What happens when the avant-garde art of 1920s and '30s USSR meets 21st century Saskatchewan? Saskatoon artist David Geary's poster series, "The Great Saskatchewan Socialist Utopia - That Never Was" is the answer.
Geary's posters are based on the works of Soviet agit-prop posters by artists such as Gustav Klutsis, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Dmitri Moor. He freely adapts design elements from these models, producing an original artwork that incorporates his drawing and painting along with collaged coloured paper and typographical elements. Curated by Dan Ring - This show comes to Art Gallery of Swift Current courtesy of the Mendel Art Gallery of Saskatoon.
This is an exhibition of artworks from the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Swift Current.
This show will acknowledge the contributions of artists and donors who have graciously gifted their works of art to the Art Gallery of Swift Current for the on going enrichment of cultural life in our community.
The AGSC permanent collections of artwork concentrate on the art history of Swift Current and region. The collections also include examples of artwork from the art history of our province. In all cases the artwork collected celebrates the gifted artists who are part of our history and culture.
Organized by Art Gallery of Swift Current.
In this solo exhibition, Rush Lake artist, G. Wozny Siemens explores the place of nature in our technology driven world. Like a photographer taking a picture, this sculptor records traces of activity; patterns of animal tracks, plant life and land forms found along shores, by making casts of them. These "earth castings" are juxtaposed with text and geometric forms to make her sculpture reliefs.
G. Wozny Siemens studied art at the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining an Honours B.A. in studio art, focussing on sculpture. Shortly after, she exhibited at the Isaacs' Gallery in Toronto and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. She emerges, after a long hiatus, with this first exhibition of a new body of work.
Please Note: This exhibition will temporarily be closed during the OSAC Showcase October 22 to 25, 2009. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Organized by Art Gallery of Swift Current.
This is an exhibition of paintings, silkscreen prints, and ink drawings by Canadian artist, Vaughan Grayson. Her art work illustrates a significant contribution to portraying the Canadian mountain landscape during the first half of the 20th century.
Vaughan Grayson was born in 1894 into a prominent Moose Jaw family. She grew up in a privileged environment that included trips to the Canadian Rockies, Europe, and Egypt prior to 1914. Trained as a school teacher, she went on to receive a B.Sc. Degree in Fine Arts Education from Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 1923. In the 1920's, she published two books about teaching art in primary and high schools that were widely-used in Canada.
In 1929, she married Arthur Mann and lived part of the year in the Okanagan and part of the year in Moose Jaw. She continued to travel most summers to the mountains where she filled numerous sketch books and
used her stories from these adventures to write her book. It covers
trips through the Okanagan from the 1920's to the 1950's.
Ellen Vaughan Kirk Grayson passed away in 1995, in Moose Jaw, at the age of 100 years. The extraordinary life she lived lives on through her art works and unpublished manuscript. She wrote about being an artist in the Canadian Rockies, which is a natural compliment to an exhibition of her work that is presented here in this exhibition. The original manuscript, together with handwritten notes by Vaughan Grayson, will also tour with this show. The title of this exhibition is, in fact, the intended title of her manuscript.
A full-colour publication will also tour with the exhibit, which includes a curatorial essay by Heather Smith, a biography, full-colour images, and Vaughan Grayson's unpublished manuscript about her experiences as an artist hiking through the Canadian Rockies. This show comes to Art Gallery of Swift Current courtesy of Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery.
SW Saskatchewan Open Art Exhibition
July 4 to August 28
A large group show presenting a variety of recent artworks and fine craft by SW Saskatchewan semi-professional and amateur artists.
Art Gallery of Swift Current and Swift Current Allied Arts Council present the annual Southwest Saskatchewan Open Art Exhibition: The Summer Show.
This exhibition offers an excellent opportunity to view a variety of artworks by Southwest Saskatchewan semi-professional and amateur artists. Artwork includes drawing, painting, quilting, photography, woodworking, printmaking, and more.
An "Open Exhibition" is non-curated. Southwest Saskatchewan artists are asked to submit examples of their works for inclusion in this show. The result is an exhibition of very diverse artist approach and ability. This project provides professional development for artists through exhibition experience and the promotion of their work. Artists also take part in critique with art professionals. Artwork is selected from the Summer Show for possible inclusion in OSAC traveling exhibitions for province wide tour.
Well-known Saskatchewan artist McGregor Hone (called Mac by friends and family) was born in Prince Albert in 1920. He graduated with a degree in education in 1941 and during the war years worked as a welder in the Vancouver shipyards. Mac Hone became a high school art teacher at Central Collegiate in Regina in 1947 and worked there until his retirement in 1979.
He and his wife, fellow Saskatchewan artist Beth Hone, moved to Lumsden in the late 1970's and set up studios attached to their geodesic-dome house. Hone was an important member of the Saskatchewan arts community. He participated in many group exhibitions, was a member of the 1940's group of artists known as 'The Prospectors', and attended the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops.
Mac Hone worked in many artistic media but for over 60 years he continued to return to the medium of printmaking. Mac Hone passed away in 2007, and this exhibition celebrates his dedication to the medium of printmaking.
Bart Pragnell was born in Caron, a small town located between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, in 1907. After graduating from the Winnipeg School of Art in the spring of 1932, he was hired by the Moose Jaw Public School Board to teach high school art and a few years later he was promoted to the position of supervisor of art curriculum for all of the Moose Jaw public schools.
The subject matter of Bart Pragnell’s work is extremely varied but he continued to return to certain themes or subjects throughout his life. He painted landscapes, people, still life, cityscapes and abstract works. Pragnell seemed particularly intrigued by the pictorial possibilities of people in the landscape - figures walking down a street, or working on their farms.
A well-known member of the Saskatchewan arts community he served as Vice-President of the Saskatchewan Arts Councils, was a member of the artist group known as the 'The Prospectors', and went on to serve as Principal of the Winnipeg School of Art. He passed away in Lethbridge in 1966.
Two solo exhibitions featuring emerging young professional artists from Swift Current.
Raised in Swift Current, Jill Armstrong spent several months of high school living in Europe and continued to travel as much as possible since. Jill has recently completed a BFA degree in Visual Arts at the U of R specializing in Printmaking under the direction of artist Jack Cowin. Jill is interested in the connection between geographical region, history, and identity. She is currently exploring pattern and its role in social history.
Jillian Cyca of Swift Current has just finished an Honours Bachelor of Arts with majors in art history and studio art with a focus on printmaking. For a four month period she went to Japan to study art and art history at Kansai Gaidai University near Osaka. This experience has influenced her approach and art forms.
This exhibition presents a broad selection of visual artwork by High School students of the Chinook School Division. This is a great opportunity for public audiences to enjoy wonderful artworks by inspired young people. This is a good professional development opportunity for visual art students. It is also a very encouraging event for students, teachers, and parents of art students giving everyone the opportunity to celebrate the expressions of their visual minded friends and loved ones. The "High School Art Show" demonstrates the significance of providing good quality education in visual art.
Solo exhibition by Saskatchewan artist, Dorothy Knowles, one of Canada's top landscape painters.
Dorothy Knowles (b. 1927, Unity, Saskatchewan) is one of Canada's top landscape painters. She studied art in the late 1940s and early 1950s at night school and summer school in Saskatoon and Emma Lake and briefly in London, England. A turning pointing her career came at an Emma Lake Artists Workshop in 1962 when she was encouraged by the American critic, Clement Greenberg to pursue painting from nature regardless of the contemporary predominance of abstraction. Her paintings from the mid 1960s to the present have had an enormous influence on younger painters across Western Canada, acquired in part through Knowles' frequent presence as both participant and leader at Emma Lake Artists Workshops. She has continued to paint prolifically in watercolour, acrylic, and oil throughout her career - working in a variety of different manners and using a range of subject matter. Her works bring to life the rich and colourful landscapes that surround her home and studio and her paintings have found homes in some of the most prestigious museums in Canada. She and her husband, artist William Perehudoff, live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
This exhibition comes to AGSC through a partnership with Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery.
An art history book about the great Dorothy Knowles will be produced by the MJM&AG, and feature the Canadian modern art history writer Terry Fenton.
Note: this is at the Swift Current Museum, not the Art Gallery
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert St W
Swift Current, SK
(306) 778-2775
The paintings and drawings, selected for this touring exhibition from the University of Saskatchewan Permanent Art Collection, illustrate dominant themes within Kenderdine’s oeuvre. Many of the pieces selected demonstrate Kenderdine’s engagement with the Saskatchewan landscape, including northern, central and southern locales within the province.
A.F.L. Kenderdine was born in Manchester, England, in 1870. He studied art with his godfather, Chevalier de la Fosse and later at the Academie Julien in Paris. He arrived in Canada in 1908, homesteading near Lashburn, Saskatchewan. In the early 1920s, Dr. Walter Murray, then president of the University of Saskatchewan, viewed several of his paintings and was so impressed that he offered Kenderdine studio space at the University. Kenderdine then spent winters in Saskatoon painting and teaching informal classes until he was appointed Lecturer in Art in 1927.
In the late 1920s, Kenderdine began to paint in Northern Saskatchewan, and constructed a cabin at Emma Lake. He dreamed of developing a summer art camp at Emma Lake, and in 1936, persuaded the University of Saskatchewan to support the artist retreat. In 1937, Kenderdine moved to Regina to assist in the establishment of the art department at Regina College. He lived in Regina until his death in 1947.
From the University of Saskatchewan Permanent Collection. Organized by the Kenderdine Art Gallery.
An exhibition of fine craft selected by the Saskatchewan Craft Council: thirty-five pieces of amazing work that Saskatchewan craftspeople made by hand.
Dimensions is a dynamic representation of high quality Fine Craft made in Saskatchewan. The unique attributes of the jurors who choose the works, together with the fact that the exhibition is open to all Saskatchewan craftspeople, offers both new and experienced craftspeople the chance to be included.
Every spring, the Saskatchewan Craft Council invites all Saskatchewan craftspeople to submit up to two hand-crafted items for Dimensions, the only annual, open, juried, touring exhibition of Fine Craft in the province.
This year 93 craftspeople submitted 147 entries for consideration at the jurying session in Saskatoon. For 2008, Dimensions also had a theme of “Growth”, which was interpreted literally, figuratively, spiritually, and above all, with creativity and innovation.
The Saskatchewan Craft Council entrusts highly qualified jurors with extensive knowledge of Fine Craft and different specializations to select the Dimensions exhibition. They spend two full days selecting the show and choosing the award winners. They are instructed to choose the best among all eligible entries, and not to concern themselves with a curatorial viewpoint. Dimensions jurors participate in a public critique in which they share their thoughts about the process and speak about specific works.
Dimensions: Growth was selected by Jamie Russell and Dr. Sandra Alfoldy. The Saskatchewan Craft Council thanks Sandra and Jamie for their valuable contributions and the detailed attention they gave to every entry.
Organized by the Saskatchewan Craft Council with funding assistance from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation, and SaskCulture.
November 29 to January 4, 2009 Holiday Salon
An opportunity to view and to purchase artwork by professional and aspiring local professional artists. A portion of proceeds from the sale of artworks go to support public programming at Art Gallery of Swift Current.
October 18 to November 20, 2008 Bob Siemens: Through a Cold Looking Glass
A solo exhibition of black & white photographs of amazing ice formations at Highfield Dam by Bob Siemens of Rush Lake, SK.
"This series of photographic prints represents an accidental and equally amazing discovery. It was November '07 and my wife and I had just driven onto the ice at Highfield Reservoir, south of Rush Lake. We soon noticed that the ice was very smooth and crystal clear, which allowed us to look into and in fact through the ice into the water below. Then we began to see amazing forms and lines in the ice. The more we looked, the more we realized that these fantastic "shapes" were everywhere, like an endless display in suspended animation.
Needless to say, I headed home for my camera equipment and went straight back there to start photographing. At that point, I did not realize the significance of what I was seeing but I kept looking for compositions and found many.
Mostly, the structures are made up of intersecting cracks, together with air bubbles that had been literally trapped as they were rising to the surface.
As I worked, kneeling on the ice, I could hear the constant cracking and rumbling as the sound telegraphed through the ice in every direction. It was like being in some science fiction movie.
I went back to the ice several more times over three days and drove and walked and photographed in daylight and in the dark with a strobe light, until I had covered miles of ice surface. When I started making the prints in the darkroom, I finally understood that I had witnessed something quite rare.
Usually, the ice is milky or the surface is rough or the ice is covered by snow and it is not possible to see into or through this frozen layer.
At times, while photographing, I imagined I was looking through a telescope into deep space. In other places it was like looking through a microscope at living tissue. Some of the forms are actually quite erotic, while others are lyrical, still others are purely structural. I also became aware that I was constantly looking at my own reflection which had a major effect on my approach.
A few days later we had a bit of snow and I returned to find the ice covered by a white sheet and the display was gone. It was a brief glimpse at life in its most basic form; so simple and so complex. I had been looking at nature's peep show...through a cold looking glass."
-Bob Siemens
September 6 to October 9, 2008 …Here and There…
Brian Ring is well-known in Saskatchewan for his ceramic work. Since 1985, he has shifted his artistic focus into an exploration of digital imaging and has worked on projects in Hanoi, Viet Nam and Paris, France. The exhibition consists of large-format digital images on stretched canvas and a DVD called Urban Buddha that trace the changes that took Brian from clay to computers.
The digital photos are part of an exhibition project that was initially presented in Hanoi, (see "Watch This Space") based on manipulated images from a full year of Viet Nam News, the local English language newspaper. Ring re-photographs these mundane images: his finished works are images of images that address, among other things, image appropriation in contemporary artistic production. He enlarges his digital images so that the digital pixilation becomes exaggerated to the point of dissolving the image, in contrast to commercial digital photography which strives for clarity and precision of colour and form. These blurred images are paradoxical: one can make out typical subjects from day to day life in Hanoi: people riding bikes, food stalls, street scenes. However, Ring shifts the focus from the mundane to a concern with both formal qualities and with the pervasive influence of mass media culture and the spread of global imaging systems that circumvent international borders and cultures, reducing the world to an endless reproducible series of almost indistinguishable images.
--Exhibition curated by Holly Hildebrand for the Chapel Gallery in Battleford, SK, circulated by the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon. Associate Curator, Dan Ring, Mendel Art Gallery
July 5 to August 30, 2008
The Summer Show: SW Saskatchewan Open Art Exhibition
A large group show presenting a variety of recent artworks and fine craft by SW Saskatchewan semi-professional and amateur artists.
May 24 to June 29, 2008 Through the Eyes of the Cree
Artwork by first nations artist Allen Sapp. This exhibition includes paintings by Allen Sapp along with storytelling by Cree Elders speaking on video. Cree artist Allen Sapp captures Cree culture through his art and paintings. Recognized around the world as one of Canada's preeminent artists, Sapp is honoured by the Allen Sapp Gallery in North Battleford Saskatchewan, near the Red Pheasant Reservation where he grew up.
Allen Sapp began painting in the early 1960s, but his work was not widely known until 1968 when the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon sponsored a hugely successful exhibition. By 1974, his work was receiving wide-spread national and international renown. His awards include election to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (R.C.A.A.), the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the Order of Canada.
Through his paintings, Mr. Sapp shows us daily Cree life in the 1920s to 1940s as he remembers it when he was growing up. His art demonstrates how his identity and his life are deeply rooted in Cree culture, thereby inspiring other First Nations artists. It crosses cultural barriers by helping others to understand Cree life.
The paintings and artifacts in "Through the Eyes of the Cree" speak to both the past and the present. They depict Cree traditions, knowledge and wisdom, family and community life, and the activities of men and women, grandparents and children.
"Through the Eyes of the Cree" is a Centennial project created by the Allen Sapp Gallery and the City of North Battleford, with assistance from the Office of the Treaty Commissioner and Department of Canadian Heritage.
May 3 to May 17, 2008 High School Art Show
This exhibition presents a broad selection of visual artwork by High School students of the Chinook School Division. This is a great opportunity for public audiences to enjoy wonderful artworks by inspired young people. It is essential to the future of our culture that we provide good quality education in the fine arts. The "High School Art Show" demonstrates the significance of providing good quality education in visual art.
April 7 to April 27, 2008
Young Professionals
Recent artwork by Melodie Briand of Swift Current and Nicholas Louma of Gull Lake. Melodie recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Saskatchewan. This brilliant young woman brings a fresh contemporary vision to painting and mixed media work. Nicholas is graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Lethbridge. This bold young intellectual pushes at the edges of contemporary thinking in art. These artists are two new forces beginning to make their contributions to art history of Saskatchewan and Canada.
Feb. 23 to Mar. 30, 2008 The River: Two Perspectives
An exhibition of landscape watercolour paintings by Lynn McKenzie-Barteski of Outlook, SK. with poems by William John McKenzie. Lynn completed this series from 2003 to 2005. Her paintings record the constant changing of the landscape of the South Saskatchewan River Valley from the perspective of the shore line, and the bird's eye view from the height of the pedestrian walkway on the former CPR Bridge which crosses the river near Outlook. Courtesy of the Mendel Art Gallery. Curated by Dan Ring.
Jan. 12 to Feb. 16, 2008 Parsons and Dietrich
A wonderful exhibition of sculptural clay wall murals produced collaboratively by potter of Zach Dietrich and sculptor Wendy Parsons of Moose Jaw. Each of theses artists are highly accomplished professionals who have presented their work across the province and beyond for many years, and have the very successful Parsons Dietrich Pottery Studio in the little white church along Highway # 1 by Moose Jaw.
Both Zach Dietrich and Wendy Parsons are clay artists with unique and distinctive personal styles. Zach is concerned with throwing graceful pleasing forms, and enhancing those shapes with colour and texture. Wendy’s detailed, symbolic wall murals display her abiding interest in the people and places of rural Saskatchewan. This exhibition documents the journey of these two individual artists as they move from their own work to a new form of expression through collaborative wall tiles. These wall tiles examine gardens and the central role they have played in the lives of prairie people. Combining wheel thrown shapes with narrative elements these works construct an image of the small everyday experiences that, when taken as a whole, make up a life.