Archives for posts with tag: collage

Small Works Too

By natashahenderson
November 28, 2012 //
1

Small Works Too

 

Join Ten of Montreal’s finest artists in an evening to celebrate those good things that come in small packages.

On Saturday December 1, starting at 6pm, enjoy some festive food and drinks while you chat with sparkling people and exhibiting artists.
 
Small Works Too is a place to find a special little visual gem for your office, your mother-in-law, or your honey. Fresh into our second year of business, at Fleurbain we are proud to present painting, collage, drawing, etching, and mixed media beauts to deck the halls! Small art makes for a unique and affordable gift, perfect for any occasion. With prices for original artwork starting at $50, you can’t go wrong.

Artists involved in this exhibition are:

-Elissa Baltzer
-Heather Boyd
-Denise Buisman-Pilger
-Natasha Henderson
-Francoise Issaly
-David Merk
-Annie-Claude Pépin
-Sarah Robinson
-Patricia Srigley
-Julie Verfaillie

If you cannot make the vernissage on December 1 at 6pm, don’t fret, we will host a mid-way festival with date/time TBA too! (Most likely Saturday December 15.)

Show runs until December 30 (closed December 23-26 and December 31 and January 1.)

 

Small Works from last year

Fleurbain is located at 460 St Catherine Street West, unit 917.
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Categories Art, current exhibit

April’s Featured Artist: Mary Blaze

By natashahenderson
March 31, 2011 //
4

 Mary Blaze is a Vancouver area artist, whose works traverse from painting, to mixed media, to performance. You can see more of her works at http://artforcecollections.com/.

Artist In Her Studio With Ceramic Vase 18" x 12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

 What to Do with an Old Water-Stained Piece of Building Paper?

             Creation begins coincident with my husband’s attempt to discard an old, water-stained roll of building paper.  In a spontaneous act, I retrieve it, lop off an eleven foot length onto my studio floor, and go to work.

            My stack of newspapers, used to protect studio surfaces from over-brushings and roll-outs, is at hand.  Therein are my first images for collage.  As I place them randomly on the substrate with acrylic medium, I begin to see window frame forms, across the horizontal length.

Artist In Her Studio With Candle and Candlestick 18"x12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            Onto the suggested squares and rectangles, I collage scanned and printed drawings from my sketch books, along with some recently completed drawings and prints.  From this point on, the work is directing me, as different from me imposing conscious determinations onto it.

Artist In Her Studio With Ink Bottle 18"x12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            I am in my studio, driven to using things at hand.  I look around me and my ink bottle comes into focus, so, with Aquarelle water soluble crayons, I draw it.  A friend had left a luscious looking, red skinned pear, and I draw it, too.  This work is becoming a very personal statement, but now a shift takes place.  As I add my Dad’s lantern and my Mom’s lamp into the spaces at each end of the paper, these two, coupled with my own central candle and candlestick, bring the work into the realm of heritage, and here it is: the cross-over of my two abiding passions, art and genealogy, having come unbidden into visual coexistence.

Artist In Her Studio With Wild Flower Bouquet and Lantern 18"x18.5" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            I wonder if, during the elapsed year of this work, the undemanding nature of the remnant from our house building project, gives me the freedom to work at a sub-conscious level, to create “Artist in Her Studio with . . . ,” but whatever, it is something to do with an old piece of building paper.  

Artist In Her Studio With Teacup and Lamp 18"x18.5" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

 If you would like to be next month’s featured artist, check out this link! Thank you, Mary, for sharing your art and artistic process with us.

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Categories featured artist

Greg Howes – Finale

By natashahenderson
December 28, 2010 //
0

Crate One. Photomorph and collage, 2009. Copyright Greg Howes.

 Greg Howes continues his story of artistic evolution, the third in a three-part series. The first installment is here, and the second is here.

The next stage in my artistic evolution came when I started to arrange objects in advance of a shot, and then rearrange them for each separate shot. I used various arrangements, sometimes groups of objects such as shells or leaves, sometimes even people to give my work a theme or location.

The Ethereal Garden. 2009, photograph. Copyright Greg Howes.

This brought even greater control of my pictures. I suppose this was when they became “designs” in the true sense of the word, rather than myself “capturing” random images and working on them without altering them in situ. That said, I still use random selection as the possibilities are infinite.

History Today Yes SD. Collage, 2010. Copyright Greg Howes.

Whilst we are on the subject of natural selection… I now felt that I was armed with a new-found power of expression, and I started to return to my punk roots. I blended punk sloganeering (which had so inspired me in my adolescence), collage, and Darwin’s theory of natural selection into the mix. This seemably at first unlikely brew was based on the idea that punks (I use the term in the English sense of the word) were some sort of cultural (and visual) mutants that nature and society needed to inflict upon itself in order to grow and evolve. This notion also involved a “back to the future” type approach (call it a “throw back”) portraying an inescapable need to connect to our primal anthropological urges for decoration and tribalism, and our (and natures) need for constant adaptations to a changing environment.

I cannot deny that part of my motivation for unleashing this conceptual mix into the world was the irritating rise of the great enemy of the intellect “Creationism”, which in my opinion has as much relevance in the modern world as the Flat Earth Society. How ironic is it that my love of collage started in an erratically attended Baptist Sunday School for the under 8s.

KK22. Collage. The first that Greg made during his current course. Copyright Greg Howes.

Presently I feel that the artistic world is my oyster. That’s why I am currently engaged in a part time mixed-media course at Gorseinon College, Swansea south Wales. This has allowed me to stretch myself even further and offer me yet more new food (no not that type, Natasha) for artistic thought. I now use photographs/collage/wall filler/glue/paint/saw dust in my art and it is always new and exciting. Whether I am learning huge amounts on the way I am not so sure, but I am just happy to be experiencing, expressing and experimenting. I find this infinitely more satisfying and much more fun than the learning of lessons, anyway.

 I doubt whether my need to create will ever leave me, as there are so many rivers to swim through and way too many inspirations for just this one life… so here’s hoping I come around again and again and again……..

Moods. Photograph, 2010. Copyright Greg Howes.

Thank you, Greg, for sharing your sources of inspiration and your story with us! May this world of art and nature contunue to inspire you for years and years to come.

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Categories Art, Gardening

Greg Howes – A History of Artistic Growth – Part one.

By natashahenderson
December 26, 2010 //
2

 The first of a three-part story about an artist I’ve had the pleasure to get to know through the cyber-world. Greg Howes is a multi-talented artist, gardener, historian, writer, actor, and generally very creative person. This is a bit of his story…

"Ohhhhhh". 2006, Photomorph. Copyright Greg Howes.

When Natasha Henderson asked me to write about the motivation behind my art work, I was a little perplexed as what to say. I tend to just “ do” something because I want to, rather than think about why I am doing it. Perhaps that is a failing, perhaps not? Maybe it’s because I am never short of inspiration or enthusiasm.

At present a lot of my working life revolves around researching family history and genealogy for private clients, television programmes, et cetera (see http://www.welshfamilyhistory.co.uk/) . Although I specialise in Welsh family history, I also research for people who have English and Scottish ancestors. When I am not tracing back family trees I am also a semi professional designer/photographer/mixed media art man. I paint/print/glue my images onto canvas/card/textiles and sell them on-line or in local art and craft shops.

I left School in 1980 aged 16 years. It was a time of a huge economic slump, possibly not quite as huge or as global as it is today, but unemployment was far higher than now and Britain had the worst unemployment rates since the 1930s… so jobs were few and far between. I knew what I did not want to do but all of the things I did want to do were all sadly unrealistic (or so I thought). Consequently most of my jobs in my mid to late teens and early twenties were very uninspiring (though I did find time to take an O level in art at Oxford).

Floral Mantra. 2006. Photomorph, copyright Greg Howes.

Occasionally there would be one or two jobs that paid reasonably well but this usually meant working from 7.00 in the morning until 6.00 at night and Saturday mornings. The only oasis in this wilderness of employment was a short period of self employment printing and designing punky/patterns/slogans for T shirts. Much as I enjoyed this it would not keep me in house or home. These were the days before the internet and as designer, printer and market trader the overheads were just too great for it to be sustainable.

Punk 33. Photomorph and collage, copyright 2007 or 2008 Greg Howes.

My big break came when I was accepted as an employee/trainee horticulturalist at the wonderful Waterperry Gardens and Horticultural Centre in Waterperry near Oxford. At Waterperry I managed to combine my inbuilt love of the natural world and its processes, as well as satisfying my passion for creating in the propagation of plants and research. I imbibed all I possibly could about different plant names, where they originated from, when were they in flower, how they were propagated and so forth. I know my time at Waterperry changed my life and my outlook on life completely, before then I had always seen myself as some sort of frustrated artist and poet (though I use these terms in the most loosest terms possible) without any realistic direction.

 That said, I could always use words to convey my feelings adequately in poetry, but sadly I had no real skill (and/or patience) with pencil or paintbrush. In my spare time I did dabble with drawing and painting but I was rarely happy with the results, though I always enjoyed the pastel work. The only thing I took out of this was a feeling that I could always invent something even if I could not copy at all.

Pastel. 2007. Pastels. Copyright Greg Howes.

Greg will continue his story here on Fleurbain tomorrow…

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Categories Art, Gardening
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