Breugel-Boche Bus

The Bruegel-Boche Bus.... an amazing mindboggling piece of art displayed in it's own room at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario.  The artist started with an old 1960 VW bus, just like the one I had many years ago, and started elaborating on it.  He started in 1996 and the construction is still continuing. 

It's a marveroolus (love that new word, I just made it up by accident) piece of imagination. The bus appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds, and I wonder if it will ever be finished!

More photos to come......

Young at Art

Each year the Gallery shows student art from all the elementary schools in the area.

This is the school where my grandies are students, but I don't know if any of the featured art is their work. There's some scary interesting stuff here!

The Leaf Project

The Leaf Project was devised to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday in 2017, and also to create an art project that the people of the town could contribute to. It started out small, then grew and grew, and was finally assembled last week. It's currently hanging in a corner of the Gallery, but will eventually make it's way to one of the public buildings. I contributed some leaves, so did my grandchildren.
Leaves were made of paper, then laminated, but there were also leaves made of pottery, stone, glass, and metal.

Juried Art Again

A few more of the paintings that were chosen to be shown at the Juried Art Exhibition in the spring. I regret not taking note of the artist's names and the titles of the works. Sorry artists, if you happen to see this post.

This was a small acrylic painting, approximately 9"x12" I think.... brightly painted ice fishing huts on a frozen lake. A lovely feeling of isolation and yet community..... and cold!

I loved the colours of the dramatic skies in these two matched landscapes. And they looked perfect displayed on the red wall. Often the colours surrounding a painting can make such a difference to the appearance and effect of the finished product.

What's going to happen when that bird in the top right corner finally makes a landing?
I'm holding my breath.....

This was my favourite painting in the show, it was large, about 36" x 48".
Memories of the artist's dad's workshop.  I stood and looked at this painting for a long time, visualizing the man who worked here, building things and repairing things. Just like many dads.
I can't remember the artist's name but I remember the title: Portrait of a Good Man. 

Juried Art Show 2017

The local Art Gallery holds a Juried Art Show each year in the spring, and artists all over Ontario are invited to submit their work. A panel of experts..... well, people who know about such things, I don't really know how they qualify as experts...... decide which works will be on display. It's only a small gallery so not everything will end up on the walls.
Here are just a few of the works that I really liked. But sadly I didn't note all of the titles or the names of the artists.

This was a depiction of Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah, the largest open pit copper mine in the world.

Life of the Ocean by Vicky Talwar. Acrylic and mixed media 36"x48"

Collage.... many printed images combined to make one large image.  I wish I had made a note of the artist.

Some more images to come.....

Revel

I don't really know why it's called Revel, but the installation in our local Art Gallery by Canadian artist Ed Pien is fascinating.  And dreamy. And haunting. And more than a little weird. I want my grandchildren to see it.

Here's what the gallery curator says about it:
Revel is like a dream. Upon entering the gallery you become immersed in that dream. Projected light fills the space through a large transparent spiral structure and within the light you catch glimpses of a figure in silhouette. The figure is the shadow of a young woman who gently attends to floating objects that resemble tiny houses and buildings, all within a cloud of organic forms and all appearing upon the gallery wall. As you move deeper into the space you literally become part of the scene as your shadow starts interacting with the shadow of the figure before you. If there is no-one else in the gallery with you it is a little unnerving to be shadow dancing with a ghost.
For Revel, Pien has created an eight-foot high, clear Mylar, spiraling screen that has been meticulously cut into a jungle of branches and organic forms. Several 3D sculptural forms are nested within a web of lines that are suspended from the ceiling at the center of the screen, casting their own shadows.

I walked between the spiral layers to the centre of the transparent labyrinth, with the image of an ethereal woman dancing around me and reflections like shimmering water on the walls. Quiet music was playing. My photos don't do the room justice. I think this is an installation where you have to be there and experience it in person!

The creator of this piece, Ed Pien, will be giving a talk at the Gallery about his work at the end of June. I'm definitely marking my calendar and intend on being there, just to find out what all this means.

Sinkholes

Our local art gallery changes it's exhibitions on a monthly basis, currently featuring drawings by Jenna Faye Powell from London, Ontario. 

According to the gallery's website: Her beautiful and playful drawings and paintings present smooth rounded out voids in the earth: x-ray visions of what lie beneath the surface, revealing to us the sinkholes’ topography and geology. Layers of earth are stylized in warm and golden hues reminiscent of old and fading photographs, and fill us with a warm nostalgic feeling. Nothing threatening here, just lovely and quirky depictions of the earth rounded out and sliced and diced to show us what’s inside. 

Mostly done in coloured pencils I think. Some of the other works are done on black paper and more ominous and gloomy, but these are the ones I liked best.

Portrait Gallery

The local Art Gallery currently has an exhibition of portraits in various mediums and by various painters, and last week a group of artists who are collectively known as "Painters 6" gave a public demonstration of the art of portrait painting.
My friend Ray was the victim... er I mean sitter. He sat there for 3 hours.... yes he had breaks, but that's such a hard thing to do!
Painting began at 5:00pm with a blank canvas and finished at around 8:00pm. Unfortunately I wasn't there to see the finished pieces. These pics were about halfway through the evening.

Garbage in the Gallery

Our little town Art Gallery hosts a fresh exhibition around once a month. I always make a point of going to see what the curator has chosen to display. I don't always like what I see, but it's always interesting. There's usually a "meet the artist" night, but I seem to have missed them recently.

This wall of recycled plastic blister packs by Toronto area artist Katherine Harvey caught my eye immediately. Totally built with plastic packaging, all colour coded. She must have had her whole family and all her friends saving packaging for her. A great way to use a tiny amount of that excessive non-biodegradable waste that we create.... far too much of it going into landfill.

 A detail of part of the art installation. Layer upon layer of non-recyleable plastic. Basically known as garbage. I admit I'm as guilty as anyone for throwing this stuff into my waste bin. It's hard to buy anything that isn't shrouded in layers of plastic.

This artist is known for her large installations built from plastic water bottles, packaging fishing line, clamshell packs.

Arty Stuff

The local Gallery holds a Juried Art Exhibition every spring and invites artists in the area to submit works in whatever form they use.... paintings, photography, fiber arts, sculpture, etc. Three jurors, usually artists or gallery curators, look over all the submissions and choose the pieces to display.

Here are some of this year's winners. I loved everything on display, except one painting (not shown). And this is just a small sample of the paintings I liked.

I'd be happy with any one of these hanging on my wall.

It's quite amazing to me, that there are so many talented artists in this area.

Up On The Roof

The current exhibition at our local Gallery is by artist Max Streicher.
Many of his installations feature inflatable figures sewn from lightweight fabrics that allow movement. The arms and legs of these big people move with the wind, and their heads bob constantly.

His bio says "Using industrial fans and simple valve mechanisms to animate sewn forms with life-like gestures, the large-scale works hint at enchantment, fantasy and optimism while they are intended to overwhelm."

They are definitely overwhelming. It's a little disconcerting to look up and suddenly notice these giants tethered to the roof.