SHELLEY NIRO, SAMINA MANSURI, ANDREW MCPHAIL

Curated by: Ingrid Mayrhofer

Qualia

July 7– August 18, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday July 13, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Qualia - what steel town feels like - intends to evoke sensory experiences that resonate with steel, and with the people who live with its material and immaterial impact. This exhibition by seven artists from Hamilton, Brantford and Toronto, explores the steadfast imprint of steel on Hamilton. In their research, the artists conducted site visits to steel plants, scrap yards, historical sites, and brown fields. The resulting artworks respond to steel as a material, an idea, a process, an element, and reach beyond the visual tropes of the post-industrial space and time.

For full media release, please click here.
For exhibition essay please click here.

Colleen Reid

Memory & Growth

July 13th to August 4th

Opening Reception: Friday July 13, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In my work I am exploring the idea of embedded memory; those pieces of our lives, fragments of occurrences, which we psychologically weave onto particular places. When we later encounter those places, we re-enter the richness of that memory and all of its associations, emotively replaying and reviewing an aspect of our own history. 

ARTS EDUCATION EXHIBITION

“Engaging and Educating Hamilton’s
Youth Through the Arts”

June 8 – June 30, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday June 8, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

• A culminating exhibition of The Print Studio’s Arts Education programs that bring artists into the schools and schools into the studio to create traditional and contemporary print media.

• 2011/2012 Arts Education was delivered to over 20 schools and over 1500 children in Hamilton’s core and surrounding areas.

DAWIT L. PETROS
Curated by Sally Frater

Mahber Shaw’ate (Association of 7)

April 20 – June 2, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday May 11th, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Mahber Shaw’ate (Association of 7), are photographs of temporary installations that investigate permutational possibilities and the disjuncture between physical and abstract materiality. The works appropriate the framework of an east African alphabet script (Tigrinya, Petros’ first language) and cardboard boxes. Petros integrates performative strategies, sculpture, and installation with legacies of studio and landscape imagery. The arrangements were constructed in locations ranging from Santa Barbara, California; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to Nazareth, Ethiopia.

LEE LYTTLE

Landscapes and Selected Works

May 11 – June 2, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday May 11, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Lee Lyttle’s Landscapes and Selected Works is an exhibition of digital prints originating from images of paintings on canvas and reworked digitally to bring out and highlight some of their subtle elements. The images vary, from landscapes of the Red Hill Creek eco system in East Hamilton, to surreal images conveying notions of death, spiritual transformation and accepting mortality.

CAROL PRIAMO

Architexturals

May 11 – June 2, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday May 11, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In this series, Carol Priamo uses her extensive practice in photography, collage and design combined with the raw materials of her own photographic images and digital programs to create tapestry-like compositions of intensified colour, pattern and texture. Her process is one of building a new ‘reality’ from the purposeful integration of altered, layered and blended photographs of architectural facades and streetscapes. She manipulates the images digitally to produce bold, abstract compositions, or more picturesque and fanciful ones. She combines all elements to visually express the inherent beauty, underlying order and endless variety of structures in our environment.

MIKE EVERETT
A Journey Round My Skull

April 13 – May 5, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday April 13, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

My work carries strong political, social, and philosophical undertones and is informed by a deep respect for the works of Goya, Kathe Kollwitz, Alfred Hrdlicka, and Sue Coe. Having studied Illustration, my work attempts to use the specific visual language of the illustrated image in order to deal with complex issues such as the nature of life, power, God, and death, and to present these issues in a way which can be understood. The use of and juxtaposition of symbols, tone, mark-making, and imagery is prevalent and adds a visual interest which is intended to draw the viewer into the dark, often surreal imagery contained within the images.

SUSAN BLIGHT
Wherever You’re Going I’m Going Your Way

March 2 – April 14, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday March 9th, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Susan Blight’s Wherever You’re Going I’m Going Your Way is an exhibition of photography, video, and mixed media works that investigate the inherent reciprocity of the relationship between First Nations peoples and place as relating to land rights, sovereignty, and cultural identity.

OLGA WIECZOREK
Back of my mind

March 9 - April 7, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday March 9, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

It is like the moment when all of your hair follicles on your arms, neck and head stand up for no apparent reason. In my latest body of work Back of my mind, I explore the concepts of memories, visions, deja vu, and flashbacks, and how they are obscured and buried within our subconscious. My images are pulled from dreams, smell-mories, and recollections that I tried to piece together to form a conversational narrative. My practice with washi paper has allowed me to explore this push and pull concept of foreground and background space in the mind and how it interplays with renderings of people and settings.

BENJAMIN TIVEN
An Echo Without A Medium

January 13 - February 25, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday January 13, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The work in Benjamin Tiven’s exhibition An Echo Without a Medium takes place within the complex legacies of the émigré German architect Ernst May and his practice in colonial Kenya from 1933-1953. The project examines the ideological flexibility of May’s formal vocabulary, and parses the relationship between his architectural logic and political dislocation. Through photographs, video, sculpture and text, three of May’s designs come under consideration: a failed prototype for pre-fabricated housing, an apartment complex in downtown Nairobi, and a now-demolished resort hotel in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. The exhibition also includes an artist’s book, containing all the source documents, images, and essay text associated with the project.

AMANDA MCKINNEY
Silhouette Series

February 10 - March 3, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday February 10, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

A cross between the physical and philosophical. A hybrid of materials. My work leans towards environmental awareness, humanity and existence. Using recycled paper to create a new form of material. With the addition of a photograph I am combining one of the oldest art forms, papermaking, with one of the newest forms of art, digital photography. Creating a new mode of expression, reminiscent of Ukiyo-e Japanese prints. The texture of the handmade paper heightens the sensory experience. The contrast of colours against the black lines of the photography mimics the fragments of our memories, which are often recalled through stimulation. Line, colour, texture, evoking memories, connecting the past with the present.

Compositions consider the elements of art such as line, colour and texture. Using images of a more natural environment to express the passage of time, I aim to create a sensory experience for the viewer. The changing seasons consistently show the strength found in the death and rebirth of nature. The materials I choose are a reaction to time and the environment in which we live. Recycling is a major element in my work. The paper I use to transfer photographs on, I make by hand from recycled paper. The reincarnation of materials, giving ‘garbage’ a new purpose and meaning, extending its time of life. I use archival mediums to persevere and strengthen the paper, reinforcing the extension of life.

ERIC EULER
Beacons

January 13 - February 4, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday January 13, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

By investigating community, spirituality, and transcendental thought, Eric creates multi-layered prints that express a strengthening experience. Visual dialogue develops through the arrangement of elementary shapes, organic textures, and archaic mark making. Monolithic forms become symbols of optimistic possibility echoed by the chaos of undefined space. Tension in the prints becomes the catalyst for change.

MEMBERS' EXHIBITION
Members of The Print Studio

December 9 - January 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday December 9th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm


The Print Studio (TPS) is an artist-run centre that is dedicated to promoting print media and media arts in contemporary artistic discourse for practicing artists and the community at large.  As a print production, exhibition centre, animator of community arts and education centre, TPS supports both traditional and experimental print and new media practices. The centre encourages research and innovation and provides forums for discussion and examination of critical and theoretical issues. TPS supports artists in the development of their practice and acts as a resource centre for print culture by actively engaging the visual arts community. This exhibition presents the various media in which our general membership work.

CHRISTOPHER SABA
Second Glance

December 9 - January 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday December 9th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

In this body of work, Christopher Saba explores notions of identity through a reconstructed version of his own family heritage. The subtle juxtaposition of contemporary culture against the backdrop of historical records forges paradoxical relationships with the artist’s ancestry, and questions it’s relevance in defining individual identity. Struggling with a Canadian identity that offers no direct path of assimilation, Second Glance is an opportunity for the artist to explore and indirectly relate to his family history.

PETER KARUNA
Transient(s)

October 28 - December 3, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday November 11th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Peter Karuna’s documentary photographs taken in Canada and abroad convey moments of impermanence, movement and rootlessness in their imagery. Inspired by the artist’s own experiences of diaspora, migration and travel the monochromatic works explore notions of ephemerality and tourism as related to empire.

PAULA KROCHAK
Living Fossil

Nov 11 - December 3, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday November 11th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Ginkgo leaves are termed “living fossils” for the fact that they have remained essentially unchanged from earlier geologic times and were at once considered to be an extinct species until re-discovery.*

In this body of work Paula Krochak deconstructs the shape of ginkgo leaves and other forms found in nature into basic shapes, lines and parabolic curves. Creating works that are influenced by the relationship between mathematical equations and patterns that can be identified in nature, she often uses this as a starting point for her work and undermines and modifies the authority of balance and rational through the addition of hand drawn elements. Shown alongside prints on paper are the zinc etching plates the artist used to create her works as way of illustrating the extent of her engagement in printmaking.

* Julie Jalalpour et al. (1997). “Ginkgoales: Fossil Record”. University of California, Berkeley.

INSOON HA
Curated by Sally Frater

monology


September 9 - October 22, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday September 9, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
*Performance: Friday September 9, 9:00 pm

Monology continues Insoon Ha’s exploration of gender, hybridity, violence and trauma. In the main gallery the artist has covered the floor with multiple large-scale photographs of her face. Though visible through the Gallery’s storefront, anyone wishing to have a closer look (or to actually enter into the space) must walk upon the images and defile them. Ha will also display a series of serigraphs that feature images of human and animal forms and random objects that have been repurposed as instruments of torture.

MARIA LEGAULT
Curated by Sally Frater

French Kiss


Saturday September 10, 2011 - 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Coinciding with the Supercrawl street festival, Maria Legault will stage a performance as the character Marie-Minou Miaou Miaou. Using a colloquial turn of phrase as the point of origin for the work, Legault will present a contemporary interpretation of the kissing booth tradition that often takes place during street carnivals. With French Kiss the artist employs humour as a means of acknowledging and dislodging the pejorative epithets and behaviours ascribed to French Canadians.

KEARON ROY TAYLOR

Late Anthropocene Dreams


September 9 - October 22, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday September 9, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
* 2nd Floor Gallery Space

The Anthropocene (from the Greek anthros, human, and cene, new) is an informal geological term coined recently by scientist Paul Crutzen, denoting the era where human activities have begun to have a noticeable impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.

Late Anthropocene Dreams is a series that examines the dissonance that appears as we reach for objectivity and transcendence. Featuring both screenprinted and digital prints, the work explores strange worlds where motion through time and space is discontinuous and fragmented.

DODOLAB WITH TOR LUKASIK FOSS

the new worker’s songbook songwriters’ workbook for new worksongs!


July 8 - Aug 12, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, July 8th 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

DodoLab has been collaborating with Hamilton artist, musician and songwriter Tor Lukasik-Foss (aka Tiny Bill Cody) on the creation of a New Worker’s Songbook. The project was originally initiated in 2010 at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre and was based on their collection of books and recordings of songs that reflect Hamilton’s history of industry and organized labour. For the first phase of the project, a series of surveys and internet queries were initiated to collect current ideas about work in Hamilton and provide Lukasik-Foss with source material for writing new songs. In addition, a guide book to writing your own work songs was developed. This is an ongoing project in Hamilton and in other communities where DodoLab is currently working, including Windsor and Sudbury. This new phase of the project at the Print Studio includes an installation/open mike performance space, a new edition of Tor’s A New Worker’s Song Writing Work Book for New Songs, and a limited edition silkscreen print of the Shitty Job Song.

DELIO DELGADO

Gami-boat


July 8 - Aug 12, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, July 8th 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Origami’s tenet which dictates that, “a line connecting two constructed points is a constructed line” was the initial point of departure for creating this small body of work. Relating to this notion, Gami-boat explores notions of movement, migration, relocation as well as the inherent absurdity and loneliness of these processes. Additionally this series abstractly explores structure through the use of blueprints from previously unrealized architectural proposals and odd compositions as well as expressing the artist’s own personal relationship to migration.

BRIAR CRAIG, DENISE HAWRYSIO, BECKY IP, PASCALINE KNIGHT, JUDY MAJOR-GIRARDIN & LISA TURNER
Accidental Literacy

Curated by Simone Aziga and Ingrid Mayrhofer

April 23rd to May 28th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, May 13th 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Accidental Literacy features works by six artists who hail from diverse geographic, cultural and printmaking backgrounds. Though their practices vary greatly in content and presentation, each of them incorporates elements of chance b to shape their imagery. The varied engagements with printmaking invite the viewer to gain a deeper understanding of the capabilities of the medium as an artistic practice.

AMANDA FORREST-CHAN
Cut Wood

May 13 to June 4th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, May 13th 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Cut Wood responds to the passage of time and is informed by notions of process. As is evidenced by the textural quality of the resulting prints, the laborious use of woodcut reduction techniques emphasizes physicality, gesture and tactility. The prints are the result of the application of multiple layers of ink that are applied over an extended period of time. The process challenges current obsessions with technology, efficiency, and contemporary perceptions of the modern world. Guided by principles of process and facilitation rather than a final product, Forrest-Chan chooses to allow the beauty of materiality, wood grain and the particularity of carved marks to be the focus of her work.

SOUTH ONTARIO ARTISTS
Small is Good


April 8th to April 29th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, April 8th 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Small is Good displays the work of various artists from all over Southern Ontario. The show promotes contemporary art in our region and supports artists by providing them with a targeted occasion to exhibit and sell small work with a 50/50 split of sales revenue. All artwork is priced at $100 to encourage purchase. Proceeds will go to support a facility that provides artists with a working space, specialized equipment, tech support, professional development and resources.

BRENDAN FERNANDES
(buli)

Curated by Sally Frater

Co-presented by Third Space Art Projects

March 11th to April 16th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, March 11th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

(buli) continues to explore Brendan Fernandes’ investigations into the dilemmas and codes that language creates through the lens of ethnicity. Through this exhibition he will look at Dada writing fashions that play on repetition and nonsensicality, while referencing wall labels and provenance reports of African objects in museum collections.

STEVE NEWBERRY
New Works


April 8 to May 7 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, April 8th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

New Works is a sampling of the artist’s recent mixed media works on plywood. Seemingly random materials like stickers and fake plastic rocks come together with layers of intuitive screen-printing that depict scenes of ‘nature’ and its inhabitants.

SADKO HADZIHASANOVIC
Self-Kunst


March 11th to April 2nd 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, March 11th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Twenty years ago… I painted my first nude self-portrait... Now, twenty years later, from the perspective of a man in his 50-s, I revisit the imagery of the self-portrait. These new monotypes are more introspective, with the face-figure cast as a vessel for emotional states of being – fragility, weakness, humanness - not caught in the forefront of war but of the inevitable passages of time

LAUREN PASHUK
Lost and Found

January 14th to March 5th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, January 14th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Lost and Found is an exploration of the nuances of various printmaking techniques within the parameters of the multiple and limited edition. Often using a found object as a starting point or element in the completed design, Lauren develops her image within a conceptual framework.

NADINE BARITEAU, SIMON FRANK
AND ALEXIS GRANWELL
Heaps and Hives
Curated by Anne Cibola

January 14th to February 26th 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, January 14th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Incorporating a range of media related to the creation of multiples, Heaps and Hives explores environmental concerns by examining patterns of accumulation and the inference of a breaking point. Nadine Bariteau’s work demonstrates the tension between nature and the manufactured world. Simon Frank’s work calls attention to the friction between nature and the industrialized environment. Alexis Granwell’s Tunnel Series explores cycles, structures and deterioration through abstract form. Collectively the works in this exhibition challenge us to consider the environmental and psychological limits to our actions.

Peter Kingstone and Daryl Vocat
Sissies and Psychopaths
Curated by Sally Frater

October 29th to December 4th 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, November 12th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Sissies and Psychopaths will feature collage, video and screen prints by Daryl Vocat and Peter Kingstone. Vocat’s screen prints combine found and redrawn illustrations sourced from Boy Scout handbooks and photographic imagery. Kingstone’s videos will explore the relationship between expressions of queerness and acts of transgression. Vocat’s and Kingstone’s collaborative collage-based prints, as well as their individual works, will examine depictions of masculinity and sexuality and will address the artificial nature of the original source material as well as the constructed nature of identity.

Becky Katz
The Carving Complex

November 12th to December 3rd 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, November 12th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

The Carving Complex is a contemporary study and personal interpretation of Freud’s theory, The Electra Complex; where young girls who admire their father, seek partners who are obvious substitutes for him. By comparing the stylized portrait of her father to those of her and her five sisters’ partners, it will be possible to see how similar or dissimilar they are to both him, and each other. The Carving Complex exhibits both the original wood blocks and each of their subsequent relief prints.

Opening Reception: Friday, October 8th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

In this series of monoprints, printmaker and abstract artist Lucinda Jones explores water as the elemental basis for all living matter. Before commencing this series, Jones spent time analyzing several aspects of water, in particular its movements and sounds. This intuitive analysis later became the basis for her artwork. Jones intends to guide the viewer on a visual pathway into the rhythm and flow of water.

Opening Reception: Friday, September 10th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Performance by Miss Canadiana beginning at 7:30 pm*

Artists Sandra Brewster, Stephen Fakiyesi and Camille Turner challenge notions of “blackness” and representation. Sandra Brewster’s series of mixed media silk screens juxtapose portraits and silhouettes of young men in “bad boy” poses with imagery of toys and objects typically associated with little boys. Stephen Fakiyesi’s prints of oversize playing cards feature images of black kings and queens while Camille Turner’s digital photographs of Miss Canadiana in and around Hamilton’s challenge assumptions about Canadian identity and normative beauty. As part of the popular James St. North Art Crawl, Miss Canadiana will mark her return to her hometown of Hamilton. In their respective works each artist creates a multilayered space wherein blackness is positioned as a marker of normality.

* Miss Canadiana’s appearance is co-presented by Outerregion

Sandra Brewster Artist Talk: Friday Oct 8 @7:30 pm
more info...

Opening Reception: Friday, September 10th 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Along with the idea of working subconsciously is the scientific process. In this way, a highly structured step-by-step process of creating is then contrasted with randomly interchangeable variables. These variables are distinguished before the process endures itself - however, they are interchangeable from edition to edition. This in itself creates a contradiction of thought, yet visually is fluid as an abstract work of art.

Studio 12
Four Corners
July 9th to August 14th 2010

*This show is taking place in both galleries.

Opening Reception: Friday, July 9th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm

Four Corners represents the four corners of a room, wall, picture frame, image, and the view finder which enables the artist to take images from the four corners of the world.

Studio 12 is a photographic artists’ collective founded in 2009. The collective is best described as a participatory group of artist individuals who share in the common objective of developing and sharing their artistic skills through the confluence of differing conceptual and formal approaches that each member brings to the group.

Featuring the works of:

Sol Agranti, Eric Bosch, Shirley Dennis, Mary Gilmour, Todd Murray, John Overmeyer, Martin Renters, Ruth Renters, and Paul Roth

“Core Images 2” is the culminating exhibition from The Print Studio’s two Art Education Programs: Artists in the Schools & Schools in the Studio and ECO Art. These programs bring artists into the schools and bring schools into the studio to create and produce age/stage appropriate print media. The chosen print media practices complement and enhance the social studies, math and science curricula. As well, students learn about local and provincial environmental issues. From an early age, children create images that express their understanding of the world. We build on these experiences, providing opportunities for students to perceive, respond, create and communicate through art. Please visit and view the work of the next generation of creative thinkers.

The Open
Brad Isaacs and Peter Karuna
April 16th to June 5 2010

Curated by Ola Wlusek
In the Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, May 14th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Members' Reception: Friday, May 14th 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm


The Open is an investigation into the natural and conquered worlds by two Hamilton-based artists, Brad Isaacs and Peter Karuna. Focusing on their personal ethics and individual modes of production, the artists explore psychological and physical notions of human, animal, and time through their black and white photo-based practices. Isaacs points to a rupture between ‘domesticated’ and ‘the wild’
while questioning the concealed and unexpected resonance between animals and human domain. Karuna investigates photography’s concern with time as he visually borrows that moment from a particular time and place for subsequent contemplation. The Open is an attempt to uncover the element of the symbolic and the magical in the menacingly candid relationships, which stylistically combine the staged aesthetic and perfect timing.

I try to portray in my artwork the things we take for granted day to day. I like to show the natural, untouched, undisturbed beauty of our landscapes and the environment surrounding them. I want to show the spontaneous formations that our landscapes create, whether in the land and water, the atmosphere, the flora, or all three. Even though nature seems very simple at times, it is to me, far more complex than you realize.

I try to capture the motion of emotions and convey the concept of “the joy of being in the continual present” and “living in the moment” in my work. I use abstract geometry as well, which is a structure of mind as much as it is a physical entity that evokes a heightened awareness of our own being.

www.fatimagarzan.com

GHOSTS
Julio Ferrer
March 12th to April 3rd 2010

In the Members' Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, March 12th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Pre-crawl Members’ Reception: Friday, March 12th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm


These are not only portraits; they are my ghosts, my inspiration.

They are not only the faces of these artists but they represent all the people from whom I have learned.

This is my tribute to all the teachers and artists that have been involved in some way in the development of my career as a visual artist since I was a child.

www.julioferrer.ca

Border Prints
Ingrid Mayrhofer
March 12th to April 3rd 2010

In the Second Floor Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, March 12th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Pre-crawl Members’ Reception: Friday, March 12th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm

Last summer, my sisters and I went hiking in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria, north of the Danube. Halfway into a day of wandering through woodlots and along fields and streams, we suddenly came upon the border between Austria and the Czech Republic. Remnants of historical differences cast an eerie shadow on the sunny meadow. Having stepped over barbed wire into the former Czechoslovakia to eat our lunch, we noticed a watchtower at the edge of the forest, next to a farmhouse. The tower does not show up on any of our snap shots.

Life Models
Toni Hafkenscheid
January 8th to February 20th 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, January 8th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Members' Reception: January 8th 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm

Life Models showcases the strange and toy-like images of Toni Hafkenschied. Employing a tilt-shift lens and film that saturates colour, the artist transforms real-life, unedited landscapes into vibrant miniatures that recall the model train sets that fascinated him as a child. The staged quality of the resulting images effectively proposes that human life is a game. At the same time, it demonstrates the power we assert over the natural landscape, and indeed constructing these images makes Hafkenscheid "feel like God, with power over the world."



The Print Studio gratefully acknowledges the support of Birch Libralato Gallery

Vistas: Real or Imagined
Deb Dema
December 11th to January 2nd 2010

In the Members' Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, December 11th 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Members' Reception: December 11th 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm

"The main body of my work is created through the process of waterless lithography. This form of printmaking allows for the exploration of line and shadow in realistic abstract subjects. I invite you to view my works."

Bling!
Hitoko Okada
November 7th to December 5th, 2009

In the Members' Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday November 13th 7:30 to 11:00 pm
Members Reception: November 13th 6:30 to 7:30 pm

Bling! is a humourous response to our economic downturn and is a satirical questioning of our consumerist social values. The candy colored gems are a playful irony of our culture of excess and acquisitions of status and luxury. Each piece in the collection is one of a kind, handmade and screen printed on 100% cotton jersey. Bling! is a product of our current economic recession.

Clothing
The mini collection is made from 100% cotton jersey. The gems are screen printed in bright celebratory colors which is in direct contrast to our current economic mood. Asymmetrical hems and lines are repeated throughout the collection which is a reference towards imbalance, and contrasts the full shapes in billowed hem lines, gathered pockets and stuffed gems suggesting excess and fullness. A bauble necklace is screen printed in the front with a bateau neckline, and an open back showcases strung up double-sided gems.

Accessories
The cluster neckpiece is a collage of inflated and deflated gems mounted on a felt backing and suspended by Mokuba ribbons, aluminum chains, resin rings and tagua nut beads. The bouquet brooch is made with a cluster of stuffed gems with a ribboned tassel.