Articles tagged with: drawing

  • Art exhibit receptions to mark International Women’s Day

    Wednesday, March 07, 2018 | By

    The opening reception of “Silent Areas: The Spaces in Between,” Cat Stambolic and Sarah Martin, takes place Thursday, March 8 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    The opening reception of “Silent Areas: The Spaces in Between,” Cat Stambolic and Sarah Martin, takes place Thursday, March 8 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    Brock’s arts community will mark International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 8 with two art exhibition receptions.

    On display at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Visual Arts Gallery and student exhibition space, “Silent Areas: The Spaces in Between” features the work of third-year Visual Arts student Sarah Martin and recent Brock Visual Arts graduate Cat Stambolic (BA ’17).

    The exhibition, which initially opened Feb. 15 and runs until Saturday, March 24, explores the disconnect between mind and body, deemed ‘silent areas.’

    Exploring the theme separately through their previous work, the pair came together to create the exhibit, which investigates “connections between mind and body; specifically, what happens if and when that connection is interrupted,” explained Stambolic.

    Both women are strong advocates of mental health.

    “Our work hangs in conversation with each other’s,” Stambolic said, and is “truly representative of the open dialogue we need to create regarding mental illness.”

    Her work featured in the show is directly related to her own sensory experiences, which resulted in feeling a disconnect from her physical body.

    “The process of making these pieces was a way to resolve these sensations and emotions, re-envisioning them as tangible sculptures,” she said.

    Martin uses her photographs to create visual representation of “restlessness and unconsciousness, how feelings of anxiety can create out-of-body experiences and feelings of existentialism.”

    Her work in this exhibit depicts women exclusively in order to “refocus the narrative of women creating work featuring women, instead of from a male perspective,” she said. “Using the female figure in a powerful way reclaims ownership of the female body and creates a new narrative of empowerment and self-reflection.”

    Both artists will be at the exhibition’s reception to discuss their work on Thursday, March 8 from 5 to 8 p.m.

    Also that evening, from 6 to 8 p.m., is the opening reception of “Expressions of Today/Expressions d’aujourd’hui” at the Niagara Arts Centre, 354 St. Paul St.

    Featuring work from Brock’s Studies in Arts and Culture, and French Studies students, the exhibit explores contemporary expressions in art and literature, with pieces creating unusual stories mixing narrative and art-making.

    “Expressions of Today/Expressions d’aujourd’hui” will be on display at the NAC until Friday, March 16.

    For information on upcoming events, visit the MIWSFPA website.

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    Categories: Alumni, Current Students, Events, Exhibitions, In the Media, News

  • A Special One Night Art Exhibition

    Friday, January 12, 2018 | By

    Invasive Species video freeze frame

    On January 17, students from Donna Akrey’s 3M90 Advanced Art Practices will be “transplanting their work into the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts building”. Everyone is invited to explore this one night exhibition between 4 and 9 p.m. Maps will be given out to help navigate the space to see the works – some easy to find, others more hidden.

    Invasive Species is a collection of self-directed works from third and fourth year students in the 3M90 ADVANCED ART PRACTICES course. This exhibition focuses on themes of information, architecture, the archive, regionality, subjectivity and objectivity, death, resilience, ecology, mental health, space, the institution, invasive and symbiotic species, and site-specific art. The works are comprised of painting, drawing, video, projection, animation, performance, and installation. All of the artists respond to the unique specificities and conditions of the facility and its site.

    Victoria Reid, visual arts student in Donna Akrey’s 3M90 course says her objective is “to personify objects in the architecture and space around us to show our connection to the architecture. I chose to do this in order to bring awareness to our relationship and contribution to the growing industrial landscape around us.”

    This event marks the mid-year point as the student progress to a final site-specific exhibition proposed to take over parts of downtown St. Catharines in April 2018.

    In order to provoke creativity and thought into this exhibition, Akrey asked her students, “if your work was to fit in this space (the MIW) and not the white cube – where might it go?” She says, “This allows the students to consider their work outside of the gallery and in effect pushes research further (as well as the logistics of mounting visual art in difficult spaces). The students have risen to it and are doing a great job.”

    Reid comments on what this course and the opportunity of this exhibition has taught her, “Through the process of making this work, I learned how to step outside my comfort zone and I learned that art can be art, even when in unconventional spaces apart from the gallery.”

    Donna Akrey is a part-time instructor of visual arts at Brock University. Her exhibition, Also Also held at Rodman Hall from February to April of 2017, was nominated for Exhibition of the Year: Budget Under $20, 000 (Monographic) Award by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG). Her collaboration as a member of the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit was recently seen in the Downtown/s – Urban Renewals Today for Tomorrow: The 2017 Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art.

    Isabella Domaradzki, artist, member of the organizational team for Invasive Species, and student in the 3M90 course says what she looks forward to most about this one night exhibition “is seeing our hard work in creating our art and planning this show come to life. We have learned so many valuable lessons throughout this experience that have shaped our identity as artists, and I think it will be exciting to visualize our growth and progress!”

    This one night exhibition is a free event held at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts from 4 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday Jan. 17. Refreshments and snacks will be served in the MIWSFPA lobby. Visit the Invasive Species Facebook event page to stay updated with this exciting event.

    See the article in the Brock News.

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    Categories: Current Students, Events, Exhibitions, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

  • Exhibition: La Magaria

    Tuesday, September 26, 2017 | By

    Exhibition: La Magaria

    La Magaria #1

    Brock Visual Arts student Lisette Costanzo presents an exhibition consisting of paintings, drawings, and installations that were inspired by La Magaria (Italian for witchcraft), metaphysics, and the divine. This is the first student art exhibition in the Visual Arts Exhibition Space for the 2017-18 season at the MIWSFPA.

    Exhibition: Wednesday October 11, 2017 to Tuesday October 31, 2017

    Regular visiting hours for the Exhibition Space are Tuesday through Saturday from 1-5 pm
    For additional times see: the Gallery webpage or the Gallery Facebook page

    Closing Reception: Tuesday October 31, 2017
    Time: 5:00 – 10:00 pm

    Location: Visual Arts Exhibition Space, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University

    A free community event.

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Events, Exhibitions, News

  • Presence: Large Drawings by Lorène Bourgeois

    Wednesday, October 26, 2016 | By

    (Source: The Brock Press, October 25, 2016 | by Shannon Parr)

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Forteresse painting by Peter Legris

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Forteresse” (2012) / Peter Legris

    Brock’s own Visual Arts Instructor, Lorène Bourgeois, is exhibiting a collection of her work with large drawings at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. Some of her most recent highly detailed drawings are mounted directly on the wall and are described by MIWSFPA as “large-scale representations of humans, animals, clothing and nakedness”.

    Although born in France, Bourgeois has trained in the arts in Paris, Philadelphia and Halifax, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Bourgeois’ work has been exhibited in Canada, France, Korea, Russia and the United States, and her work is currently held in a multitude of centres for art which include: the Canada Council Art Bank, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the National Bank of Canada, the Richmond Hill Public Library, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Ernst and Young, Senvest, Hart House and the Donovan Collection. Currently, she lives and works in Toronto, as well as teaches in Brock’s Department of Visual Arts.

    In a statement made on her website in regards to her recent drawings, Bourgeois says she is developing a series of drawings that focus on the subject of clothing and its relation to human and animal bodies. She goes on to say that she is interested not only in the social and utilitarian functions of garments, but also their qualities as physical objects. In particular, the details of these physical objects, such as their folds and buttons, are some of what she explores in her work.

    “Isolated from their original context, and placed in the presence of similarly ambiguous “faux frères,” such garments seem to oscillate between functionality and theatricality, between absurdity and threat,” said Bourgeois. “It is this tension, the moment when the function of clothing slips into something less recognizable, that I wish to explore.”

    At the opening of her gallery at MIWSFPA, she further elaborated on her more recent drawings, saying that they relate garments to the human body and face:

    “We have five new pieces in this show. They are all from the same series; what’s interesting for me actually is to allow them to connect to one another just like people would in life,” said Bourgeois. “They really reflect my own experience, like looking at people and contouring people in life. Of course, my interest is in a different meaning of clothing – like, people wear clothing for a social reason, it can be protection, it can be both, or it can also be a sign of authority. There are all these different possibilities, and with this collection we see a few.”

    Out of the pieces hung along the walls, one individual drawing stood out, as it was the lone piece to include an animal.

    “I’ve also been interested in animals for some time – even dressed animals. Sheep, for instance, at the winter fair are covered with a kind of hood, which really reminds you of something from the middle ages,” said Bourgeois. “It’s a bit scary, because you only see the eyes.”

    Although her subject matter is diverse, it all connects to and works with images of humanity. Throughout our discussion on her art, she began to speak about what she is trying to accomplish with these pieces.

    “There is a lot of different thought going into this work,” said Bourgeois. “Like bringing back a different period of history but also bringing together individuals which lived in the past. Some of the work’s sources are really both from my life and looking at people and animals, but they’re also looking at artifacts in a museum. Also, looking at sculpture. Some of these faces [in the drawings] were actually roman people.“

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Swim Cap” by Peter Legris

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Swim Cap” (2013) / Peter Legris

    On a drawing entitled “Swim Cap” (2013), Bourgeois commented that this was one of the drawings of a sculpture. This sculpture was depicting a nineteenth century noble person in France, but Bourgeois removed the clothing she’d had on and instead focused on the face and shoulders, noting that she wanted to focus on the woman’s strength in these features.

    Referencing a work entitled “Tin Hat” (2014), Bourgeois noted, “this fellow here who was a Roman general has become a soldier or a worker – we really don’t know now because of that tin hat. I know it is an odd thing I’m doing with the human form but for me, what really matters is bringing them back in a way and showing their strengths and sometimes their attitude, but often the dignity that I see.”

    When the subject turned to motivation, Bourgeois elaborated on the two things she thinks of when meditating on her work; first, its presence.

    “One of the things I think of when I think of my work is the idea of presence – bringing back the human presence, whether it’s that of a person living before our time – it could be a contemporary person like my neighbour’s daughter (reference to “Infant”, 2012). The other word I would use is trying to make it as intense as possible through the way of working. It is very intense, with layers and layers of the medium.”

    On her process, she explained that her staple tool in the Large Drawings collection is Conté, a medium often consisting of compressed, powdered graphite. Bourgeois only uses this and an eraser to produce her pieces; there is no white tool, and so instead she works with the original white space of the paper. One piece can take approximately three months

    In the collection now being exhibited in MIWSFPA, it is interesting to note that there are four separate drawings of figures wearing gas masks.
    Although she expressed her horror at the idea of war, Bourgeois also claimed a sense of fascination felt when exploring war museums. She recounted a time a few years back, when she was on a research grant in England. The Imperial War Museum was holding an exhibition on childhood during WWӀӀ.

    “Something I didn’t realize until that show was that everyone in Europe had to have a gas mask ready,” explained Bourgeois. “Because gas had been used in WWӀ, they thought it was going to be used again in WW2; people were terrified. In that display, they were showing gas masks for children which they called ‘Mickey Mouse’. The gas masks were red and had funny colours so kids would not be so scared of them, but it was pretty scary [for me to see]. They showed a video of a toddler learning how to put the mask on their head. In the end, gas was not used at war, but it’s still a current topic because it’s been used recently in Syria.”

    On her earlier work, Bourgeois talked about her fascination with clothing:

    “I drew only the clothing. I’ve always worked with the human theme. As I mentioned before, I used to look at faces from sculpture and I would take a lot of photos in museums of sculpture, but then all of a sudden my camera started looking below and realizing the clothing.”

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Tin Hat” by Peter Legris

    Lorène Bourgeois’ “Tin Hat” (2014) / Peter Legris

    Bourgeois spoke on the eighteenth century, saying there were were beautiful sculptures with beautiful clothing, specifically noting the time of the French revolution. Men wore very frivolous and showy costumes, which drew her interest. Even now, although she focuses on the face, she works with a hat in her drawings.

    In one corner of the room hung a drawing entitled “Forteresse” (2012); in it, a severe looking woman sits, staring out at you amidst the huge, frilly fabric collaring her dress.

    “The source for Forteresse is a tiny sculpture of a woman from the nineteenth century, and she had a much smaller cloth around her shoulders and neck,” said Bourgeois. “I made her much bigger and her dress also bigger. I call it Fortress. She’s very righteous, very dignified, and you don’t know whether the strengths are coming from her or whether the outfit gives her those strengths. On one hand it gives her power, but on the other hand it’s very restrictive, which it was if you think about those times in the Victorian time where women wore corsets and very stiff clothing.”

    When looking at Bourgeois’ Large Drawings, her dedication to depicting the human expression and presence is clear. The detailed shading done only through Conté and eraser allows her to work very closely with the base level paper itself, coming back to it over and over again, and sustaining a relationship with its white space. She did not need to talk about presence, because it was already felt in the room. “Swim Cap” stares, fierce and dignified, into the dead centre of the room. The depictions of children and people in gas masks almost stalk the corners of the gallery, some staring back at its viewers and others looking away. The medium allows for an intense representation of its subject matter and, with it, Bourgeois has brought these people, Romans or World War ӀӀ children, into the room
    with us.

    Lorène Bourgeois’ gallery of Large Drawings will be held at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts from October 18th – November 18th, Tuesday – Saturday from 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

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  • Lorène Bourgeois: Large Drawings

    Wednesday, October 12, 2016 | By

    Media Release
    Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts
    906.688.5550 x 4765

    Lorène Bourgeois: Large Drawings
    October 18 – November 18, 2016
    Opening Reception: Thursday, October 20, 5 – 8 pm

    The Art Gallery at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts is pleased to present “Large Drawings” by Lorène Bourgeois.  The artist and Brock University instructor will present a series of large-scale representations of humans, animals, clothing and nakedness. The exhibition will include 10 – 12 highly detailed drawings mounted directly on the wall. The artist will attend the opening reception and thereafter be available by appointment.

    Born in France, Lorène Bourgeois completed her training in Paris, Philadelphia, and Halifax. A Fulbright recipient, she holds an MFA from NSCAD University. Her artwork has been exhibited widely in Canada as well as in France, Korea, Russia, and the United States.  Her work is held in numerous collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the National Bank of Canada, the Richmond Hill Public Library, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Ernst and Young, Senvest, Hart House, and the Donovan Collection.  Lorène Bourgeois lives and works in Toronto, and she teaches drawing in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University.

    To view Lorène Bourgeois’ website, click here
    Free Community Event
    Art Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 1 – 5 pm
    Lorène Bourgeois gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

    Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, 
15 Artists’ Common,
St. Catharines, ON L2R 0B5

    – 30 –

    Media inquiries:
    Marie Balsom, 905.688.5550 x 4765,
    or email: mbalsom@brocku.ca

    Visit our website: brocku.ca/miwsfpa

    Video Coverage:

     

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  • Lorène Bourgeois exhibition coming to MIWSFPA

    Wednesday, October 12, 2016 | By

    (Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, October 12, 2016)

    Whether Lorène Bourgeois is drawing humans or animals, the use of garments is a recurring part of her striking imagery.

    And starting Oct. 18, the public will have a month-long opportunity to view an exhibition by the Paris-born visual artist and Brock University instructor.

    The show “Large Drawings” will be on display in downtown St. Catharines, in the Art Gallery of Brock’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. Consisting of 10 to 12 highly detailed works, the images are representations of humans, animals, clothing and nakedness.

    Bourgeois herself will be on hand for an opening reception from 5 to 8 pm on Thursday Oct. 20, which is a free community event.

    Throughout her career, Bourgeois has had her artwork exhibited across Canada as well as in France, Korea, Russia and the United States. She now lives and works in Toronto, and has for several years taught drawing in Brock’s Department of Visual Arts.

    To learn more about the upcoming exhibition and see some of the imagery, click here.

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News