Lakehead University Retrograduate Exhibition at the Definitely Superior Art Gallery

     Nudity and nacho chips combined at the opening of the Lakehead University Retrograd Show to three packed gallery spaces. Stephanie Celine and Kristin Jorgenson aimed to poke fun at our society’s obsessive love of snack food with a work performed by Stephanie and Reed Thomas. The brave souls disrobed to hop into a tub and pop open bags to cover themselves with thousands of Dorito’s Nachos chips. Brave, not only because the performers were naked, but also because those damn addictive cheesy chips have sharp little edges. Death by Doritos! If you like nachos, there are still lots of them available in the bathtub and all over the gallery floor. The show packs a crunch. :)

      The Definitely Superior Gallery hasn’t had such a dramatic performance piece for a while. Performance pieces can wedge themselves into one’s mind as much as a great art show.

     And there’s lots to like about the current show, set in all three-gallery spaces, comprised of a long list of young and talented creative people, many who may become major artistic contributors to our city. A few works are certainly worth obtaining for collector’s walls. If you want to invest in art, or begin the great and respected hobby of buying art and being involved in the community, here’s a good place to start.

     However, you won’t find the standard landscape, still life, or portrait. There are lots of portraits, but most have a tilt, a playful twist, as do the landscapes and still life. Kristin Jorgenson’s playful Bountiful Harvest is a slightly typical portrait of a house, but with a big wedge of pink frosted cake sitting in the front yard. Painted in a naïve manner one suspects its creator, not a professional, got distracted. Since we know the painter has a university degree, and is a better painter as evidenced by more painterly and detailed examples throughout the show, we know she’s poking fun at our indulgences and making a statement about easily accessible art at the same time. Art too, can be like cake. Or Doritos.

     Eli Castellan’s piece, Mental Traffic, continues the theme. This time it’s a gaunt soul starved semi-human who can’t escape the magnetic pull of the television. The figure’s body becomes an alien-twisted anorexic, with arms reaching for an alternative from the soul-sucking world from which he can’t pull his mind away. This deceptively simple piece is fraught with meaning and has as much a cognitive pull as Robert Crumb’s comic piece, Keep on Trucking. The image sticks in the mind because it’s emblematic of a human condition for many people, like our addiction to Doritos Nachos. A miniature version of Eli’s sculpture would be a good present for every child at Christmas. Just a Grinchy thought.

     There are also great abstract pieces like Scott Poluyko’s Rauschenberg-like piece, Aggression, and Rebecca Taddeo’s very red yet composed untitled mixed media canvas work.

     There are wonderfully crazy surreal pieces, like Melissa Miller’s, Awakening, with its bizarre gooey drips floating between teeth and an eye, and Michelle Kivi’s assemblages of recognizable imagery for her Northern pieces: Routes and Commute.

     There are thoughtful emotionally fraught personal pieces like Viki Ludmark’s, Hereditary Relapse, a bold statement as if seen through the very liquid that creates the addiction.

     The show is comprised of twenty different graduates, all worth checking out. Please go to www.definitelysuperior.com for a list of the artists. The Lakehead University Retrograduate Exhibition is on till May 31^st.

Into the Woods with George Raab

Feelings of plenty, a sense of awe, and mimetic replacement for what we love and need in our lives are a few of the standard functions provided by art. You can probably find “mimetic replacement” in your house. It can be seen in wallpaper, carpets, household objects, bed spreads, teenage posters, paintings, and your curtains.

     Take curtains for example. Are yours depicting fruit or leaves or trees or butterflies or birds? These curtains help to block the view of five months of winter while simultaneously providing imagery that reminds you that spring and summer will return. This kind of imagery can also give you feelings of plenty; similar to the feelings you get when you view a fridge or pantry full of food.

     So it is no surprise that Sharon Godwin, the director of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, got the response she did from a patron when asked what she thought of the work of George Raab. The patron loved the show, but even with all the artistry involved, she didn’t like the few images of snow.

     The patron’s reaction may have involved more than simply being tired of seeing snow. George Raab’s work reveals a personal love for the peaceful and somber moments one can have standing alone in a forest. We share his view of real places, places we rarely visit, bogs, marshes, and lonely landscapes that are subtly interpreted to create a sense of mystery and awe, yet can make a big impression. For all its beauty, being alone in a forest is not for everyone. The sense of awe and depth in a world with no paths or footprints can also illicit worries and fear. It can depend on your personal experience and imagination as well.

     Unlike a lot of art that is deliberately flat, the perspective depth in George’s work is a powerful quality, furthering the duality of beauty and the unknown. The mix of drawing, painting, etching, aquatint and the photographic process that Raab employs make it difficult to know how much interpretation was involved, so the places become both real and imaginary, further creating a sense of wonder.

     It’s also nice that after five months of winter you can go to a gallery and get a little “mimetic replacement.” Visiting the gallery a bit like going for a walk in the woods.  

     George Raab employs both traditional techniques, the kind Rembrandt used and modern photography. Raab might start by drawing an image on a clear film using pen and ink as opposed to drawing directly on a plate with etching tools. The photo itself might be altered on a computer using Photoshop, employing a program to create a softness he enjoys. The photographs are always his own.

     Raab commented during his talk last week that digital art wasn’t taken seriously as an art form for the longest time. “But now, digital art is as perfectly a valid form of self-expression as painting is.”

     Far from digital, yet very detailed is the Intaglio process. Intaglio is a traditional process where the basic image is burnt or drawn into a zinc or copper plate. Ink is rubbed into the areas of the plate bitten by the acids, allowed to do so by either the drawing or the photo emulsion. The plate goes through a press with wet paper on its surface forcing the ink and paper to combine. Peeling away the paper from the plate results in a negative image that becomes the art, reproducible, generally 15 to 25 images for an edition, sometimes up to 50 images, which explains the numbering system you see penciled beneath the images.

     Raab spent a couple years working with the process searching for a personal style, something he says, “has atmosphere with stillness and peace.” He wasn’t looking for spectacular landscapes and drama. “Some of the images are ethereal, not morose. There’s something very evocative about some of them.”

     George Raab is also a rare bird in that he’s been a full time artist for forty years, managing his own career without relying on the gallery system and managing to represent himself, occasionally spending months away from his art to do the office work required to make sales and organize shows. “It’s a big schlep,” he says, “but it’s worth it.”

     He also commented that he was tired of subsidizing galleries. Galleries generally take 50% commission along with charging for the framing services. Raab hosts his own art shows to sell his work and does his own picture framing, which is excellent, by the way. As for the art, he obsesses over the images, and the images are so detailed and the process so finicky that he produces only about eight new images a year.

     Raab says submitting his work to public galleries is a bit of a crapshoot because there are juries involved. But he’s been very successful at showing his work despite the representational nature of the work, less contemporary in approach and more popular. Although he does play with contemporary approaches as with the hanging Mylar piece in which patrons can make themselves disappear.

     “I thought it would be nice to have something other than another flat object on the wall,” he says. However, Raab’s imagery is far from flat. There’s a lot of depth to be seen in his work.

     George Raab’s show, Into the Woods, is at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery till June 15.

3 Shows at DEFSUP Gallery: Adam Makarenko, Amy Swartz, Dr. Bob Chaudhuri's Newly Collected Works.

A quality some artists have could be compared to obsessive-compulsive disorder, which includes a manic desire to repeat actions and creatively arrange objects. The Definitely Superior Art Gallery is hosting three shows, two of which feature artists dedicated to detail in an obsessive manner than is very intriguing, uniquely artistic and definitely worth checking out. Also worthy of your ocular pleasure is the continuing bulging collection of a local obsessive art lover Dr. Bob Chaudhuri.

     Former Atikokan/Thunder Bay resident and now aspiring famous Toronto artist, Adam Makarenko in his show Miniature Frontiers goes in for mimicking reality in much the same way that train hobbyists do with miniature landscapes, except that Makarenko’s miniature dioramas are most often a means to an end, a photograph. One particular photograph, of bees, was so intriguing it kick-started his career, winning him a major prize.

     Gallery director, David Karasiewicz, describes Adam as a modern renaissance man, which sounds like an oxymoron, but accurately describes Adams multiple ventures into sculpture, photography, painting, music, and video. His work is a blend of traditional art, fine art, and popular art. Most artists would be happy with success in one field, but Adam has the ability to do them all well and to combine them successfully into music videos, one of which was nominated for a Juno Award. The results are quite beautiful and often create a wonderful sense of awe by way of contrast of large and small scales. The images make you question what is real and at what scale that reality might exist.  You are even encouraged to take your own photographs of one particular piece.

     More artist than entomologist, Amy Swartz, a Toronto-based visual artist is less interested in the insects she uses as a base for her subject matter and more in how the insects can be used to stir our emotions to create an eerie reality that at times seems cruel, yet humorous.

     If you’ve seen the disturbing ending of the 1958 movie The Fly, where Vincent Price’s character spots a fly with the miniaturized human head and arm of his friend Andre who screams, “Help me! Help me!” that may give you a sense of the tragic that Amy Swartz can stir up in your mind. 

     Then think of an army of flies with human heads. Or imagine a crowd of insects protesting or butterflies with little animal heads. Just as popular culture in the form of B-movies or CSI can make great moral statements using fantastical and depraved concepts, so can contemporary artists, even on a smaller scale with a lower budget.        

     This is what Amy does well, but with a twist. The imagery she creates has the feeling of intellectual weight because her work is displayed in glass cases, the formal setting of an entomologist’s collection as found in an insectarium or museum. The sense of eerie is enhanced by the scientific quality of the pieces. The cold and almost heartless world of display cases contains the bizarre and funny world of insects on parade or protesting or fighting or just being plain weird for weirdness sake. The sacrifice the insects made to have their bodies indignantly altered seem more worthwhile as a result of the artistic and scientific mix.

     Dr. Bob Chaudhuri has been collecting worthwhile works of contemporary art for many years. This show reveals the additions to his collection. Works by acclaimed Canadian artists with different approaches to image making make for a unique show that allows those of us who don’t get to the bigger galleries to see what the contemporary world of fine art has to offer. The mix includes an etching, paintings, collage, acrylic on deer skin, a watercolour, sculpture, graphite, ink, photography, and ceramics.

     Jen Dyke’s “Sales are Down” is a humorous collage which is unusual for it’s use of perspective, achieving a story telling quality. Greg Pace’s ceramic piece titled “Music” as a whole might be considered “art,” but each individual piece is as traditional in its function as any plate or mug. However the work is incredibly beautiful all the same, certainly worthy of being called art.

     The paintings on drums by David Wilson and our own Christian Chapman, who also has a very cool print in the collection from a new series of works, titled Bezhig, bring First Nations voices to the show.

     Wonderful drawings by Dougall Graham for a piece called Marijuana Seven cleverly contrast a quality of sexiness to dull instructions on how to make joints. The drawings looks like Don Draper’s sketches for a pitch to create advertising when smoking pot might become legal one day.

     Get out to see this shows quickly as the last day to view them is the 26^th this month. After you’ve seen them, you’ll certainly have something to talk about.

2014 Bologna Children's Book Fair: Opportunities in a Faraway Land

   The Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy is an annual gathering of children’s book publishers from around the world. Their primary goal is to sell rights for their best books to foreign publishers in order to have the books translated and printed in other countries. Some publishers, especially Canadian publishers, are not interested in buying rights to foreign books. Whether buying or selling, publishers split the proceeds. The author and illustrator also get royalties out of the deal, although usually less than from books sold in their own country.

     My last publisher sold the rights to my first picture book, Spacesnake, to Korea with no contract and no discussion. I got a cheque for a thousand dollars, apparently a buyout fee, and ten copies in Korean. To this day, despite going through a lawyer, I still have no idea how many copies were printed, how many sold, and what was involved in the deal. This was one of many infractions that made it easy to get the rights back for my three previously published books.

     The last time I came to Bologna I approached publishers as an illustrator. This was four years ago when two weeks were added to my trip due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. No planes were flying due to the ash in the air. I didn’t get any work out of that trip, but I met other illustrators who did, mostly Italian. For me it was a real learning experience. And it was great to see how bookstores in Italy are more popular than Starbucks in Canada.

    Last week I attended the Bologna Book Fair, but this time as a publisher, with a mission to sell the rights to my books to other countries. There were hundreds of publishers to choose from. Booths were filled with agents, publishers and their assistants, who spoke with prospective publishers, authors, and illustrators, usually in English. The illustrators were easy to spot. They carried large black portfolios. I had a heavy little leather bag filled with my books.

Illustrator's Wall

     With the current state of the publishing industry in Canada being in eternal crisis, with distribution being a major hassle in such a big country as ours, and now that Chapters/Indigo is officially a department store, it helps writers and illustrators to look beyond our borders. In my case the results could be fantastic, and could serve as an example of why it’s important to publish your own work rather than rely on a Canadian publisher.

      Because I own the rights to my books, I can do what I want with the stories, the characters, etc. I don’t have to sell universal rights to a Canadian publisher if I chose one day to work with one. In Bologna I met with, Beatrix Martin-Vidal, an author who doesn’t sell the universal rights of her stories to publishers.

Argentinian Author/Artist Isol
Winner of the Astrid Lingren Award

     “Many publishers are lazy, or they want too much control of your work,” she says. “They buy the universal rights but don’t sell the rights to other countries. I can make more money selling the rights myself.” And she is quite successful at doing so.

     I had six books to pitch to publishers, three of which I printed last year, draining my bank account of carefully saved $30,000.00. I’m a martyr for a cause, one reason I don’t own a car. But Thunder Bay has been really good to me and I recovered the printing cost of my first self-published book, The Love Ant, within a year. And it was a real confidence boost. Thanks Thunder Bay!

Australian Writer/Artist Bruce Whatley!

     In Bologna, the Germans screwed up their faces in disgust when flipping through my books, except for Spacesnake, the most modern looking of the bunch, apparently. The French were cool, but one French publisher is interested in two of my books, Night Wall and The Boy from the Sun. I met with a Quebec publisher and they were so enthusiastic that all of my books could be translated into French for distribution in Quebec fairly soon. But the best reactions came from China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. In fact the agents and publishers gave me a profound look of surprise. Not only was I the author and illustrator, but the publisher as well. They would repeat questions like, “This is your book?” or “You did the design yourself?” or “You published this?” or “You did the pictures too?” And they all wanted me to send pdfs of every book, enthusiastically handing me their business cards. I was a little taken aback by their interest.

     Of course, this doesn’t mean that anything really promising could come from this, and I have to be careful not to get conned, but it’s certainly a great first step. And hell, if I can do it, there are lots of talented writers and artists in Thunder Bay who can do it too.

[Message to fellow Canadians! If you can get your EU Passport - with your parents or grandparents born in Europe, go for it! Email the embassy of your parents birth and get the details/application. Opportunities in Canada in the arts are diminishing due to our current Conservative Government. Don't be fooled by the EU stereotypes dished out by right wing nuts. Europe is a far better place than most Canadian media or politicians and economists will admit to.] 

Arts' Gallery and Future Prospects

     Inspiring individuals can expand a city’s cultural footprint by drawing like-minded people under a welcoming umbrella. Don Bayes, a savvy artisan and businessman first partnered with Carol Kajorine last November to form the home of Hide 5 Leather and Pike Lake Forge at 12 St. Paul St. in the North Core. The space is called Arts’ Gallery.

     Joyce Seppala who creates unique and fantastic clothing designs and Steve Godin who creates fine woodworks, are both in the process of setting up shop with Don and Carol. This gang also continues to work Saturday mornings at the Thunder Bay Country Market in the Dorothy Dove Building on the CLE Grounds.

      Unlike other umbrella organizations that have come and gone, Don is a sensible organizer and salesman whose discerning ability includes finding talented people who create original works of art that are folk-functional, decorative, trendy and contemporary.

    Don has begun an artistic and commercial venture sure to surprise and please these artist’s fans, and any other patron of the arts. Set up like a gallery with a couple working studios and room at the back for classes, the space has also has a retail vibe that is funky, spacious, and less cluttered than most retail shops. It is also dotted with works by other contributing artists and there are more artists to come.
     Don himself is branching out, experimenting with his leather works, taking on challenges and finding inspiration from artists around him, including Carol Kajorine, whose metal works blend both functional and fine art so well that it takes a moment to figure out whether some of her pieces are art or art and some kind of display to host jewelry or wrist bands for sale.

     Don wants to help expand Thunder Bay’s artistic development in stages, beginning with classes offered in the space to eventually developing a school. He is inspired by the success he sees in Grand Marais with the North House Folk School. This school not only assures that Grand Marais’ history remains relevant, it offers its residents a way to fully integrate into their community with hand made creations.   

     Don’s folk school concept for the North Core could be really valuable. Much like teaching someone to fish, teaching people how to make original things keeps the mind and soul healthy and can even make one a little dough. A folk school would also be a great tourist stop for Thunder Bay. Don is thinking big. Thinking big is what Thunder Bay is getting good at.  

     “We want to take culture out of the Walmart world, take us out of the consumer society and create something that is close to home and built to last,” says Don. “We want to provide value for our clients by creating something that is less commercial. I want them to come back, but not for the same item.”

     As an example of one of the artists in the space, Don has been a leatherworker for over 40 years, producing mostly one-of-a-kind creations like handware for blade blanks. He’s got Damascus skinning knives, popular to use on deer, moose, caribou - whatever. He’s begun employing chainmail for leatherwork. He makes men’s and women’s wear, from buckskins to bikinis. His corset design with cincher on the waist is similar to the fantastic steam punk style. Some works employ porcupine quills. He’s creating unique lamps that sport top hats. When pressed, he had trouble finding one overall unique item. He strolls the space pointing to various items, which stand out amongst items that are also trendy. Being the savvy businessman Don caters to both the unique and what’s hip.

     When asked about interesting customers he bursts into a laugh. “From hunters and fishermen to the BDSM society!” he declares. Don describes pieces he’s created for use in historical reenactments. “We get them all, man!”

Preserving the Past - the Archival Challenge

  A few years ago, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. a young adult of sixteen years, travelling with his parents across the United States from Thunder Bay, was soaking in all the details of the vast array of contemporary and classical art. Standing alone in front of a massive and colourful painting he noticed a long thin line of minuscule flecks of on the floor directly beneath it. He assumed it was a result of paint dust having dropped.

     But how could that be? He recognized the work as Jackson Pollock’s. The painting couldn’t be more than fifty years old. With no one around to see him, the young man held up his hand and with his thumb as the release, snapped his index finger against the painting. The canvas shook a little and thousands of tiny flecks of paint trickled down its front to join the long thin line on the floor.

     Surprised, the young man stepped back. He had just caused further damage to a painting worth millions of dollars.

     A large tour group entered the gallery space. The tour guide stood in front of another large abstract and the guide explained that unlike classical works or popular art, this painting would never grow old because the subject matter that would ordinarily date the painting didn’t exist. There were no horses with buggies, old cars, or outdated clothing fashions.

     The young adult, now standing behind the tour group spoke up, “But the paintings don’t last forever, do they?”

      “Yes, you’re right,” said the tour guide. “This museum spends over one million dollars a year on restoration. Ninety percent of that money goes to repairing works of modern art, because artists today experiment often and they use all kinds of untested materials. For instance…” She pointed to the damaged painting. “Jackson Pollock did that painting using household acrylic paints. And he painted into raw canvas, so the paint is slowly destroying the canvas, and the canvas doesn’t protect the paint from acids and small pests.”

     The young man scooted into another room where he found a woman with a small trolley with all sorts of equipment and dials. She held a chart and a magnifying glass. She was staring intently at a Rembrandt painting. The young man recognized the famous painting from a book. He approached the woman and asked her what she was doing.

     “I’m analyzing the painting to take notes and see if the cracks have gotten any wider or that the paint is getting more yellow.”

     “How long will this painting last?” asked the young man.

     “Well, this painting is almost four hundred years old. At its rate of entropy, the painting should last maybe another eight hundred years. If we take care of it. Maybe longer.”

     Within the space of ten minutes, the sixteen year old was keenly aware that he had learned a valuable lesson about art. And fortunately, that lesson would travel with him for the rest of his life.

     Last Sunday at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, archivist Sarah Janes and a professional art conservator, Meaghan Eley hosted a workshop called “Preserving Your Past for the Future.” For three hours they offered all sorts of great advice about preserving photos, letters, artifacts, and digital files. They went into detail about what most quickly deteriorates what we love: people handling art improperly, earthquakes, shipping troubles, bad storing, fire, water, pests, pollutants, light, incorrect temperature, humidity, and something we rarely take into account as being important, yet obvious, disassociation.

     This is where we forget or neglect to place value on an object by understanding its meaning and recording it somewhere, like writing the date, place, names of people, and other information on a family photograph. When loved ones die vital pieces of information about family history can be lost if it isn’t recorded somewhere.  

     All this wonderful modern technology we have isn’t a reliable alternative for recording material. Digital versions of music and photography can vanish in an instant, never to return. Methods of keeping our past aren’t much better. Our ability to understanding what is worth keeping and how to keep it changes over time. Our current Conservative Government is an example. They are causing great harm to our collective memory by cutting funding, closing libraries, and firing scientists.

     If you want to preserve your family’s memories, don’t store what is most valuable in your basement or attic. Put your valuables in strong plastic bins that seal tightly. Back up computer files with external hard-drives, keeping files in different locations, including outside your home. Get your art framed properly with museum standard materials. If you’re an artist, don’t shirk on using the best products. Store fabric materials in plastic. Ziploc bags are great, apparently.

     And get proper advice. The Internet is full of bad advice as it is a huge topic. If you want some real detail about preserving something, contact the Thunder Bay Art Gallery or the City Archives and Records for a reference. You can also try these websites: Imagepermanenceinstitute.org and www.cci-icc.gc.ca.