THIS WEEK AT SPARK BOX
Carl Wiens’ silkscreen pieces are near completion with just one last layer. Can’t wait to see them all finished! Looking forward to seeing some more people working in the Open Studio including Nicole Armour. If you haven’t seen Nicole’s handmade books you really should take a look, they are beautiful! She also has a very insightful blog about books, movies, music and friendship called The We of Me.
We are excited to start another month and invite new people into our home and studio. On Wednesday we picked up our newest resident coming to us from Israel and staying for two weeks. Nava Astrachan will be working on three etchings during her stay. (image below taken from HERE).
On Thursday Kyle and I got to see all of our work up at the John M. Parrott Art Gallery and share the moment with our friends and family. The evening was a success and we were so happy to see friendly faces out for an evening in Belleville to support us and our work.
The end of this week finds the end of Sarah Burwash’s residency with us. It has been great having Sarah at the studio. I love her work and will be sad to see her go. I mean just look at this map she made of the area … awesome!
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PAST RESIDENTS: GLYNIS WILSON-BOULTBEE & PAUL BOULTBEE
The power of getting out of your personal studio.
During the summer of 2010 we accepted our very first artist couple. This was not something we had considered when planning the residency, in fact, we were surprised when Glynis Wilson-Boultbee and Paul Boultbee’s application came to us. After thinking it over we decided that it might be fun to have a duo working in the space. In fact, this might be the way Kyle and I would approach a residency. It turned out to be a great decision. Glynis and Paul came to the studio from Alberta, Canada. While staying with us Glynis worked on a variety of writing projects while Paul worked on pieces in preparation for an exhibition held this past December.
The great thing about Paul and Glynis was that they really found a way to enjoy the area and incorporate it into their work. Paul had originally planned to work on a completely different series but changed his mind after becoming inspired by the Glenwood Cemetery built in 1873. With its 62-acre property of rolling hills, mature trees and winding dirt roads it is hard not to be inspired by its beauty. This is something I really love seeing with visiting artists. It is pretty incredible how much a place can effect your work.
By changing your environment you can sometimes end up created something completely new.
For me this is exactly why we decided to start a residency program. We wanted artists to experience a new space and have that new space effect their work. Paul’s work is a great example of that.
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PAST RESIDENT- ALISON THOMPSON
A past winner from the summer 2011 residency award was painter and textile artist Alison Thompson. Her stay at Spark Box ranged from working on her paintings, to discussing the cross-section of art and craft, to embroidery our vintage chair, to exploring the Prince Edward County scenery.
It was such a joy to have her at the studio, her positive energy filled the house. Her work perfectly reflected her personality – bright, cheerful, vintage and fun. The work produced at the studio expressed her interest in the world of craft and her passion for the world of art. Her embroidery work filled the desire to work with traditional women’s needle craft and her watercolour paintings of quilt patterns addressed her pursuit of the fine arts.
RESIDENCY AWARD
Beginning your career as an emerging artist can be tough, which is why Spark Box Studio is offering FREE RESIDENCIES to fine art students and emerging artists. This residency opportunity is a unique way for young and emerging artists to cultivate new ideas, access a rich library of arts resources, learn about career-building opportunities, and develop an understanding of the art world from a business perspective.
Six emerging artists will receive a one-week (7 days) residency at our Open Studio in Prince Edward County. The selected applicants will be given a private studio space and given access to the Spark Box Studio equipment and resources, as well, winners will be provided with living accommodations for their weeklong stay. They will also have access to career guidance from owners Chrissy Poitras and Kyle Topping, along with, local community members.
The winter residency award runs from January 9, 2012 to March 31, 2011. Please be advised that the award is for 7 consecutive days.
Applying for the Residency Award gives artists the opportunity to practice an essential business skill in the art world: the application process.
APPLY NOW (DEADLINE NOVEMBER 1, 2011) CLICK HERE>>
SPARK BOX SHOP
We have been working hard on putting together the merchandise section of the studio. As some of your will remember the “sale” area of the last space was crowed in a hallway, not the most convenient place to look at printed goods. We decided we wanted to make one full wall of the new studio dedicated to printed goods that were for sale. This would include materials from our craft sales, Square2 Magazine and personal art work. Like most projects it took a lot longer than we anticipated to get it together the way we wanted … but it finally feels close to finished.
We have also been updating our Etsy shop with new products and recently put up a table on the Poppytalk Handmade Online Market. So, if you are looking for a handmade gift for the upcoming holiday season please make sure to pop in. We are open year round Tuesday – Saturday 12 – 6 PM (Thursday we are closed).
PAST RESIDENT: CYNTHIA HSIEH
This summer we shared our home and studio with artist Cynthia Hsieh. Cynthia works primarily in drawing and painting and in her own words ” the narratives of [her] drawings and paintings aim to allude to the outward appearance of the good life with delicacy, subtly, and humour. They exist in the context of an imaginary reality where expectation of the beautiful and other external elements fuse, hence [her] commentary of such seemingly desirable world.”
Being from Shanghai Cynthia wasn’t used to living the country life of P.E.C. It took some getting used to but by the end of her stay she was surprised at how much fun she had had in a small town. During her stay she took part in a number of different “Spark Box” activities. She came with us to the Picton Picturefest, to Nicolai Sarafov’s lecture and exhibition and to many trips to the various P.E.C. beaches. Before leaving she gifted us a hilarious drawing of me with my still-not-created terrarium (the image is based on a photo in a 1970s foliage book).
RESIDENT: JESSICA ANDERSON
This summer has brought us a number of fantastic artists-in-residents. Sadly, these artists don’t stay with us forever and last week we said our goodbyes to Atlanta-based artists Jessica Anderson. Jessica is pursuing a MFA degree in sculpture at the University of Tennessee. Her work and interests lie at the intersection of art, activism, and the transformative possibilities between the two.
The allure of printmaking did take hold of Jessica during her stay and she ended up making several prints large etchings. Her main focus though was the creation of sculptural pieces that resemble her In Laboratory work. During her two week stay the studio turned into what looked like a science lab filled with jars and bags of floating bits and pieces of simulated human parts.
AWARD WINNER: AMANDA MCCAVOUR
I met Toronto artist Amanda McCavour during the Come Up To My Room exhibition at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. She had a room installation which featured an entirely sewn living room space. Over the course of that weekend we hung out quite a bit and I was very happy to see that she had applied for our residency award.
Amanda “uses a sewing machine to create thread drawings and installations by sewing into a fabric that dissolves in water. This fabric makes it possible for [her] to build up the thread by sewing repeatedly into [her] drawn images so that when the fabric is dissolved, the image can hold together without a base. These thread images appear as though they would be easily unraveled and seemingly on the verge of falling apart …”. She is “interested in the vulnerability of thread, its ability to unravel, and its strength when it is sewn together.”
While at the studio she worked a few different projects, one involved sewing lined paper and another comprised of several new pieces for her Scribble series. The lined paper work, I assume, will feed into her Folded Fortune work (see above), which developed through experimenting with themes of children’s crafts and things she had made when she was younger. The Scribble series is yet another project based on a popular children’s craft, the spirograph. The result of these pieces is a very impressive installation comprised of several scribble drawings suspended from a ceiling.
RESIDENT: REBECCA ROTHFUS
I have always been drawn to white on white or black on black art work, so when artist Rebecca Rothfus came to our studio this past June and said she was going to work on a series of embossments I was thrilled. Rebecca work is of modern day landscapes. She is intrigued by the structural beauty of cell towers and industrial plants and enjoys the visual contrast between these structures and their surroundings. Using photographic references Rebecca made four collograph prints which she later used for her embossments.
A collograph print is created by using a hard surface (wood or cardboard) to build up your imagery. This results in a relief surface with a range of different textures and levels. Many printmakers use string, fabrics, objects found in nature and textured paper to create their imagery. Generally these are then inked and transferred to paper through the printing press. Rebecca used cardboard to build up the different layers of her print, adding and removing pieces to create the levels. Then, instead of inking the plate she put it through the press clean to create the embossment. The wet paper moulded around the different levels of cardboard leading to a beautiful, all white print, with her image recessing in from the background.
REFLECTING ON PAST RESIDENTS: HANNA HUR
photo taken from May Truong
Last summer we had Toronto artist Hanna Hur stay with us for a week. Hanna and I became great friends in the short period of time that she was here and I had the pleasure of interviewing her for the April issue of Square2 Magazine. Hanna’s work ranges from drawing to photography and she deals with a multitude of different topics. She has worked on several projects with her twin sister Laurie Kang and recently she has been developing many drawings based on themes of self-identity and her departure from the Christian faith.
What’s next for Hanna Hur? She is off to Berlin in May where she will be mentoring with artist Candice Breitz.
REFLECTING ON PAST RESIDENTS: JAMIE Q
A few months ago we had Jamie Q, a Canadian artist, participate in our Residency Award. Jamie works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, bookmaking and printing. I loved her work as soon as I opened the link to her website. It was bright, punchy, fun and full of underlying meaning. Not only was her work amazing but her MFA research focused on the politics and aesthetics of the do-it-yourself ethic, as well as the social potential of art objects and DIY distribution strategies … could she sound more interesting? She proposed to create a silk screened zine while staying with us and she did just that. In a week Jamie made 60, 14 paged, 8 colour screen printed books. For those who don’t know much about silk screen this is a lot of work and a great accomplishment. ***by the way you can purchase a copy for yourself on her website just click here***
Jamie always seems to be up to something. If you are living in San Francisco you can see her work at the Take Root exhibition at the Luggage Store Annex. If you are in London Ontario she will be participating in a Zine Workshop at the London Library April 28th.
ONLINE FIND: MEL KADEL
Grand Old Fort (image used from Mel Kadel’s website)
We have had several really great artists come through our doors in the past year … but there are always people online that I wish would come to the studio. So I decided to do some posts about them. This post is about Mel Kadel an artist from Los Angeles whose drawings of young woman, repetitious patterns and dreamscape scenery have always captivated me.
Copy Cats (image used from Mel Kadel’s website)
Kadel uses pens, q-tips, glue and old paper to make her very intricate drawings. I love the way her characters interact with the strange shapes, colours and piles of pattern. Sometimes it is as if they are attempting to escape an unknown world. In a recent interview on Fecal Face Kadel was asked if she would ever consider moving away from the city (apparently she loves to stay in and lives in a cute log cabin just off the freeway) … I hope that if she ever does want to be surrounded by nature she will make a trip to Picton!
Holding Down the Fort (image used from Mel Kadel’s website)
NIALL ECCLES
Last July we were posting Character of the Day drawings by cartoonist Niall Eccles while he built his website. Since then Niall has created many more of these lovely characters and I am happy to announce that they are for sale at Kelly’s Downtown Picton. We are also excited to be including Niall in the Spring issue of Square2 Magazine along with several other great artists from Prince Edward County and elsewhere.
HOMELANDS
Place of Culture, 2007, latex paint, pen and ink on paper (image courtesy of Dagmara Genda)
I love intricate drawings, and large-scale drawings take this love affair even further, so you can imagine how happy I was to have seen “Homelands” an exhibition at the Modern Fuel featuring the drawings of Dagmara Genda and Marigold Santos.
Place of Culture II, 2009, latex paint, acrylic, pen and ink on paper (image courtesy of Dagmara Genda)
The works dealt with themes of place and space in the construction of identity. Genda’s surreal drawings, consisting of layers of intense imagery, stems from three interests – nationalism, space and identity. Santos’ work, which was lit with black lights (amazing), was inspired by childhood folklore from the Philippines and featured two primary creatures the asuang and the anti.
Dusk Ador, 2009-2010, Brush and ink, phosphorescent paint, charcoal, colored pencil, gold and silver leaf, pastel on Fabriano paper
(image courtesy of Marigold Santos)
Dusk Ador, 2009-2010, Brush and ink, phosphorescent paint, charcoal, colored pencil, gold and silver leaf, pastel on Fabriano paper
(image courtesy of Marigold Santos)
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RESIDENT: KATIE BOND PRETTI
In my fourth year at Queen’s I began to concentrate on abstract painting. My professor Jan Winton actively encouraged this and was always showing me different artists for inspiration. When artist Kim Dorland came Queen’s to give a guest lecture Jan made sure that I booked a meeting with him. I took her advice and signed up for a private studio visit. Kim was very nice to speak with, giving me positive feedback and good advice for moving forward. During our chat he told me about some Toronto artists working in abstract painting. One of these artists was a young girl named Katie Pretti.
That same day I went online and searched the artists Kim had mentioned and was pleasantly surprised to find such great work being made just 2.5 hours away from me. I particularly liked the work by this Katie Pretti. I added her website to my favorites and often checked back to see what she was up to.
Then I graduated, moved back to Prince Edward County and started Spark Box Studio. After a few months of running the studio we launched our Emerging Artist Residency Award. One day I opened my email and saw a very familiar name. Katie Pretti. I was shocked. Why was Katie Pretti writing me?
It turned out she heard about the residency and was interested in applying for the award. Of course there was no hesitation, I offered her a space right away. I was so excited to have a young artist that I looked up to coming to my little studio.
Katie came to Spark Box in mid-April. She worked on a serious of plexi-glass engravings as well as a few etchings. We talked about school, getting our masters and showing work in commercial galleries. Katie has done quite well for herself in Toronto. She has been showing with LE Gallery for several years and just recently installed an exhibition with them called “The Vanitas”. This show is comprised of a series of 10 large-scale painting that explore the themes of death, emptiness, disenchantment, and the brevity of life.
It was a great experience having Katie at the studio.
ONLINE FIND: CHRIS PIASCIK
I am loving Chris Piascik’s daily drawings. I have always been drawn to original handmade type and he has got some great all type pieces. I also love how so many of his drawings start out as elaborate scribbles. When you go to his site be sure to check out the video which shows him creating a piece from start to finish.
CREATIVE KIDS CAMP
Soon after Spark Box opened its doors we began receiving inquiries about hosting a children’s art camp during the summer. However, the thought of a bunch of paint-covered kids running around our small studio space was enough to keep us up at night. When we expressed our dilemma, our supportive community stepped forward to provide us with a camp location! Mia Lane, and her daughter Becky Lane, offered to host the camp on an amazing wooded property by Fish Lake. During the week of August 16 – 20, 8 kids from all over the world came to print, paint, draw and sculpt in the woods.
Not only did we have a great location, we also got great help. Becky Lane, a local designer, helped Chrissy Poitras plan, organize and run the camp. While the kids had fun creating their art, they were also taught and inspired by the art history each of their projects was drawn from. The campers learnt about the impressionists while painting en plein air, the earth art movement in the 1960s by creating sculptures out of natural materials, and the history of street art when making their own graphic text pieces, to name a few.
By the end of the camp the kids had created an impressive array of remarkable art works, installed their own exhibition in the woods, titled and priced their work, and made personalized invitation for their family and friends. They had a great turn out and some even sold some work!
BETH FREY
Beth Frey has an interesting way of looking at story telling and the creation of visual narratives. During her spring stay at Spark Box Studio this multidisciplinary artist created a number of highly detailed works on paper.
To some Beth’s work may appear to be quirky illustrations full of humorous characters in exotic environments, however, coming from a performance and video art background it is not surprising that Beth’s core concept is the history of story telling.
The drawings she made while at Spark Box were for a show in Toronto at the Gladstone. The curator had given the artists a short story of a young boy who was traveling through an enchanted forest being tricked by several squirrels along his journey. Beth’s visual interpretations of this story were soft in palette but complex in imagery. The piece ended up being a triptych full of elements that walked the viewer through the narrative of the fairy tale.
For more information on Beth, including upcoming exhibits please visit her website www.bethfrey.com
CHARACTER OF THE DAY
DAY 11
DAY 10
DAY 9
DAY 8
DAY 7
DAY 6
DAY 5
DAY 4
DAY 3
DAY 2
DAY 1
We have had illustrator Niall Eccles working at the studio since we opened and have always enjoyed watching him work on his projects. Recently he has made the experience all the better with his daily characters.
I have always wanted to be disciplined enough to commit to a drawing a day … but alas it just isn’t in the cards for me. However, it is a practice I should adopt and we should all take a page from Niall’s book and try to create something everyday.
As a way of honoring Niall’s “Character of the Day” we will be posting them to our website daily!
These little drawings will be for sale at the studio if one of them catches your eye and you just have to have it!
RESIDENT: MIRANDA BOUCHARD
From Sault Ste. Marie, Miranda Bouchard, came to stay with us for a week under our residency award program. It has been wonderful getting to know Miranda on both an artistic level and personal level. She graduated from the university of Guelph and is now working full time in a marketing / communications position for a gallery in Sault Ste. Marie. As with many of our residents we get the opportunity to exchange and share our experiences of being emerging artists. Quite often the hardships of being freshly graduated, financially hindered, limited in space, and underemployed are met with sympathy. It may sound terrible but it is nice to meet others who are similar situations, especially in times of strained economical circumstances. Consistently what we gain and learn from our conversations with residents is that their resolve, determination, drive and ambition keep them positive, alive, moving forward towards accomplishing their artistic goals despite all the troubles young artists face.
Miranda was working with old found photographs and negatives from the early to mid 20th century. She was taking stacking images together to form interwoven new pictures from which she would translate into drawings. Here is a bit from her artist statement: “My works begin with technologically-mediated subjects: images captured by digital recording devices or from scanned, re-captured and manipulated photographs. The process of technological filtration – that is, the passage of an image through cameras, computers, printers, scanners and photocopiers – changes the source as it blurs, obscures, flattens, collapses, pixelizes and distorts it, creating a new image, offering a changed way of seeing something familiar.”
Check out www.mirandabouchard.com for more images of Miranda’s work, her full artist statement and CV.
RESIDENT: MISHI
We realize it has been some time since we updated the blog about our recent residents, of which we have had a few over the past months. The first since the last post was Toronto-based artist Agnieszka “Mishi” Foltyn. 22-year-old Mishi is a graduate of Concordia and one of the last to visit of our 2009 fall/winter award winners. Kyle and I were both in love with her confident figurative work and her grimy drawings of boots. With a big personality and a lot of spirit Mishi feverishly worked on a number of large-scale drawings during her time at the studio.
On one occasion she was bombarded by a group of interested Loyalist College students. We were holding an etching workshop for the Art & Design Foundations at the studio and students couldn’t help be sneak into the her studio space to see what she was up to. Being the open-minded individual she is Mishi had no issues answering questions and allowing the students to take a look at her works in progress.
Mishi’s work can be seen or purchased at Gallery 133 and Art Interiors.
ART LESSON: PERSPECTIVE
For a while now we have been teaching a drawing to an eliminatory student after school. Our lessons mostly consist of learning basic drawing techniques and skills. Amongst theses lessons we’ve focused on topics such as transferring a drawing using a grid, learning different pencil weights, and shading. In our last lesson together we studied one point perspective where we drew a image of a road with telephone poles receding into the distance. Along with showing perspective with the telephone poles we had her also draw a small house beside the road in perspective and had her shade it according to a light source. It is impressive to see the amount of insight she has gained in being able to understand, comprehend and discuss her own errors and successes.
HAUNTED LIFE DRAWING
For Halloween we thought it would be fun to draw ghouls and ghosts posed in scenes. In addition to the two models we had invited to attend the 2 hour session, Chrissy also joined in the modeling fun. We spent the session drawing group poses to a background of scary music. For the first themed life drawing session it went rather well and was quite fun. We hope to continue themed life drawing session once a month. Thanks to those who came out.
