Saturday, July 17, 2010

The act of hanging a framed picture...

Two months of processing and I finally had a break-through today!!! I have admired the telephone poles in Fort Langley for a long time now. Their raw and unassuming presence is refreshing in such a "perfect" little town. When I experimented with stencils and frames last semester, I documented the work on a white wall in the studio. It looked good but there was something missing. I love how the contrast between the frame and the battered 'wall'. The frame is used to draw attention to the subject inside, it suggests that the image is worth being viewed. The irony in this piece lies in the lack of its invisibility. Usually street art becomes a part of its environment. Here it appears to be delicately placed.
Once I develop the piece I want to get several frames so I can do a public installation in the DTES. Frame donations are welcome!!




 
And the follow up from this project, hung on the streets of Vancouver: http://framedheart.wordpress.com/

Friday, April 30, 2010

(RE)COLLECTION [installation]

A few weekends ago Sarah and I put together a show that was held in the small studio space next to the Fort Gallery. The show had a wonderful turnout, we saw a lot of people in a short amount of time. To make a long artist statement short, (RE)COLLECTION explores both Sarah's and my family/personal histories. It shows the places of intersection in our childhoods, also the importance that collections have had in our lives.
(RE)COLLECTION is an attempt to blur the line between gallery, museum, and private home.

(I might put the artist statement up after all)





Monday, March 22, 2010

Presence



“[In the city] extremes coincide—extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts between yesterday’s buildings, already transformed into trash cans, and today’s urban irruptions that block out its space.”

-Michel de Certeau

Every time I walk into the downtown core of East Vancouver I cross an invisible line that runs from False Creek (a condominium complex) to the Pacific Central Station. This line divides the normal from the abnormal, the livable from the unlivable.

My work seeks to bridge this gap. It is the gap between myself and the other, between wealth and poverty. between hope and despair. In my artwork I search for ways to reveal the inherent worth found in the people who inhabit the margins of society. This piece is twofold: the Façade Series is the visible representation of an unseen barrier and Presence is my personal endeavor to cross that barrier.

In Façade I explore separation and the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. These low-income hotels are metaphors for the beautiful and vastly misunderstood people who reside within them. The building’s exteriors are neglected and abused but the windows provide vague glimpses into individual lives. Through these paintings I aim to challenge misguided perceptions and transform that which is profane—even offensive—into something imbued with reverence.

Presence is a public art piece, so titled because it hinges on physical presence and the giving of gifts in order to bridge societal gaps. It originated from my desire to gift something to the people in the Downtown Eastside that they haven’t already received in some form of charity. I want to honor those who have been forgotten by the rest of society—I want to minimize the degree of separation between the other and myself.

The seventy cloth gifts bear the image of an ambiguous figure that exudes a strange gracefulness while existing between gravity and levitation. The playful figure is completely free, transcending hardship and reaching for the eternal.

I wrote the recipient’s name in a gift-tag format on every cloth. Calling someone by their name is a simple act of human recognition. Madeleine L’Engle recognizes the importance of names: “To be given a name is an act of intimacy as powerful as any act of love.”