ruinminations...

here, too, stand mysterious ruins by water's edge,

from what brute architects to what hollow kings

 foment hardcore monuments in mild forest glens,

with cold altar upon altar heaving heavenwards

where are they now, the lumbering ruminators

to unearth such moss encrusted stratagems fore

[and regain long lost powers of primeval strain

only to lose them again in the immutable march]

emily carr grad show:: counting on

Every May my ritualistic tour of the studios and galleries of Emily Carr University to survey the culmination of artful efforts shaped and shifted by educated guesses never fails to yield curious manifestations of the most inventive and stretched out minds and limbs...

I spy a single thumb poking out of a concrete block as part of an installation by Kai Arne Choufour, "staring at the snow again melting in my bed my only friend has left again as seasons end and girls undress the sun's impressed it blushes red" - the poetic rationale for so many things that are too hard-edged in this world

and later find a population of more sluggish digits clustered on the furniture, floor and walls of another installation by Shawn Ederis, "A Touch of Infestation" - with no poetic raison d'être at all!

As I wander on, a purview of multiplicity continues - and none as obvious as the breeding habits of little bunnies by Haide Anne James  [winner of the Circle Craft Graduation Award for Ceramics]

"Untitled (One Brown Bunny)"

The count is on as I encounter a corner with 30 cotton rags dipped in porcelain hanging to dry on random lines by Gabrielle Strong, "Lost in the Process"

and further on, a precise arrangement of hexagonal porcelain tiles of varying thickness protruding from the wall by Carly Mucha, "Causeway (A Series of Expansions and Contractions)"

On another wall, thin bands of ceramic ribbons loop and curl into a textual script of unconventional means by Deborah Kisiel, "Addictus"

while Kristen Heyland scrawled a single barely legible word in black liquid acrylic as part of her presentation "Human" and "Human?"
 

 A large striking black and white painting of multiple geometrical shapes looms out and pulsates with an abstract monochromatic rhythm by Emma Metcalfe Hurst, "Moving Backwards While Going Forward (assembly through simultaneity)"

and in contrast, a long screen printed panel of such intricate characters and activities and scenery play out the fantasy world of an exquisite imagination by Jacquie Duruisseau, "Untitled (Map. 1)"

The multiple theme continues with this series of silkscreens of washy colours and circular loveliness simply laid out in a grid pattern by Koeun Lee, "untitled"

and within a translucent chamber, an installation by Matias Armendaris Avila, "Amber Archive", featured these minutely engraved amber pieces to illustrate the "Typology of the Cultural Artifacts of the Other"

Rows of similar artifacts or representation of objects persist in these two rows of trees lining a road going nowhere painted on a rough hewn tree stump that is part of an installation by Ben Hawkins, "Pathways"

and then looking down on another podium, a clump of nondescript form in all its oily blackness approaches sculptural transcendence of symbolic acumenistic glory by Chloe Godman, [best name ever for an artiste!] "Explorations of the Informe (Formless)"

And still downspotting into the bucket of dried porcelain of Gabrielle Strong's installation with the hanging porcelain-soaked cotton rags above, I surmise an artfulness in the crack pattern of the porcelain cake and the splattering of drips to warrant as a stand alone piece...

Emma Beattie's "Fertility Fest" echoes cracks in the china, as delicate and twisted as the chances at procreation and developing a fully-formed one-of human being

while Kassandra Klassen swirls her paints into a multi-hued "Field of Vision" around a pristine void - the nullification of life itself!

In a darkened room, I trip on shards of golden light emanating a fantastical landscape above which rises a planetary vision more divine than Earth itself and created by presumably still an earthling Jessica Jackson, "Wonderment: Second Iteration"

while across the room, a reminder of "Home Sweet Home" by Megan Broadfoot brings me back down to our humble planet with its artful creations and skillful crafts to pass the time and to pass on as tangible mementos of our little lives lived...

And so it begins with these little lives to be lived - the outlines of baby creatures gently stitched onto ethereal gauze floating in another void - to be lost, to be found... in "Searching for Loss" by Niki Mahon

And then there are only "YOU & ME" in the end - ME in my full-on consciousness writing these words on a blog only YOU may or may not read; ME sitting here looking out my window at the fig tree waving its fat leaves in the wind and YOU may or may not give a fig about what I can see; ME filled with so much LOVE that my head has turned heart-shaped and glowing a bright shade of red and YOU may or may not turn up to show your LOVE to ME...
But thank YOU, Jacquie Duruisseau, for bringing US together and giving US a splendiferous home in your visionary quasi-world - WE are all here!


YOU ARE HERE
The Show at Emily Carr University of Art + Design
2015 Graduation Show 
ended May 17th

emily carr grad show:: scaling up

Another year and another round of peaking art students presented their final flourishes before dispersing into the all-knowing world at large - with their fame-inflamed aspirations, or more humble hope to practice the skill set and art doctrines impressed into their spongy young minds - perhaps doses of meticulously cultivated talent is enough, perhaps a web of auspicious connections will propel some, perhaps just being true to their artistic authenticity will stand the test of time...

At this year's usual sprawling show, there is more than a whiff of sophisticated whimsy in the air, more of an upscale polished quality that can grace the most discerning gallery - abstracted symphonic forms floating in white space as well as starkly powerful works that are minimalist yet saturated with cryptic orders.


One installation by Parvin Peivandi is a multi-media dance of convoluted metal rods upholding ceramic "heads" of partial Persian motifs, all purist white and untainted by the slick pool of black oil they spring from - a work loaded with geo-eco-political metaphors and yet its lightness of being does not confront nor confound...

Wood scraps thoughtfully assembled and formulated by Angela Smailes into sculptural maquettes present as miniature sculpture in their own right - the compendious delicacy of each piece holding its own - and despite their constructivist abtractness, some read as vaguely familiar creatures in various states of composure. Isolated from each other on their individual perches, each is accorded a relevance unto itself and yet floats together in the general display as part of a giant discordant puzzle...

Long titles seem to fixate one's attention to certain work - ones that are purely descriptive in an overtly wordy mouthful such as Eric Miranda's "Five Ways of Transporting a Sphere on Three Ways of Displaying Five Ways of Transporting a Sphere" where pretty pink and lilac and lemon nippled rubber balls are attached to, bound with, and hung from various appendages in a playful and wholly inarticulate manner...

Michelle O'Byrne's descriptive narrative of "young man and woman embracing as a romantic couple on a tropical beach destination" for a wall installation that has no such wholesome image depicted in full and yet the delicate combination of the framed print, the finely strung horizon line dropping down to an ephemeral strip of sea/sky blue panel resting on the floor below all play to the heightened sensuality shimmering in a sanitized and magazine-glossy beach resort where one should always question one's true motives for being there...

 

Good old school painting wise, this pair of garages convulses in waves of gooey paint - the banal subject portrayed in prowling darkness, one spotted with a bright sensor bulb, the other lit by neighbouring windows, both depicted with such insouciant yet assured brushstrokes that only raw and ready talent can beget...Gillian Richards, you rock my paint can!

Wei Cheng's grouping of black glazed urns festooned with gilded strands of rough-edged clay asserted themselves in stately glamour - in a piece called "Zen", the vessel is tilted downwards as if surrendering to the binding embrace of its ribbon of gold, in another called "Convergence", the tall upright urn is spewing writhing golden snakes over a faceless Medusa already turned herself to stone...

These exquisite and mysterious pod vessels by Aileen Arduin convey a Georgia O'Keeffe-like essence of erotic benediction - at once eerily beautiful with their secretive folds retreating into darkness and immaculately executed in their conceptual other-worldliness...

The primal-potent effect of this sculpture by Porowski S. Jacek is in your face immediate and technically hyper-controlled - implications of transgression in the splitting of the wood and of intransition in the binding and holding in place - a subscribed violation as naturalist as the silk smooth cherry trunk and as brutalist as the cold hard cement wedge...

Sometimes downspotting yields the most intriguing rewards, and as such, "Architecting Absolutes" by Madison Killough trips the mind in an unassuming game of cornered disregard - and sometimes art should just simply imitate perception at its most base level in order to raise awareness of a more intuited state of cognition...

In the darkness of a narrow closet, the small screen flickers with splotchy black moons, mesmerizing in its randomness and in its constancy - what could be more purely universal than rudimentary particles flashing in isolation and somewhat into perpetuity... "O" by Hannah MacAulay

Emily Carr University of Art and Design
Graduation Show 2014
ended May 18