Gallery Space

About 15 or so years ago a new Recreation Centre was built incorporating a library, some meeting rooms, a swimming pool and a fitness centre. As this town's population has grown over the years, it has become obvious that the building wasn't large enough to supply the town's needs.
After many months of on again / off again building plans and debates on the rising cost by town council, construction of the new expansion started a couple of years ago, and the project is almost complete.
The expanded library opens today with a great celebration, but unfortunately we've had a huge ice storm all weekend and I can't even get out of my snowy icy driveway this morning to go and see it. I'll have to wait until all the ice melts!
The new fitness area is almost complete, and will be ready by July.
And our small Art Gallery will be moving to a larger space in the new building.... with the entrance just inside the front doors, so much easier for the public to access the space dedicated to art. The Gallery is currently in a building set back from the main street, and somewhat out of the public eye.... you have to want to go there!
So in anticipation of the move, the gallery work space is being organised.

The gallery work space is used for art classes, children's art camps, school groups, paint battles, family art days. The walls are lined with shelves containing paint, markers, crayons, inks, brushes, paper, canvases, art books. I meet with my art group, AAP Collective, there on Monday mornings. It will be so nice to move into the new space when it's complete.

Meanwhile, there are children's art classes still continuing. I wonder how long these coloured pencils will stay colour-coordinated.....!

Come From Away

Have you heard about the musical production Come From Away? It's the story of the more than 7,000 passengers and airline personnel and some travelling animals on 38 wide-body planes that were stranded at the small town of Gander in Newfoundland in the days after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001. You can read about how all the travellers were taken care of by the good people of Gander and the surrounding small towns here.

Ten years after 9/11 in 2011, there was a reunion of the passengers, airline personnel and the townspeople in Gander, and an idea was born. Canadian writing team Irene Sankoff and David Hein created the musical Come From Away to tell the incredible story of how a small town of 10,000 souls selflessly fed, housed, clothed, and generally cared for more than 7,000 bewildered and frightened travellers from all over the world who didn't know what was happening or what to think.

Tickets for this popular musical are hard to get, and also pretty expensive, but last January I got together with some friends and we bought tickets for April..... and earlier this week we saw the show. We went downtown on the GO bus and train (I hate parking in Toronto so public transport is the best option), enjoyed a yummy dinner at Marche, then headed to the Royal Alexandra Theatre on King Street.

We got to our theatre seats, and immediately I recognized a woman who I worked with more than 15 years ago.... she was sitting in the row right in front of me! Small world, right?

The opening set of Come From Away. No photos during the performance, of course. The chairs that you see are mostly used as chairs, but can magically become school buses, planes, cars, beds, a lookout over a beautiful view, seating for a party, stage for a musician. And each actor can become many different characters depending on what hat or jacket he's wearing. The show runs 100 minutes with no intermission. There were side-splitting hilarious moments, and heart-breaking moments too. A wonderful show, I enjoyed it so much. It was worth waiting for.
If you have a chance to get your hands on a ticket.... it's a must-see show!

Trees Second Try

I'm not satisfied with the painting shown in the previous post so I tried again.  Always fun to see just how a different technique can change the outcome.

Similar colours, but the backgound was textured with plastic shelf liner, and the trees are acrylic paint marker.  I'll probably have another go at this subject later this week. Sorry, this is a really crummy photo.

Trees

Just did this 8"x10" painting today, trying to be looser and attempting to use the palette knife, but I think the tree trunks and branches are too dark. And too messy.

Spring!

The view out of my kitchen window about 5 minutes ago......

... yes, that's snow falling from the sky! In fact, it's been snowing all day.
Isn't Spring wonderful????

Chair Time

As promised in my previous blog post..... the chairs in the AAP Collective art exhibition on display at our local Municipal Offices until the end of April.
AAP? What does that stand for? It could stand for many phrases.... Another Artist Paints, Amazing Art Projects, but in this case it's.....

ART AIN'T PRETTY!

BLUE VINCENT by Colin W

NAMASTE by Ed K

CHANNELING PIET MONDRIAN by Margaret G

ENDO by Diana B

FISH by Susan W

THE THREE HARES by Fenella R S

(Oooops I forgot the title, I'll have to look it up) by Sabrina S

More paintings and prints are on the right wall.... I'll post some more pics soon.

Have a Seat

Our Monday morning art group are hosting a mini art exhibition starting next week, and one of our art projects has been to renovate and decorate an old piece of furniture. It could be a chair, a table, a footstool, whatever has been discarded.

Sometimes treasures can be found at the side of the road on garbage day, you just have to be at the right place at the right time. I kept looking but didn't find anything suitable.

I eventually found this child's chair at the local thrift shop, and took it home, but when I started sanding it down I noticed one of the stretchers between the chair legs was missing, making the whole thing a bit wobbly and unsafe.

A quick trip to the local lumber store for a dowel and then some TLC from a friend with a saw and a hammer fixed things fairly quickly.

Then a spray can of glossy black paint covered up the worst of the dents and scratches, and the Three Hares design was carefully painted on the seat in gesso. 

The Three Hares is an ancient design found in many locations including China, the Middle East, France, England..... a puzzle really, with each hare having two ears, but only 3 ears actually appearing.

Then the hares were painted with colourful acrylic paint. 

Now I'm debating whether to add any colour to the existing pressed wood design on the back of the chair..... what do you think?

Blog edit a few days later: I've decided to leave the chair as it is, no more colour. Just a coat of gloss medium over the paint to give it some shine. I'll be posting pics of the other art chairs once we get the exhibition started.