV events, anyone who has experience with shooting video should contact me if they would like to help out in documenting the events. Also if you would like to play a co-ordination role at any or all of the events, please let me know as well.

(Also at each event, participants can colour drawings by Montreal artist François Morelli, which will be made into a video that will be put on our website.)

Thursday March 16: UQAM’s Café des arts, 11 to 3 p.m. A repeat of last year’s excellent event. We have co-sponsorship again from Capteur de rêves, UQAM’s arts promotion group.

Friday March 17, 1 to 4 p.m., VAV Gallery: Alumni/Art Matters careers panel and portfolio feedback workshop. High profile photographer Nicolas Baier, Ellen Gallery director/curator Michele Thériault, art as a business teacher Maria Torres are featured, along with the moderator, painter Tom Hopkins. The collective helped with the event last year and will help again this year; including moving chairs around at the halfway point. Students and alumni welcome, good refreshments.

Our next show is going to be April 9 to 15 in the VA building lobby, including individual work. The show goes up on April 9 and the vernissage will be Tuesday April 11.

Several of The Art Collective’s members and friends are presenting work during Art Matters, including Bea Parsons, Trevor Kiernander, Kyla Chevrier, Shawn Kuruneru, Khadija C. Baker and Susan Westbrook.

Bea Parsons is showing a ceramics piece called Giant at Darling Foundry, 745 Ottawa, from March 3 to March 10. Vernissage is Saturday March 4, 5 to 9 p.m.

Also at Darling Foundry is work by Trevor Kiernander, who is showing Abattoir, a four-paneled painting “exploring the abattoir in rotation, or quite simply, the slaughtered beef carcass.” The work examines “the subject removed from its original context while making reference to abstract and representational painting.”

Kyla Chevrier is presenting work at Bain Mathieu, 2915 Ontario East, metro Frontenac, from March 3 to 8, vernissage is Friday March 3 at 8 p.m. Kyla is showing work titled Own Yourself. “Hint Hint … it’s more than tits and ass. Own Yourself is a commentary on the objectification of women and the stereotypical perspective that pervasively invades contemporary culture.”

Shawn Kuruneru presents work at Casa Del Popolo, 4873 St. Laurent, in a show curated by Chantal Musgrove, who attended several of the first sessions of The Art Collective in the fall of 2004. Continues until March 30. Vernissage is Monday March 6, 8 p.m. Shawn is presenting drawing work titled Black Out. “You never miss the water till the well is dry/you never miss your baby till she says goodbye.”

Khadija C. Baker presents work at Nota Bene, 3416 Ave. du Parc. “I use a metaphor of a female for being Kurdish. As women have not found their proper place in the world, the Kurdish people do not own a country on a map,” is how she describes her painting. The show runs until March 17, with the vernissage on March 19, 6 to 8 p.m.

Also at Nota Bene is work by Vanessa McKernan, titled Mother May I. “I love her fiercely. Lean on her, look like her. All the while desperately separating my beliefs, aggressively, passively, affectionately.”

Susan Westbrook is presenting work at Art Mur, 5826 St. Henri St., metro Rosemont, from March 11 to March 18. The vernissage is March 11, 1 to 4 p.m. Susan is presenting work from a series of paintings that “explores how images can stand in for an absent person or context, and the way in which they can assume and even supercede the importance of authentic memories.”

Alexa Helbig-Berghoff-Auel presents work at Divan Orange, 4234 St. Laurent Blvd. Runs until March 30, vernissage is March 8, 5 to 7 p.m.

Beyond Art Matters, the rest of the art world is ticking along too.

Don’t miss Laura St. Pierre’s opening: Vernissage is Friday March 3 for Laura St. Pierre’s show, This End Up, at Galerie Articule, 4001 Berri St., #105. The show continues until April 9 and includes an artist’s talk on Saturday March 11 at 3 p.m. Laura is an MFA student and an instructor at Concordia whose Drawing class did a collaborative art making workshop conducted by Robert Winters on Feb. 16, 2006. A photo of Laura and collective member Judith Brisson at the collaborative session can be viewed in the Photos section of our gallery.

The Art Collective’s sessions are open to all Fine Arts students, alumni and professional artists.

Robert Winters
Co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca

Posted by Robert W at 12:31 AM | Permalink