Virtual Opening & Vancouver Outsider Arts - Meet the Touring Show Artists
happy new year and welcome to promo arts tonight we are streaming live for a virtual opening and a meet the artist event i'm janice cotter gallery manager at pomo arts we've started an internal organization-wide mandatory process of equity diversity and inclusion training along with organizational decolonization practices training to help us as we work towards developing a respectful territorial acknowledgement we recognize this is just the first step and that we have a long way to go including the building of respectful relationships with local coast salish nations in our community as we start this evening i'd like to thank homo arts board of directors as well as our longtime supporters the city of port moody the province of british columbia for their support through the community gaming program as and the government of canada for their support uh through the canada summer jobs program thank you all for joining us this evening i'm excited to be starting our 2022 exhibition season with three wonderful shows installed in the gallery we had hoped to welcome 2022 with our first in-person opening reception in 22 months um but with changing public health orders and uncertainty due to uh raising rising covet numbers we've pivoted back to a virtual opening i still feel incredibly grateful that we're able to start the year with art on the walls and to be open for gallery visitors there's so many businesses that weren't able to do that i'd like to thank our artists for their patience during all of these ups and downs and for trusting us to have their artwork in the gallery as well as on a digital gallery on our website for people that aren't comfortable visiting in person i'd also like to credit our canada summer jobs marketing assistant luca appall for his hard work on the installation luke is only with us for another week or so so i have been very happy to have his help these past few months i hope you'll be able to come to the gallery and see these shows in person promo arts is open daily and you can check our website for our business hours and our covet safety plan in this evening's event you're going to hear from artists melanie ellery and amy j dick and then we'll meet the artists in participating in the vancouver outsider arts festival uh pardon me the bank of outsider arts festival's uh first touring exhibition so right now we're going to um ask melanie to um unmute and to tell us a bit about her exhibition uh you may have seen melanie's work in group exhibitions of homo arts or met her when she was on one of our artist sessions virtual events and now it's a true joy to have her work in a solo exhibition coming together hi melanie hi janice wow i couldn't have put that better myself what a true joy to have a solo show in port moody that's my become my home and that was actually the impetus for excuse me this body of work um coming together i moved here in 2017 to port moody in 2017 with my husband and our dog at the time excuse me and we uh we just love living in port moody but i had been really struggling to try to find a studio space i still had a studio in vancouver and i was commuting back and forth and i was feeling like just pulled in two different directions uh so finally at the in early 2020 i got a space in in port moody and i was thrilled and just got everything moved in right at the beginning of you know people should we stay apart from each other and you know people were starting to wear masks and we were washing your hands vigorously so i moved in um and then i struggled as most everybody has through this whole last two years i've realized that my creativity comes from a place of flow and joy and so when that wasn't happening because of all the crazy things that were going on in the world and my head was full of all that stuff um i really struggled so this work um was me kind of baby stepping revisiting some older not older work but previous work that had never really quite got to a good place and just kind of reflecting going back um and trying to pull it all together again and i'm very excited i as as you know janice i i think like all the things that were going on in my head i when i brought you the artwork i thought oh like it there's a lot of things going on here how will you ever make it work but you you just worked your magic and i'm very excited for people to see it all together because it really does um tell a bit of a story of you know the crazy thoughts and busyness to kind of getting to a little more um back to that state of flow and and it did all finally come together i'm going to be doing an artist talk next thursday night at 7 15 in the same back channel on port moody facebook page um i'm going to walk through the work and just kind of give a little background on uh kind of where um it sort of came from and the transition as we go from piece to piece i hope everyone can tune back in and i hope that everyone gets a chance to not just only see the show in person but also the other two fantastic shows that are going on with the outsiders and others and amy's show i've been a big fan of amy for quite some time and i have a piece of hers that i love um so yeah i hope everyone actually gets a chance to come in um if not definitely tune back in online and look at the online galleries because everything's up on there and thanks again janice i i'm so excited to have a solo show in your gallery thanks so much melanie i appreciate you talking about your upcoming artist talk and we'll talk to you again next week um so amy uh j dick amy am i pronouncing that correctly yeah you got it okay um is her next artist and this is her first time exhibiting at pomo arts and i'm delighted to have her exhibition dichotomy in the end kitchen gallery welcome amy do you want to tell us a little bit about it and give us a teaser for your artist talk i'd be happy to thank you so much for having me first of all i'm very excited about the show and i'm really just grateful to be able to show there so thank you um also excited to see all the other work that's going to be up when i come and pop in myself in the next few days so awesome um this body of work it came out of years of me struggling with a disability and when i was trying to expand my idea of who i am what i was capable of and i created it through most of 2021 so a lot of the most of the work on the walls is from from last year entirely um it's a correct it's a collection of collages it's a collection of paintings of women's specifically referencing um complex aspects of her depth our vulnerability of her strength and portraying the contrast of the dichotomies which is where the the title comes from of the realism and the abstraction together and the form and the flat and the red and the pink and the human and the monster and bringing them all together into a complex unified whole so i i love that idea that we can that people are just so much more than what we see on the outside that there's all these layers and aspects to us and not some of these layers you know they fight with each other and they wrestle with each other and they just seem oppositional but they also manage to fit in this one body that we carry around with us through our lives and so i had a lot of fun and i i find a lot of enjoy in portraying these these what feels like more realistic portraits of people um than maybe you would get with just a snapshot of their their face of their bodies they're kind of complicated with all these layers so um that's what this is here and um again i'm having my artist talk on the 27th so in two thursdays from now uh 7 15 same length just like uh just like with melanie and um i'm excited to talk more about the work and why i put all the weird stuff that i put in it and what's behind it so i hope that you'll join me i look forward to being there when you give your artist talk um thank you thank you um so at this point we're going to uh say goodbye to um to amy and melanie and uh but you'll meet them again when they live stream their artist talks from the gallery on january 20th and 27th and now we will start uh this evening's events all right bye melanie bye amy um we'll start bye thanks again thanks again bye-bye um we'll start tonight's uh event uh with our guests from the vancouver outsider arts festival uh first i um actually i really consider it an honor to be included as a venue for the vancouver outsider arts festival's inaugural touring exhibition and uh thank you to peter likener for bringing it to my attention and uh encouraging me to have this show um i'm delighted to have uh some of the participating artists with us tonight and you'll meet them as we scroll through the work but first i'd like to welcome the community arts council of vancouver executive director uh kristen chung to say a few words kristen i hope i didn't pronounce your name and connect correctly oh that's perfect yeah thank you um yeah i just want to say hi welcome um and joining our um opening tonight um my name is kristen chung my pronouns are she or hers as janice mentioned i'm the executive director of the community arts council vancouver and we host the vancouver outsider arts festival or both as we like to call it um i just want to acknowledge that i'm zooming here from surrey also known as the unseated territories of the katsuki samu and kwantland territories and other folks on our team is shannon goodman our program manager who will be speaking about a few artist profiles a bit later and pierre lechner one of our board members and also festival director and kind of founder of this whole festival he'll be speaking about the outsider arts and the festival a bit later and just want to mention a few things about our organization so cacb has been around for about 75 years as the first arts council in north america um and we've contributed to the shaping the cultural life of vancouver we've created and advocated many of the institutions traditions and policies that you see in vancouver today and the vancouver outside arts festival is one of our main programming events that we host in the fall at the roundhouse community center and our other programs are reframing relations and our community arts fund and the vancouver outsider arts festival was founded about five years ago and also yeah brought to us by pierre lechner who will now speak about uh what is an outsider artist and a bit more about the festival so thank you pierre did you want thank you yeah so yes you indeed thank you so yes i also want to thank the vancouver community arts council for making this possible for the past uh five years and of course also the port media arts center for being our first venue for this touring show uh so thank you uh yeah um even after five years often people will ask me what is outside of art what is an outsider artist and for us at this point we take a very broad definition of this term there is debate around the term but we take the broadest kind of definition mainly essentially that we're looking at art and artists that are outside of the mainstream of the art market and outside of the art institutions so this term originated almost 100 years ago looking at some primarily self-taught artists who lived in institutions but now it is a much broader term and it includes um artists that are both self-start the artists that are also coming from art schools and so on who are outside as i said the mainstream for a host of different reasons but i think what's really important for us i think is that we believe that this is uh these are art and artists that are underrepresented and undervalued by our community in general and and that we perhaps don't know how valuable they have been and how their contribution has been reflected in modern art and content and still contemporary art but it's not uh recognized enough so that's one of our motivations and that's why we're so pleased to have uh this ongoing event and perhaps to make it happen more across in different communities across vancouver and mainland and so on because there are outsider art and outsider artists in every community um so i'll stop with that but basically just i want to finish with a quote a quote from uh an artist that in fact was thought to be an outsider artist at the beginning of her career but eventually became an insider if you want and that's yokohono and yokohonu is now one of the main artists at the vancouver vancouver art gallery and the quote is that art is a mean for survival and i really think that is true and i think today perhaps more than other times we art is so important for our well-being but not only individually but our communities and so our role and all the artists that are participating i want to thank you and really make you know bring that awareness that uh we are critical to the wellness uh of the community through all the work that we do so uh thank you after this i'll pass it on to shannon again or the artist themselves for more information thank you thanks pierre i'm going to uh share the screen for our digital gallery now and we'll be able to scroll through it and meet the artists so first we have just a panorama view of the gallery work installed and you are welcome to come and visit the gallery and see the exhibition um on the walls which is always nice we have uh 14 participating artists and the first artist um up is alan poon allen would you like to say a few words um to about your artwork or yeah um uh so i would like to first say that i'm very grateful to be part of uh my goober outside arts festival this year um especially since it's um the first time i've ever exhibited my works i consider myself primarily a landscape photographer um i'm fascinated by the stories that our environment tells and especially um how our environment is shaped by social forces um and the works i exhibited here are also another first for me in that it's the first time that i've worked with photocomposites so with this first image here it's actually part of a larger architectural series i've done of notable condo buildings vancouver um i think as a society we no longer see these buildings as homes but instead as investments and stores of wealth so i decided to cover them with banknotes i also give a nod to the foreign buyer controversy by including some chinese yuan and american dollar bills um we never seem to make a fuss about american foreign money so i thought it'd be interesting to see how people would react when they see the two different currencies and what that you know might say about race and class and the other pieces i've done they explore similar themes by showing the broader cityscape the compositions are kind of conventionally framed like like advertisements almost in a in a real estate ad for example um i think real estate is kind of like a playground for the wealthy and i thought the bright colors of you know canadian back notes really add to the playfulness of the images here thank you alan i appreciate you talking about your work um we will move on to our next artist oh here's the artwork installed again in the gallery and you get a better uh idea of the size of the pieces when when you can see them on the walls our next artist is alex lavrov and alex would you like to say a few words about your artwork yeah sure all right junior can you hear me i can hear you that's great thanks all right thank you thank you for having me here it's i appreciate your effort you're putting into the exhibition it's very it looks really good thank you thank you very much so i'm uh my name is alex and i'm a visual artist i work i work mainly with oils oil paints on canvas and i like the explore subject subject of psychology i like to go deep into psychological themes look into my own mind and whatever i discover i put on canvas for the most part and i usually improvise i start from scratch and do and then the subject itself develops into something and then i interpret in certain way and and that's basically how i do it so um did you want to speak to the the technique that you use to achieve uh the look that you have in your work it's quite difficult yeah i think there's different ones this is for example the first one is a pixelated i call it so i did it it's a i did it with a flat square brush but sorry not square just flat brush but so the final look it's about quarter inch size of the flat brush i just go you know like dubbing like sort of like a pointillism but more i can't explain it's just movements to go you know from horizontal and vertical and it becomes uh squares look at little squares the other ones is more flowy so it's uh it's not dubbing it says brush strokes and then i i don't know how to explain it that's okay i have yeah i have videos which i show i usually you know have photographs do the time lapse videos and then they can be watched on youtube so it's easier to show than to explain how it's done that's that's a good idea with um with specialized techniques like this yeah thank you and um alex has four pieces and you can see them and again installed on the walls um some of the uh installed uh photos include more than one artist and if you scroll through the digital gallery it'll tell you the various artists that are included in the photos now our next artist is althea adams and uh shannon i don't think althea was able to be here tonight did you want to speak yeah definitely so althea adams is a visual artist a peer support worker and works as a basic computer tutor and group facilitator for those in mental health support programming in vancouver bc she's always been a person who loves to help guide others forward and now she's putting herself in the spotlight as she showcases her work in this exhibition through the road of rediscovering her own spiritual and mental wellness it led to a deeper discovery of her own natural abilities and talents in drawing painting pottery print making among many other mediums um after trying her hand at these mediums acrylic pouring an acrylic painting is what she ended up using for these works that we're looking at today the world might try to give her the label um of an abstract modern expressionist with african expressions however althea sees her art as a spirit and reflection of her and her own journey and we'll scroll through the artwork althea has included in this exhibition and our next artist is andrew woods hello andrew hi uh my name is andrew and um this is my first exhibit with the vancouver outsider artist festival so um i'm very grateful that i had the opportunity to do this with everyone um so art for me is is mainly a form of storytelling and that's really what i like to do with my photography um is like this photo right here kind of um tells a story about the importance of opening our eyes to kind of the the natural beauty around us it kind of ties in with with a quote that i really like by uh the author wrote doll which is um an above all watched with glittering eyes the world all around us because the greatest secrets are always in the most unlikely places so it's kind of just yeah just about opening your eyes and taking it all in um just sorry before you go on i just wanted to let people know that with these um photos that are expanded you can click on it and you'll get a better um a full-size view of it just a little smaller and with the smaller images you can click on them and they'll expand so you can get a better look at the detail sorry andrew go ahead oh yeah no worries um yeah so this one up here is mostly kind of just as as i was playing with how how color can influence mood and how important color is in in storytelling and and um and how it can assist the storyteller and um conveying their message so that's basically what i was trying to achieve there altering the colors um this one right here ozzy mandias is is this kind of explores the uh the theme of decay it's it's a title titled after a a poem um by an old poet he was he was married to the the wife who wrote uh she wrote a frankenstein mary shelley it's her husband who did this poem um it's basically about like how how all mighty things fall kind of like a fall from grace sort of thing um and i like i like just exploring that theme of of decay and how it can also be um can also be a beautiful thing to kind of observe and witness so i really like playing with that kind of uh that theme um of how how something can seem ugly at first but also if you had examined it from a different perspective it can also you know have a certain beauty to it so and this one down here is was taken out of ghost town um in the interior last summer uh this past summer um it again just kind of explores the theme of of decay um but i also like um i don't know i just kind of like observing certain scenes and wondering like what's the story behind it because so many of these old old places are so rich and in kind of their history and the stories they have to tell so it's just kind of it's something that's that i find exciting is just kind of exploring stories and getting uh creative with them so yeah thanks so much andrew for sure thank you our next ad um artist is biandra jacqueline um biandra would you like to say a few words yes i'd be happy to thanks and thank you i i feel very privileged to be part of uh this festival the outsiders uh vancouver outsiders art festival for the first time and um being part of uh this exhibit with you as well janice thank you um i uh i'm a self-taught artist and yet i've always had a lot of creativity and have wanted to pursue further my my artistic endeavors but life took its uh took me into another uh area but uh i've been influenced a lot by my travels i lived in barcelona and egypt and i found that what i really noticed what would bring the urge to create for me was the light the way that the light would um ebb and flow and the colors and i took the outer of what was happening and i was observing and realized that i had it touched a really deep inner life for me and so i have a very uh strong interest in working with the unconscious and looking at it as the collective unconscious as well so i'm i'm really uh one to dream tend and pay attention to my dreams and what they're trying to say to me um these paintings have come from a place of uh uh where they were not consciously prepared uh basically i went to the canvas and started to just um listen and to my intuition and this was the results of of doing so the painting i did called sing it it was uh three in the morning and i couldn't sleep and so i woke up and i'm just like no i want to sleep i need to sleep it's but the sun was coming up soon it was in the summer and i just went to the canvas and just started to paint and then the image came through by scraping back the paint um and that was what was revealed to me so again and with the uh first portrait called uh on the verge that was uh it just came out as uh the uh covet had been announced uh this yes this uh self-portrait um that was not my plan to be doing a self-portrait i was trying to do a face but not of my own but then as i looked at it later i saw how uh actually the emotion of what i was feeling and the sadness of what was happening in our world um just it appeared to me on the canvas so then i'm realizing uh this is um this is what i'm almost in a dream state when i'm painting and if i get out of my own way then i do pretty good so if i start to analyze and go into too much detail i i mess it up so i i figured i just like stay into the intuitive and i find that the colors really move me and um uh color uh with the painting that i did um the untitled one and untitled terrain if you'd like to just move down a little bit those those were again something that just sort of came through in the way of walking out into an area that was decaying and yet there was growth and life and i came back and that was my impression of it and i just didn't know how to really um explain it except that it's untitled and which could be a futuristic world as well so uh i leave it up to the observer to decide what they see in there but it is a terrain as well as the um the last painting that i did this was done in the autumn and so i was very moved by the the color changes of that time of year and um it held on to me and within all the chaos that's going on in the world this is the painting that uh came to me and um um i just needed to stay bright and and positive so that those colors represented that to me at that time so um yeah and i like to work in oil as well as acrylic and i do a mixed media as well and some photography and some writing so it's uh i love the charcoal so i'm i'm still learning and creating and never know what i'm going to be doing next so well thank you very much thank you for sharing that biandra that was very nice thank you we'll move on to oh there's a gallery installation that shows uh biandra's work on the walls and we'll move on to our next artist beth wilkes and now um will beth be speaking this evening or shannon are you sorry i'm i'm right here you got me oh thank you beth oh my gosh i realized i was muted all the time sorry go ahead great okay well i'm beth wilks i'm a colored pencil artist and another grateful first timer at the outsider arts festival um for the festival i created uh four new drawings in a larger scale this time than i have done previously and because i work in um a lot of detail uh and with the pencil it it does take a long time so literally each one took just close to a month to produce so starting in may and then in time for october sort of thing um the one that you're looking at right now well firstly i wanted to do a representative of each sort of animal group so you've got your mammals your sea creatures reptiles and birds this one is uh obviously a sea creature it's a leafy sea dragon i wanted to make it a different position than you would normally see it and a full-on um looking straight at the gaze of the viewer and that's what i try and do with all of my work uh it's the line of unique wildlife portraiture that um i'm really trying to bring out the personality uh so that you're looking at a presence so for this one of course i can't really see his he's got a lot of feathers this is a fancy chicken and [Music] a polish fancy it's called and i was i'm also interested in husbandry extreme animal forms and how people manipulated animals uh so that they take on um they suffer because of it and and that interests me and i want us to look at that so that's what i was interested in in that one and this one i was very excited to do because it's an image of fernanda a fernandina island giant tortoise recently discovered after being declared extinct for a hundred years and so she's a survivor and i wanted to show her a very monumental and a bit of a badass so yes um and then this one's a favorite this is the asian elephant um this one i think i really got a presence uh at least that was really uh what my aim was and uh i have an auntie who uh told me it ha he has kind eyes she said so i was really excited about that um yeah i just really want as i say the sense of presence i want uh a kind of um to meet the human gaze with an almost uh defiance and an individuality and i want us to be reminded of the lives of other creatures and uh and their presence basically uh in this sort of end stage uh you know climate change situation that we're in um yeah and i mean i focus on colors i have a a case of 250 pencils that i've collected since the 70s and i carry it with me everywhere and i mean a pencil case if you're if you think pencil case carriers are geeks well i'm a huge one because i've got this massive case and anyway i'm really excited to share it and that it's gone on tour and thank you so much thank you uh for telling us all the information about that and that you've covered different categories and i'm just delighted to have your work in the gallery here it is installed um on the wall and it just looks lovely thank you beth our next artist is cassandra yu and i believe that cassandra wasn't able to be here this evening so shannon would you like to say a few words about cassandra and her artwork yeah cassandra yu is a chinese canadian artist born in vancouver british columbia as a third generation immigrant she grew up traveling constantly between vancouver and hong kong and her work is heavily influenced by online entertainment and asian pop culture in the early years of her artistic journey she painted portraits of daley girls with abstract surroundings saturated colors rendering the fluidity and emphasis on flesh are recurring features that persist through her throat all of her creations recently her work explores altering the conventional shapes of the canvas tactile surfaces and embroidery we'll see most of these throughout her four pieces you'll see kind of these asian pop doll like figures she she mentioned in her bio we'll also see some different sized and shaped canvases which are really interesting none of her embroidery was added to this exhibition but it was part of our larger festival that took place in october now that one is not hanging funny that is the shape of it i i it was i was confused when i first saw the image until i actually saw the artwork and so it's important to see it and installed on the wall to get a perspective on that thank you shannon our next artist is chuck halman um chuck did you want to say a few words about your artwork sure uh hi everyone thank you so much um for letting me be part of this festival uh so i have been taking photogra oh i'm a multi-disciplinary artist uh i have a bfa um i work primarily in everything um anyways so presently i've been making are taking a bunch of photos in my neighborhood which is in the downtown east side of people's comments and as we know about the downtown east side as it's built of a lot of homeless and uh drug-using folks and i just wanted to bring to light some of the things that they have to say and that their voices have meaning and have they do have something to say so each piece is from us like like the the first one gentrified is from maine and kiefer uh they re eat the rich is from the 100 block on the south side i can't remember when i took these photos because i've been taking them for years i can't remember where the location of the black lives matter or and the um criminals piece is in front of uh which no longer exists the army and navy on the cordova side and um so i wanted to do something different with the photographs and i in my other the other side of my art practice i use a lot of um atypical uh materials and so i started using these uh flat back rhinestones and adding them to the text of my photographs thank you um we've tried to uh get photographs that capture the sparkle um of the text that looks wonderful on the wall but um you really need to see the artwork in person it's really hard that's one of the the hardest things about my practice is there's so many of these and it's they're so hard to photograph i i can imagine the challenges you have there um but actually i thought we did a pretty good job we get a lot these photographs are great thank you and we've sent you copies of them so thank you yes so um the artwork is installed in the hallway as you come in right across from the title i tried to do a panoramic photo but sometimes you get a little bit of wobble when you do a panorama but uh chuck's artwork is right there on the right our next artist is charlie sandman um charlie would you like to say a few words about your artwork yes hi hi um yeah so my work explores my life experiences as a queer trans person with mental health issues so whether it's exploring my gender identity and what that means to me or reflecting on experiences navigating the healthcare system as transgender and bipolar clay really allows me to play with the constant push of trying to live as authentically as i can and feeling the need to conform to society's expectations i play a lot with form and color to help me express the polarity and union of joy and depression fitting in and sticking out and trying to find a way through a world that understands that doesn't understand me um this first piece growing into me is a love letter to top surgery it was a life-saving procedure that helped me heal my relationship with my body and allowed growth and peace that i had never imagined possible before it's also the largest piece that i've ever made next up is a vase called i don't want to conform which is um about the heavy feeling of needing to fit into society's standards so this phase was hand-built and then pushed away from its original cylindrical form the surface decorations are colorful joyous and really expressive done with brush strokes posed with the deep and looming darkness that could envelop the form making it lose all energy and vibrance this piece is exploring color and it's about the kind of joyous experience of trying to find your style your colors and your look in general sometimes you just have to throw everything you can at the wall and see what happens which is pretty much exactly what i did with this large hand built phase you never really know how glazes are going to react and turn out in the kiln until afterwards so i had a few ideas of what might happen but really it was about the process and just seeing what would come out and my last piece is incongruous which explores the incompatibility of forms and surface decoration it was built as a cylinder and then most of it was forced into a square shape and then the surface was decorated with multiple layers of slits and different clays until eventually the wet layers of clay were added onto a completely dried piece which leaves them pulling away from the surface as it dries thank you charlie for sharing your techniques and your inspiration for your artwork and there they are installed in the gallery our next artist is jacqueline prime primu i'm i hope i've pronounced that correctly um i'm jacqueline were you going to say a few words i'm i have to see if or or is uh let me just see if if jacqueline is here jacqueline is here but i think that um it may be shannon who is uh speaking this evening shannon yeah yep um so born in edmonton alberta jacqueline is a painter and a mixed-media artist who identifies as metis she has a bfa from concordia university in montreal and has shown her work at several art councils throughout british columbia her meditative paintings reveal her deep connection to the land she is more interested in capturing the mood and essence of the landscapes that inspire her then are a realistic depiction the intent of her paintings is to give the viewer a sense of calm and they certainly do that the colors are very calming as much here it's another one of those series you have to see in person because of the textures too yes she's she's added layers of different mediums on them so it definitely is worth looking at from the front and from the side and we have four pieces uh two of them are 16 by 20s and there was an installation photo earlier and i believe there's another one later our next artist is linda hoffner linda did you want to say a few words about your artwork i'm gonna speak a little bit it's sometimes hard to talk about ourselves you know so much easier to talk about somebody else so i'm really really grateful to be part of this gallery and to the vancouver outside artists organization i have had three exhibits and i'm just so grateful they've been so supportive and um and i'm just you know thrilled to be here so i was born in mexico in guadalajara and i'm basically self-taught artists i've been painting for a long long time since i can ever remember and i tried to um bring you know colors and vibrancy into my art i like movement and i like to tell like a little story um i've been influenced by frida kahlo who is you know i just find that she's such an amazing artist and she has influenced my work i paint uh basically i use acrylics and i paint in canvas and sometimes in in wood like this is here it's called here comes the sun and i just um wanted to bring something peaceful and joyful like in the morning uh this is the painted and um in a in wood this particular painting this other painting is also um painted in wood and it's called casa azul which means blue house and um frida kahlo her house was named blue house and this this is not her house but i was sort of inspired by the thought of her having a blue house so i just wanted to this big color and just look inside and to try to imagine what is going inside in that house you know peeking through that window and the next um painting it's uh is one of micros i just i just very fascinated by crows i i paint many many crows i just find them really fascinating and so intelligent so i just really connect i live in uh i'm a local base artist and i live in commercial drive so i just wanted to sort of make this part of my neighborhood um you know with the east van cross there um standing there and yeah and the next painting um this was also uh i painted this you know during the time that were hit with covet and i just i wanted to bring an image that it is peaceful and meditative so that's what i wanted to concentrate on and this one i called it shanti um which i think that it means peace and thank you so much for uh letting me be part of this exhibit is a real pleasure um it's a pleasure to have you here linda i appreciate all the artists that were able to come and participate this evening and um and let us show their artwork both digitally and in the gallery um the this is uh a slight panorama of um three of linda's pieces and there's another piece a little further down the wall that couldn't quite fit in in the photograph um on to our next artist um rohina and um i did not get a pronouncer on this and i believe shannon is going to rohingya wasn't able to be here this evening or i may be pronouncing that incorrectly as well um wasn't able to be here this evening so shannon will uh speak i call her rj but i i believe she goes by rogina um she currently lives in vancouver bc she came to the city in the early 2000s and quickly connected with the lgbtq plus community finding like-minded people as herself and now proudly calls this city home her passions are many however that what is most important to her is creating books of art she is a passionate artist creating images that are both abstract and focused on the paint itself her most recent works that we'll see today push the boundaries of representation integrating abstraction within imaginative figurative compositions she wants to tell a global story of diversity inclusion and acceptance in a non-verbal way and there was an earlier photo of regina's work installed and it gives you a better perspective of the size and texture on each piece oh here we have it again another one um so you can see her work installed on this wall our next artist is sandra ewan sandra would you like to come forward and say a few words yeah sure i think i would can you hear me i can can you see me i can okay i'll scroll down to your artwork and then you can say whatever you are okay yeah so this painting is called beach houses it started off as a beach painting and then i overlaid the houses on it and i kind of stopped halfway and i kind of thought this is kind of cool because it unites two things that i love which are architecture you know in vancouver the you know just growing up here in the neighborhoods here and also the beach so combining nature and the man-made and also how you know our city is sort of disappearing because communities are changing older buildings are being phased out and it's just kind of that whole idea of movement and dreams and nature and the environment that thing combined with the city this one here is uh construct um so i started doing the same kind of thing it was like houses but then i kind of stopped and i kind of thought i really like the form i really like um how they're kind of um just suggested and you're just looking at those basic shadows and it's very minimal with a little bit of the red or the umbrella or a little bit of purple a little bit of texture a little bit of uh glazing in certain areas so really experimenting with mixed media and keeping it really minimal so that sort of explores exploration and different types of outsider are a bit more maybe a bit more raw and not as refined as some of the other pieces the next one's called in the mood so this one is kind of a retro kind of painting you know kind of has the shadow but it's kind of like a boogie woogie kind of scene to me where i kind of overlaid all these kind of uh you know 60 70s colors and made it kind of like uh really kind of retro in a way i i really think it's kind of a fun painting and i kind of zeroed in on this really kind of you know pre-vancouver special house and you know and a lot of these ones in the neighborhood that i was in and i really enjoyed painting these my father was an architect she really helped me with my art this last one um was on the street that i lived on it's called the house for sale this house is for sale for a long time and the gaps between the building are about uh the gaps in society and just the weird shadows effects that you get from trees and from this awning up here that the red the accent so really playing with color and accent and shadow and the play of pattern and shapes and forms the nature again the shrubs against the uh the house it's really kind of a neat combination yeah i just want to say that i really appreciate being at port moody art center again and um being part of janice's show and also i want to thank um the people at the community arts uh community arts council vancouver shannon and kristen and pierre but they've been just fantastic the whole whole experience has been fantastic i've been in the show about maybe three times at the roundhouse and it's it's always been a gas to do it so i've learned along the way you know i need to be i need to be there and really engaged and i really think it's a great outlet for artists who who don't um have access to shows it's great thank you very much um it's great to have you back in the gallery again sandra we've had you in several groups and a solo show so um it's just really nice to have your work back on our walls thank you thank you and i thought that uh seeing as they were architectural they would fit well on our brick wall great very fitting thank you our uh last artist for the evening is uh shamsam muhammad and shamsa is not here so shannon will say a few words about shamsa and her work yeah so shamsa was born and raised in naobi niobrite kenya after immigrating to canada in 1974 after the ugandan exodus after traveling to various countries and around the world explored sorry and exploring vancouver champs has started to miss the older styles of architecture and began to take particular notice of the heritage building she encountered this interest in historical architecture followed her on a trip to india where she shot many photographs of which we're going to see in this series today these particular photographs give the viewer a small glimpse into the vast and varied architectural styles one can find in india champs's hope is that the viewer will be inspired to visit these and other heritage sites and appreciate the architectural wonders created by past generations and we have four of shamsa's um photographs here and here they are installed in the gallery beside beth's work and opposite linda's work and next to andrew's work so um it's it just is so nice to walk through i wish i could walk you through the gallery as well as um showing you these images and hearing having you hear the artists talk so um at this point um i'm i will uh just say that it's a hybrid exhibition with the digital gallery and in person and um you can visit the our gallery we're open daily for uh visitors and weekdays we're open until nine p.m every evening so even if you have a day job you can come and visit and see the amazing work in our current three exhibitions um for information on artwork sales you can email us or contact us or come visit the gallery right now i am going to uh stop the share and um we will have uh all of our our uh artists who are here um i want to thank everyone for being here this evening and being a part of this virtual event we were so looking forward to having you all here in person and i i'm disappointed that we aren't able to have you here but thank you so much for being part of this virtual event um pierre did you want to say a few closing words oh you just muted great well again thank you i really want to thank everybody and uh oh did you only thought i had again as i was talking before is i don't know how much people how much artists realize that they are healthcare providers that the work that they do helps our psyche and helps our our understanding of the world and it's you know it makes people think and get together so so all the well the comments and all i was really proud to hear everybody's work and uh i thank you for sharing your work with us and uh keep on trucking and we keep on working and thank you janice for making this the first and we hope to have uh we're looking for other venues but we are also going to be certainly in july we are going to be at the langley art council and that's going to be another show there and there possibly will be other shows in between hopefully and again i'm thankful thank you well keep us posted and if you tag us on any posts for upcoming shows i'm sure our our marketing community our communications person star horn will be more than happy to share your posts on where your upcoming shows will be thank you again thank you so much to all the artists i i so appreciate um all your words uh uh sharing so much about your artwork and your inspirations um it was definitely a pleasure to have you all here and i hope that i will get to meet more of you when you come to visit the gallery so uh thank you very much i am going to uh where did my okay um i sorry i i lost my facebook link that would allow me to end the event so at this point i am going to say thank you kristin um or shannon did you want to say a few closing words yeah i just want to thank all the artists participating and kind of echo what um pierre was saying how arts um yeah artists are all kind of like yeah uh mental health workers and helping us kind of through these challenging times i feel like i've been working from home and being remote for the last two years and just even being part of this virtual exhibition um i feel such a richness in my body and my spirit just to see all the works and kind of have all of us in the same zoom room and i feel like um yes so much yeah nicer and better and kind of more spiritually awakened by the by the artwork so just echoing what pierre was saying and thank you for all the artists um joining us tonight and i'm looking forward to seeing the exhibition in person too so um i might see you in person dad so thank you so much great well um this evening then i guess we'll say goodbye and that um uh we'll have our next artist talk on january 20th i keep wanting to say february i'm already jumping ahead on january 20th is our next artist talk and i i'm when i sign off on facebook i'll get the artist to just stay on the zoom link for a second but if everybody wants to wave goodbye we'll close the event good night everyone
2022-05-23 20:31
