Category Archives: Announcements

Present in Memory

No Right Turn

My presence is both what is before me and my memories merging moving me into the future, predicting, estimating and conflicting. We are both present at the moment and not present at the same time. Our world is often filled with contradictions, experiencing these moments, this duplicity, we do not question it. Neither the oppositional nature of the experience nor its immediate impact seems to arrest our movement forward. We speed past the moment, thinking it will be examined later, but later never comes. We are in these moments of many worlds. 

Window Memories

The merging of these moments in images reflects these moments of dissidence. The work is about how we inhabit dichotomies that propel us forward, the experience of my moments. The work is about my movement through these moments and how focus and memory or analog and digital is at play. 

Are You Wynning

The dust is settling on library shelves as the hum of servers being cooled in closets behind the shelving isles, engages patrons at the library monitors, or allows for remote access to digital books and journals. We see, touch, taste and feel our way through the world to reach these monitors into which we commit details from our senses. Details that mix with scanned and photographed images from the multitude of devices we groom. The flow is automatic from the machines that monitor our health, homes, businesses and algorithms that track our movements and our searching. It is an accelerating information highway whose lanes are ever-expanding and on which a traveller is increasingly challenged to see a clear direction. Challenged by how to anchor information in fact. Challenged by the emergence of increasingly complex contradictory input, compounding our struggle to reach our destinations.

Networking

The work is presented in a series of images created by merging digital and analogy experimental photography into a single image and then printed on cotton paper with pigment inks in limited additions of 20. The images are personal and represent the collision of my presence in the moment and the memories that informed those moments. The images are of the places I have created, where memories and presence merge strongly. Places, where what, was before me and my memories resonated.

The Exhibit
Alkalinity Field
Homing In
Ghost of Bare Trees
December Climate Winds
Market Liquidity
From the Interior
Evening Stratum Memories

On-Line Course

I am teaching an online course “Developing Your Photographic Eye” through the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, and registration is now open.

A low maximum of 5 students allows for more individual attention. Instruction will be provided online via Zoom. Google Classroom will provide a secure and private platform for instructional material, after-class discussion groups, and after-class feedback.

Photographers at various skill levels who are interested in learning more about the art of photography. Every photographer regardless of their skill level has a style either dormant or emerging. Through walking assignments, participants will have an opportunity to develop their own unique style to make images and discuss them in a workshop format.

Discussions may cover composition techniques, various photographers’ methods, post-processing, camera techniques, and technical problem-solving.

Instruction will be online via Zoom. Google Classroom or Moodle will be used to provide a secure and private platform for instructional material, after-class discussion groups, and feedback.

You can register at the City of Burnaby web reg portal the bar code is 674376

https://webreg.burnaby.ca/

Fees: – $240.00

Senior $192.00

Wallace Stegner House

Artist Residency, April 2022

We arrived on April 1st at the Wallace Stegner house after a three-day journey through the landslides and heavy weather of British Columbia, emerging onto a high prairie and its large skies. The sounds of travel were quieter on the broadly divided highway moving lazily over and around the subtle undulations of the terrain; then we turned onto 21, and the adventure began.

Stegner’s Eastend family home on the Frenchman River offered a warm reception. It was well outfitted for our arrival. Everything we needed for a comfortable working stay was there for us. It allowed us to unpack quickly, settle in and begin to work. 

The Road to Shawnavon

On the second floor was the bedroom with a view of the street and an office equipped with items we might need to work, everything from pencils to a printer. The bookshelves were filled with resource books about the area, literary journals, and writers’ guides of all sorts. Between the two rooms,  a small, well-curated library of books immediately got my attention, months of books, I want to pour through.

A Dog Leg Road Back to Eastend

We wandered out back and saw that the Frenchman River, so eloquently described in Stegner’s Wolf Willow, was just across the lane. On the other side lay the hillside and the river valley. How can one not be inspirited by this setting? Over the next few days Edward began to explore the town during his morning walks, camera in hand, and in the late morning driving the roads that curve out from the centre of the town in all directions. In those curves, the town reaches out into the valleys, coulees, mesas and benches an embracing them and their history.

Conglomerate Valley

Phyllis begin reading to understand the sense of place, foraging through the library, taking in the nuances and history page after page. In the afternoon during their walks, her eyes fixed on the ground, studying the plants and materials, and contemplating what camera-less photographic material she might use to record a sense of this place. It was spare landscape, and the plants were not yet prepared to show a hint of green. Thoughts of Lumen  Printing techniques, photographic papers, sheet film and cyanotype methods mixed with her study of the vegetation. 

Alkali Grass in the Morning Fog

We walked through the streets of Eastend and took in the various buildings. Later we discovered many had been relocated here and others resurrected, like the Stegner house. On Redcoat Drive and Maple Avenue, businesses housed within buildings that may have served many purpose over the years, and then handed down to the next generation.

Eastend Grain Elevator

Inside the Stegner House, artists had left paintings on the wall, books on the bookshelves, ceremonial documents and photographs. We could see this was a place where previous residents had created new directions, gathered from previous artists, were cared for by the town, and works had flown forth. We thought we knew the prairies from personal experience and having come of age when classic Canadian writers had created landscape characters in novels and poetry about this expansive, historically layered terrain. 

Homestead Remains

On our creative journey we met guides who took us through Eastend’s historical and geographic paths, sharing the history both written, unwritten and to be written. The more that was absorbed, the more our language moved and changed with the nuisances of the town. Embedded in these nuances were tones of knowledge passed down by those who had arrived in the last two centuries and those who had been here before.

April Snow

Following a Surprise Spring Blizzard, we were treated to a Prairie Winter Redux, a rare rolling back of time and season to watch with artist’s eyes how winter stillness awakens slowly and only when the time is right. The wind, the snow, and the fickling sunshine brought great inspiration and surprise to our visual art. The visually dynamic weather somehow made a connection with the new landscape.

During our stay we found new artistic avenues to explore; developed the foundation for a new exhibition; gathered the material to produce a photographic book of our experience, and developed skills we intend to pass on to other artists in our teachings. Our residency at the Wallace Stegner House made all this possible. We are thankful for this opportunity and the warm embrace of the Eastend Arts Council and the people of Eastend.

Eastend Arts Council: Painting with Light

Phyllis Schwartz and Edward Peck are two land-based photographers working on new ideas at the Wallace Stegner House. They will begin with a brief slide show of their previous and current work. Phyllis will talk about her photography without cameras, share some discoveries of photography by early botanists and explain how this applies to her work. Edward will talk about the painterly aspects of contemporary photography, explain how he creates images that reflect his visual experience, and illustrate how his work has moved away from the chemistry of the darkroom into pigment painting. Their presentation invites discussion and questions. 

COLLABORATIVE ALCHEMY THE BOOK

Available on Blurb

Spent bouquets, living sculpture and botanical photogenic drawings spark a visual alchemical gallery conversation. Edward Peck’s large-format scan grams, Pierre Leichner’s wheatgrass sculpture and Phyllis Schwartz’ lumen prints toured five Vancouver Lower Mainland galleries during 2019 and 2020. They are artists whose practices contemplate the full cycle of natural growth and transitions that are in an ever-changing state. They use plant-based materials to create works of art that speak to issues of permanence and impermanence. They are choreographers and arrangers who have manipulated natural materials into compositions that challenge the viewer to contemplate time, form, and the ephemeral. Now a selection of their work is bound in book form with a gallery essay and artist statements. This Sassamatt publication is available in the Blurb bookstore. 

Natural Alchemy, the first group exhibition, opened in early 2019 at Cityscape Community ArtSpace in North Vancouver. Then in April, Schwartz and Peck presented their work at the Lipont Gallery in Richmond, in a group exhibition under the name Formulation of Time in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival. In late summer, Collaborative Alchemy then opened at the Outlet Gallery in Port Coquitlam. During this exhibition, all three artists provided workshops and presentations on their process and techniques. In November, the exhibition opened at the Amelia Douglas Gallery in New Westminster; during this show, the artist held seminars for individuals studying Fine Art. Finally in January, all three artists exhibited Collaborative Alchemy Plant Based Visual Art at Place des Arts Gallery in Coquitlam, where workshops were also presented. 

Pierre Leichner, Edward Peck and Phyllis Schwartz are artists whose practice contemplates the full cycle of natural growth and transitions that are in an ever-changing state. They use plant-based materials to create works of art that reflect states of permanence and impermanence. They are choreographers and arrangers who have manipulated natural materials into compositions that challenge the viewer to contemplate form, time, and the ephemeral. Hybrid prints by Phyllis Schwartz are made by a contact printing process that leaves traces and shadows on photosensitive surfaces. Her lumen prints engage viewers on a primal level to look again and make their own meaning from ambiguity. Pierre Leichner uses plant roots and moulds in an exploration of our relationship with nature and the beauty of the life cycle. In his work, the roots of plants become sculptural forms. Edward Peck’s photography addresses the symbolism of flower arrangements and the transformation of meaning when they are discarded. He explores the beauty that extends beyond our utilitarian use of these obsolete floral arrangements.

Beau Photo Presents Wildlife Photography Seminar

Beau Photo is hosting an online seminar on wildlife photograph, presented by Nikon Canada. If you are interested in honing your wildlife photography skills you may be interested in joining this seminar being conducted using Zoom. The link above hopefully will connect you next Wednesday.

Beau Photo has an extensive digital and rental departments keeping up with the latest in the industry, darkroom, film, used camera stock, albums, folders, and lighting. There staff of photographers, have expertise in shootIn sports & animals, landscapes, portraits and even wet plate photography for anyone who loves 1850’s photography. Photography has been their passion since 1982! They also support many photo organizations, local and across Canada such as PPOC, CAPIC, CAPA, and NPAC along with many other community events. Their quirky, knowledgeable staff is here to help you. You can see just how quirky they are by checking out their profiles here. They are one of Vancouver’s cultural treasures.