Check out my teaching page for new course at Memorial University.

Check the teaching section for new courses for the Fall 2011. Anna Templeton is offering 10% off for those who register now!

Good thing the art scene is sizzling in St. John’s – music festivals, film festivals, dance festival, Folk festival, art gallery openings, lots of theatre and live music,  – because, well… we don’t live here because of the weather. Although July – for the most part – has been much better than June was. See links below for some of the wonderful arts happening here.

CLASSES

I am offering three week long art courses at Anna Templeton Centre – each course runs from Monday to Friday, 9am to 12 noon. July 25 – 29 is Face and Figure Week, August 8 – 12 A New Perspective on City-Scapes, and August 15- 19, Watercolour Immersion Week. Click on Teaching for details on these and Fall offerings.

NEW WORK

Congratulations to Christina Parker on her gorgeous new gallery space at 50 Water Street in St. John’s. I have four new works in the show from my recent series “The Moon and Stars” in which, inspired by a child’s drawing of space travel, I recall my childhood  memories of watching the space race with my father. Simple symbols of x’s and o’s representing the stars and moon are hammered from bronze and incorporated into encaustic wall pieces and sculptures of vibrant colours and playful forms.

NEW PROJECTS

Right after I tidy my messy studio – having just completed the pieces for the Christina Parker Gallery opening – I am going to build a power hammer, with the help of my friend Bruce Brenton, based loosely on the one in this YouTube video -

HAPPENINGS IN ST. JOHN’S

Festival 500  http://www.festival500.com

Sound Shift  http://www.mun.ca/ictm2011/images/ICTM_sponsorship.pdf

Wreckhouse Jazz Festival  http://wreckhousejazzandblues.com

Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival  http://www.nlfolk.com

Go to Teaching tab to see  the art Courses I am offering this Spring at Anna Templeton Centre and Memorial University.

Go to Teaching tab to see 9 Art Courses I am offering this fall at Anna Templeton Centre and Memorial University.

I am working on a project for the Port au Choix National Historic Site.

A few months ago I came across the Request for Proposals from Parks Canada. They were looking for three 2D linear images of traditional Aboriginal cultures that used the area to gather resources from the sea as far back as 5500 years ago. They alsowanted two arches for a circular stone site called the Dorset Doorway which would symbolically refer to whale bones used to support the roofs, made from animal skins, of their traditional circular houses. The proposal asked for an artist or artist team with experience in public sculpture and Aboriginal art. I have plenty of the first – and none of the second. So I contacted Michael Massie, whom I had met at his show at the Provincial Art gallery at The Rooms in St. John’s a few years ago.

Michael has Inuit ancestry, and is a fantastic sculptor – but on a small scale. He makes beautiful sculptural teapots , full of Aboriginal imagery, magical and playful, from silver, bone, stone, and wood.

So with my experience with large, metal, public sculpture, and Mike’s background in sculpture and Aboriginal imagery, we put together a winning proposal. Mike finished the drawings for the 2D pieces and I had them blown up on paper to 1 ¼ life-size, so they look life-size outdoors. With the tremendous help of my good friend, painter Greg Bennett, we are well into the bending and welding of the steel 2D figures.

I am also working with C&W Industrial, a metal fabricator, in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland.  on the final design for the arches which will be laser cut and welded at their facility. Michael’s design will be laser cut into the arches. I have worked on several previous projects with C&W, including a public sculpture called Celebration, and the NOIA (Newfoundland Ocean Industries Association) Outstanding Contribution Award.

The upgrades to the site, including landscape work by Ed Versteeg of  Ekistics and the metal sculptures should be finished this summer.

Originally written January 1, 2010

Although only a date on a calendar, starting a new year brings a fresh sense of possibilities, opportunities, and anxieties. With a new soundtrack of CD’s by Hey Rosetta and Amelia Curran to inspire me, I set forth to write my first ever Blog. My friends Kathryn and Joel are helping me remake my old and static website so I can update it and move stuff around by myself, and learn to use blogging and Twitter to reach a wider audience with my art and ideas. I hope you will join me on this adventure – and learn from or be inspired by my successes and mistakes, and share your inspirations, successes and mistakes, as I try to learn to balance the making of art that comes from my gut, with the necessary work of finding an audience for it – something I never learned how to do in art school. I hope through my artwork, my musings and rants, I may shed some light on this necessary process, while exploring themes I am passionate about – such as climate change, poverty, prejudice, power imbalance, and violence and how we as frail human beings find the strength, courage, and grace to stand up to these challenges.

Hammered and Welded Steel with Fired Clay – 18.5″ x 19.75″ x 4″ – 2004