GASTROSOPHY

Dear friends,
You're invited to Gastrosophy, an exhibition about the art and science of good eating. I am one of seven artists exploring the social, political and cultural functions of food in this exhibit.

They examine themes of its substance, social value, personal and cultural experiences, rituals of preparation and consumption and issues related to global production and distribution across media. Ultimately, the question that binds all of these artists together is: “What are we actually doing when we sit down to eat?” — Olivia Chow, Curator

At the opening, I will be performing a piece titled Practical Magick; of Kitchen Witchery where I will be sharing bread and tea in the kitchen space.
This piece explores mundane magic and subtle acts of superstition that are taken for granted in our everyday lives, for example, tossing spilled salt over your left shoulder or using aloe vera. The artwork was inspired by the innocuous doll in my mother's kitchen—the traditional scandinavian poppet, known as a Kitchen Witch, used as a rustic talisman to protect the home and bring good luck—and evolved to encompass references to superstitions, old wives tales, folk magic and ancient pagan traditions.
Because the kitchen is associated with the hearth and is of great importance to folk magic traditions throughout history, I choose to occupy the kitchen space of the gallery, transforming it through performance of rituals like baking bread and brewing tea. In this work, I recreate the space of my kitchen at home by bringing objects from my collection, and creations of more recent origin for the purpose of the exhibition to share with the viewer. I perform the role of kitchen witch—a solitary practitioner of domestic magic and personalized rituals.

The exhibit will also feature a performance of making traditional chinese dumplings. Caution: it may contain flour, meat, shrimp, vegetable, soy, sugar, sesame and traces of peanuts

Join me at the reception tomorrow!
Friday, March 7, from 7 to 10 pm
at The Works Gallery at Jackson Power, 9754 - 60 Ave

 

TONIGHT!

I am pretty excited to be shooting photos for Latitude 53 tonight at their fundraiser event The Fine Art of Schmoozy. Some fabulous artwork up for auction if you want to drop by and support the gallery. If you can't make it, consider buying a membership or giving one as a gift. This place is one of the raddest — and oldest — artist run centres in western Canada, and are preparing for their big move to a larger space on the main floor of the building next door. Exciting!

Don your gay apparel and come celebrate with live music and fancy cocktails while you peruse neat artworks like this one and I snap your best serious-art-collector expression.

This work by Adriean Koleric is just one of the pieces we’re hanging in the gallery for the Schmoozy silent auction this week—we’ll be posting more photos over the next few days.

Donated artwork by Adriean Koleric

CRAFFITI ART

Flanking 106 street north of Jasper Avenue, you'll find a handful of printed fabric panels featuring the poetry and art of Holly Newman that defy the classifications of art, graffiti or craft.

Her trademark attention to detail and impressive work of the hand adds visual interest and gives the passerby an opportunity to stop and engage with an artwork in a seemingly unexpected place. However, I have to wonder if the location Newman chose to display her work wasn't influenced by what could be considered Edmonton's unofficial Arts District made up of the Alberta Craft Council, ArtsHab, and Latitude 53.

According to Holly, her motivation is to "invite the viewer to reconsider the city landscape. Unique relationships are formed in the city. Natural elements can be elevated or ignored depending on the viewer's level of distraction and inclinations. Our changing relationship with nature has evolved so rapidly that at times it seems to have disappeared. Finding remnants of the personal within the city labyrinth is my motivation in constructing projects that challenge the role of the viewer within the city landscape."

BACK WORDS // Sight for Sore Feet

A burst of colour brightens an otherwise dreary Spring day – Snow-swept and slushy. The mural appears on 95 street, close to 107 avenue, on a long circumambulation that takes me through downtown, Chinatown, Little Italy, and eventually, back to Alberta Avenue. A smile crosses my face as Stripedscape by Grace Law fills my field of vision with 30 feet of saturated stripes, making me momentarily forget my saturated socks. Standing and staring at the painting for several minutes, likely causing passersby to assume I was another local eccentric, I could appreciate the size of the artwork and the great amount of work that went into it. According to the artist, the mural is "a colourful scene that embodies the diversity of the area that is so close to the heart of the city of Edmonton." The stripes are also meant to represent cooperation and peace.Sure enough, this mural was created with the help of many, and would not have happened without The Places.
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BACK WORDS // FELLOW FLÂNEURS UNITE

Alex Hindle and Leila Sidi are not your everyday Photographers. They travel tot he liminal spaces of the city that most people never let even their minds wander. "Crimes of Adventure in the Polaroid Apocalypse" is an exhibition of photographs that document the decay of urban industry in "the city's rich margins and their scribble scrap of rust bucket huts and train yards." "Crimes of Adventure"will introduce you to a different side of the city; a foreign-looking place that these artists became intimately familiar with. Their work chronicles their experiences, "telling a story that dissects the nature of dereliction, loss, and the powerful and fluctuating essence of places."
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BACK WORDS // COOL STUFF

Collections are fascinating. The artist behind the blog A Collection A Day, Lisa Congdon said, "I think that ordinary objects become something different when they’re arranged with other like things… Seeing things with other like things helps us to see them in new ways." A well-curated group of objects say a lot about the person who was attracted to them and who gathered them together. It also tells us something about the culture and history of the people or places the objects belong to. Cool Stuff brings the artifacts and artworks in the UofA Museums' collection together for a winter party at the Enterprise Square Campus until the end of March. For free.

If you want to know more about the thought that goes into selecting the things that go into the show,  visit the exhibition at 12 PM on March 29, when curator Jim Corrigan will be giving a tour. And for those creative people who say nature is a huge inspiration, John Acorn "the Nature Nut" speaks about how nature responds to winter in our city this Thursday March 15, at noon.

BACK WORDS // REDDRESS

Six hundred empty red dresses fluttered in the breeze against the white backdrop of freshly fallen snow, a stunning metaphor for the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. The REDdress project was conceived by Jaime Black, a Métis artist from Winnipeg to "to draw attention to, and create space for dialogue around, the gendered and racialized nature of violent crimes against Aboriginal women."
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