Kauai Starburst (Phyllis Schwartz)
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Sassamatt Images are showing at Lipont Art Centre in Richmond, CityScape Community Art Space in North Vancouver and Art! Vancouver during April. All three exhibitions are visual contemplations of the full cycle of natural growth, transitions and regeneration. Like spring flowers, they bloom quickly and yield to summer foliage and salad days. So too, these exhibitions will be closing soon.
Natural Alchemy (CityScape Community Art Space, 335 Lonsdale, North Vancouver) contemplates the forces and cycles present that shape the natural environment. Work in this exhibition documents the intersection where natural materials meet, how they affect each other and challenge the viewer to contemplate time, form and the ephemeral. Closes Saturday, 04 May.
Formulation of Time (Lipont Art Centre, 4211 Number 3 Road, Richmond) displays a poetic inquiry into the fleeting grace in the life cycle of natural flora. The Anthropocene epoch raises questions about what we are seeing, the need to continually look again at the human impact on the ecosystem and the nature of our own impermanence. Closes Tuesday, 30 April.
Art! Vancouver is an exhibition of 500 artists and galleries showing work at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Vancouver Lipont Place present selected works from Sassamatt Images. Check it out 25 – 28 April (Vancouver Convention Centre East, 999 Canada Place).
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In British Columbia, where vegetation is abundant, the symbolic meaning of plants’ life cycles is ceaselessly reflected in artworks. Lipoint Place (4211 Number 3 Road, Richmond), Formulation of Time is an exhibition that showcases the interpretation of this theme in the experimental photography of Phyllis Schwartz, Edward Peck, Desirée Patterson and Sand Wan.
Phyllis Schwartz and Edward Peck are artists whose practice contemplates the full cycle of natural growth, transitions and regeneration. They use plant-based materials to create photo-based works of art that speak to issues of permanence and impermanence. Their work has the capacity to engage viewers to contemplate ephemerality, change and transition in the ever-changing natural world. Phyllis Schwartz will exhibit plant-based Lumen Prints, and Edward Peck will exhibit high-resolution, plant-based, abstract Scanograms.
Desirée Patterson’s Point De Fusion series depicts natural landscapes and plants that appear to be melting into abstraction. With a high aesthetic value, the series aims to connect viewers by evoking a sense of awe and wonder, with a prophetic underlying current. The title, Point de Fusion, references the melting point of an object at atmospheric pressure; the moment when its physical state changes and it becomes a liquid. As the landscape begins to thaw, the idea of motion is implied in an image that once was still.
Sand Wan’s large-scale, black-and-white Immortality series emphasizes the seemingly tranquil but everchanging forests along the Pacific Northwest coast and Fraser River. With black-and-white photography, which lends timelessness and classic quality to his images, he captures the forests in their prime time and the trees’ last resting place along the coastline where they lie as driftwood.
Saturday April 6, 2019 2-4pm: Public Opening & Book Launch
Exhibition hours: April 6 – 30, 2019 Free admission
– Monday – Friday 10am-5pm, weekends by appointment.
– Also open during Art! Vancouver on the weekend of April 27 – 28, 10am-5pm.
– Closed on Good Friday April 19th.
Lumen Print Workshop by Phyllis Schwartz
Saturday, April 13th, 11am – 3pm (12-1pm beak for lunch)
Admission $15/person
Registration is required: https://lumenprints.eventbrite.ca
The workshop is participating in the 2019 Capture Photography Festival and supported by London Drugs Printing Grant.
Natural Alchemy — a group show that contemplates the forces and cycles present that help shape our environment — opens Thursday, 21 March at CityScape Community ArtSpace. The work in this exhibition documents the intersection where natural materials meet, how they affect each other, and how they can challenge the viewer to contemplate time, form and the ephemeral.
The paintings, prints, photography and installation in this exhibition highlight the beauty, connectivity and impermanence of the biosphere and geosphere, helping us to understand how growth, decay, and geological processes play a vital role in shaping our environment. Presenting artists Phyllis Schwartz, Edward Peck, Katherine Duclos, Pierre Leichner, and Willloughby Arevalo incorporate organic and plant-based materials, as well as natural processes to help shape the outcomes of their compositions.
Featured in this exhibition are Lumen Prints by Phyllis Schwartz and and Scanograms by Edward Peck. Schwartz makes hybrid camera-less photograms that leave traces and shadows on photosensitive surfaces. Plant enzymes and atmospheric conditions interact with creating alchemical results on the surface of the paper and sheet film, leaving X-ray like marks of shapes and interiors. These Lumen Prints are primal, hovering on the cusp of poetry.
Peck’s series, Arrangements, is drawn from discarded bouquets, set aside as they wilted but to still full of colour, shape and still in transition, perhaps always in transition as decay eventually rekindles life. He took these discards and after some contemplation, arranged them into compositions, in which he explored their new colours, shapes and fragile state. These works were made using a high resolution scanner, producing a series of Maranasati meditations or a momento mori.
Natural Alchemy
March 22 – May 4, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, 22 March (7 – 9 PM)
CityScape Community ArtSpace (335 Lonsdale, North Vancouver)
Eight Sassamatt Collective photographs are in the North Van Art Rentals collection, three by Phyllis Schwartz and five by Edward Peck. The two most recent acquisitions will be on show in Art Rentals Show, a salon syle exhibition. The exhibition runs 14 February – 15 March (Cityscapes, 355 Lonsdale, North Vancouver). Work on show is available for rent or sale. This is an excellent opportunity to buy more art and get in to the spirit of Valentine’s Day.
Longevity, new work by Phyllis Schwartz, is a selection from a series of Lumen Prints made at Finn Slough. Seeding the Wind, new work by Edward Peck is a selection from Arrangements, a series of images that captures flowers as they transition from bud to bloom to death.
https://nvartscouncil.ca/events-exhibitions/art-rental-show/
Longevity is a Lumen Print from a series of photograms made from plant materials gathered at Finn Slough, a tiny fishing community in Richmond British Columbia, Canada, where approximately 30 residents live in wooden houses along a marshy riverbank. The indigenous and cultivated plant materials used to make the photograms reference a community that is inextricably connected to the environment and persistently adaptable to the encroaching built environment that challenges its existence. Of particular interest are the ginkgo leaves, an ancient plant that has adapted to environmental transformations or thousands of years. The ginko tree, one of the most ancient plant forms dating back 2.5 million years, is a symbol of longevity. 170 ginkos survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Longevity is now available for rental or purchse at NORTH VAN ARTS RENTAL
BC PEN — open to visitors is a new Sassamatt Images gallery. It features a series of black and white photographs made during the BC Maximum Security Penitentiary openhouse in 1980 just prior to its decommission. The dark, structured confinement is pierced with slants of light that reflect on anything bright, and still the film grain is a collection of marks made by 102 years of anger, despair, and fear.
These images are from an archive of black and white film negatives shelved for forty years, and working on them brought back both questions and memories. I wondered what would draw me to visit a place that contained memories of excruciating suffering, knowing that I do not release the emotional residue of these experiences easily. Revisiting the BC Penitentiary through my photography brought back memories of 1973 Riot followed by hostage-takings in 1975 and 1976. My mind resurrected countless news stories about deplorable conditions, high staff turnover and the unforgettable friendly fire killing of Mary Steinhauser, a social worker who was outspoken about solitary confinement. Curiously, I was compelled to be among those who visited and witnessed this closing chapter in British Columbia correctional facility history and the end of century of draconian prison conditions.
As I moved through this series of negatives I remembered how I was struck by the artificial presentation of the BC Penitentiary as a museum, explaining intake, routines, education opportunities and the transition to release. The kitchen displayed spotless counters and sparkling aluminum cooking equipment. The infirmary displayed specialized accommodations for inmate medical care. Most of the damage and debris from the final riot had been cleared away, and the cells were spotless. I was much more curious about the remains of the series of holes bored through cell walls, preserved for visitors. In the end, what remained was the architecture of confinement and the slants of light that pierced darkness on so many levels.
Conversation — going in circles (Procion Dye Drawing)
My passion for a sketchbook practice and sharing it afar has taken my most recent sketchbook to Quebec City for exhibition in the inaugural Biennale International du Carnet D’Artiste (BICA) presented by Société d’art et d’histoire de Beauport (SAHB).
SAHB believes,
An artist’s sketchbook is a very personal object inside of which ideas are freely growing, both technically and stylistically. Sketches, musical notes, doodles, collages, colors, marks, painting, tears, writing, watercolors, words, pictures, and memories unveil the most intimate part of the artist’s mind.
My current artist notebook, What You See Is What You See/ Ce Que Vous Voyez Est Que Vous Voyez,is a project dedicated to visually explaining some of my Procion dye drawing techniques. It logs a series of techniques that I have discovered and finessed. Most of the time, I dry brush a page of paper with black Procion dye powder and use a variety of techniques and processes to enhance and manipulate line, form and colour intensity.
What You See Is What You See/ Ce Que Vous Voyez Est Que Vous Voyez is an on-going series of evocative abstract Procion dye drawings. Using a variety of techniques to make marks on paper, my 2-D forms take both recognizable and ambiguous shapes. I often rely on pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of recognizing familiar patterns and forms, to guide me to a finished drawing. Frank Stella’s minimalist, abstract paintings inspire the title of this series, but in my work, I seek a sense of more playfulness.
BICA opened 08 September and the exhibition continues through 28 October at Maison Tessier-Dit-Laplante, 2328 Avenue Royale, Beauport, Québec.
Forest Family (Peach)
Art 4 Life at the Port Moody Art Centre is an annual interactive exhibition curated for a young (and young at heart) audience. Intended to raise curiosity, inspire imagination and invite a life-long love of art appreciation and art-making. Art galleries offer unique community spaces where an audience of all ages can experience the power of art to transform how we understand our world and ourselves.
I am honoured that five of my mixed-media sculptures are included in this exhibition dedicated to a young audience beginning the habit of art for life. These sculptures, five members of the Forest Family, are hybrid critters born from the union of the plant, animal and geological realms. They are quirky, humourous and friendly life forms awaiting names and biographies, inviting viewers to connect with recognizable features, an adoption process of sorts. Like pets, the members of the Forest Family are intended to invite curiosity and affection.
The benefits of an arts education affect every area of life, and Art 4 Life is one such event in a lifelong journey of art appreciation. “Exposure to the visual arts, especially in these creative ways, expands a child’s awareness of the world and is a tool that can be used for learning in science, history, math, and more,” says Robert Frankel, director of museums and visual arts at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC.
Art 4 Life opens 22 September (1-3 PM) at the Port Moody Art Centre (2425 St. Johns Street) and runs thru 01 November.
Phyllis Schwartz, Longevity (pigment ink on cotton, Lumen Print process)
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