Front Page Coverage of VAV Event
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