Unikkaaqtuat

Happy Nunavut Day! July 9 celebrates two acts passed in 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act. Nunavut then officially became a territory on April 1, 1999.
The museum of Inuit Art is marking this date with the opening of a wonderful new exhibition, Unikkaaqtuit: Inuit Creation Stories. It features pages from several different creation myths along with many sculptures from the collection.

Sketch

A few random sketches...nothing too special but I do like to carry around a book to doodle in whenever I'm at a loose end. Summer is generous to sketchers, presenting me with opportunities to capture images on the page everywhere I look. More difficult is picking what I will focus on...

Harry Clarke

The Eve of St. Agnes

       Who can describe the magic that is Harry Clarke's stained glass images? His most famous piece, The Eve of St. Agnes is an illustration of the Keats poem of the same name. It resides in the Hugh Lane in Dublin–the work is admirable in itself but I am drawn in by Clarke's distinctive style. I originally saw the sketches for this work before the finished product and was enamored with the delicate and detailed drawings and slightly odd looking characters...

The Eve of St. Agnes (detail)

The finished product is essentially a comic book in stained glass, a series of panels that show scenes from the poem. It is enchanting, enthralling and and lovely but also holds a sinister bent, not just from the tale itself but in the renderings of each person. The glass panels, though transformed through the brilliant colours and backlight also carry shadows that hint at some of the strangeness and creepiness of the narrative.

The Masque of the Red Death

Harry Clarke, illustration from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

   















 I am very much drawn to the incredible detail of his pen work. The stark black and white images carry the same magic that his stained glass work does, yet the closer you look, the more there is to discover. When seen from a distance they are arresting, the images convey a sense of narrative and an intriguing sense of mystery. Many also have an odd disturbing quality that I find equally intriguing, appropriately he illustrated Edgar Allen Poe's stories as well.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

To ring in the new year with a song...

And to welcome in the new year... from 1windowbird on 8tracks Radio.

Jack in the Green

Studio Tour 2014

Come out to downtown Waterloo this weekend for some great art and good times! Lots of original art for sale. Hope to see you there!

Preludes and Nocturnes

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
comic review

A book review in comic form...this is one of Neill Gaiman's The Samdman volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes. The drawing style is very much inspired by Alan E Cober, a fantastic artist/illustrator but also by the feeling evoked in the book.

Seen and Seen Again

acrylic on canvas, 2014

    The focus of tourist photos is generally on those aspects of a place that are deemed worthy of tourism; a monument, place or object becomes depicted over multiple times with the composites within this space creating the difference, these images are shared through digital media and repeated, copied and reproduced.

    Working from digitally layered images, I want to translate “tourist” images of multiple sources into a single image through a painting. Referencing the article “In Defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steyerl, I’m interested in the concept of image sharing as a way to retrieve the power of the image and to equalize the separate classes–poor images are “images that can be made and seen by the many.” Using some of my own travel photos in combination with those found on the internet, I create an image that coalesces separate times, perspectives and sources into a single image, unified through the painted medium.

Reading Material

Someone told me today, "I'm kind of between books right now." I'm not entirely sure what that means so here's some of what I've been reading lately. Details after the jump...