Events from June 23, 2022

• Frank & Victor Cicansky: Keep on Going - Station Arts Centre Cooperative

  Presented By: Station Arts Centre Cooperative
  
  

  

  Curated and organized by the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery with funding assistance from the City of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Arts Board, SaskCulture, Saskatchewan Lotteries, and the Canada Council for the Arts. This exhibition is toured through OSAC’s Arts on the Move program.
  This exhibition features the paintings, sculptures and craft objects of folk artist, Frank Cicansky, in dialogue with the ceramics and sculptural work of his son, internationally renowned artist, Victor Cicansky. The presentation of these artists’ works together offers an opportunity to consider the shared values, creative drives and narratives of memory, place and origin that inform both of their artistic practices. Together these works reflect a sincere and compelling response to place, offering immigrant narratives of first and second generation settler Canadians in southern Saskatchewan, while also exploring the influential connections between our province’s folk art and funk art genres.
• Geoff Phillips: Plantscapes of the Prairies - Allie Griffin Art Gallery

  Presented By: Weyburn Arts Council
  
  

  

  Phillips created Plantscapes of the Prairies to challenge people to look closer at their environment, to see it in new ways, to challenge himself to learn about the different species found in our South Western Saskatchewan landscape, and to illustrate a new world of plant life underfoot. Many people rarely envision the species we walk on as having any artistic merit, interest, or importance. There are myriads of colour, form, and interconnection there for the observant in the Grasslands National Park, Cypress Hills Centre Block, Cypress Hills West Block, and the Frenchman River Valley that inspired Phillips’ work. The parks seemed very important in keeping rare species of plants and preserving the natural grasslands and forest ecosystems. Without these parks there would not be any natural land to explore as an artist, but the real cost is on the ecosystems and animals they sustain.
  Phillips’ process includes driving to locations in South Western Saskatchewan, mountain biking with rolled canvas in his knapsack, finding a section of land, unrolling the primed canvas on the ground, paint-sketching the scene/plants, and rolling it back up to stretch and paint in oils later in his studio. He takes many close-up photographs of the various elements and plants found within the scene. Some photos are chosen for reference and printing. These photos along with the paint sketch and the artists memory/experience of the land inform the painting process. Without that one-on-one with the land the painting has no life.
• Muveddet Al-Katib: East and West: The Bridging of Cultures and Art - Indian Head Theatre and Community Arts Inc.

  Presented By: Indian Head Theatre and Community Arts Inc.
  
  

  

  Borders can be physical, emotional, perceived and real. Borders define but a bridge provides a means to move from one place to another - whether physical or emotional - connecting to where you are.
  As an emerging newcomer artist to Canada experiencing the impact of borders of all types - connected to my past with a desire to reach out to my new surroundings – I sought to share a path forward for others experiencing this for the first time. Each has a story to tell, starting when we embark in life and shaped by everything we see and everyone we meet. We live in a changing world, exposed to new cultures and people - emotional bridging between continents and lands with many different cultures within them. With a cultures’ overlapping and building upon one another, mixing traditions and symbols, the goal of art has been to bring cultures together into one; one people, living and learning together, in one place, sharing stories and understanding each other along the way.
  'Creating Bridges: East and West' emerged as a series of paintings in 2014 through 2018 and features ten to fifteen pieces that reflect the bridging of cultures, done in mixed media on canvas with coins, metallic leaf and rich textural additions. The theme of the show was a way of sharing the story of diversity of peoples and cultures in our community as a result of immigration - crossing borders to a new place, a new community and new way of life.
• The Flower may not Look like the Roots - Shurniak Art Gallery

  Presented By: Assiniboia & District Arts Council
  
  

  

  Everything I needed to know about Regional Identity, I learned from Artists
  Curated by Jera MacPherson and toured thorough OSAC’s Arts on the Move program. Featuring Sarah Fougere, Bonnie Gilmour, Barbara Meneley, Vera Saltzman, Carol Schmold, Crystal Thorburn, and Sarah Timewell.
  With attitudes ranging from the microscopic to the cartographic, the seven artists of The Flower may not Look like the Roots1 cultivate contemporary relationships to landscape, ecology2, and regional identity that respond to local communities past, present and future. The work plants its roots deep and long ago but to ends that are contemporary and evolving. These renegotiations of a well worn-in genre materialize themselves in clay, paint, video, drawing, and textile. Each of the various artistic mediums employed by the artists supply generous insight into the ways in which geography and sense of place figure into the personal landscapes of their own minds. Yet collected together, the suggestion of a regional voice begins to assemble. One that is rooted in history and place, but whose flowers are open and receptive to the conceptual intricacies of region-building.
  "The flower may not look like the roots, but from them it derives its life. Similarly regional visions derive their life from the landscape. This is the meaning of regionalism. The regional voice is the landscape. Without it there is no art." Arthur Adamson, "Notes from the Dark Cellar: Ruminations on the Nature of Regionalism and Metaphor in Mid-Western Canadian Poetry, in RePlacing, ed. Dennis Cooley (Downsview: ECW Press, 1980), 224.
  2 "The really existing, true state of interdependency manifested in the relation of all living things." Artist-made definition. Daniel Tuck, Immersive Life Practices (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014).
• ᑌᐸᑯᐦᑊ/Tepakohp/7 : Audie Murray, Larissa Kitchemonia, Donna Langhorne, Stacey Fayant, Marcy Friesen, Brandy Jones, & Melanie Monique Rose - Biggar Museum and Gallery

  Presented By: Biggar & District Arts Council
  
  

  

  ᑌᐸᑯᐦᑊ/Tepakohp/7 is a multi-artist exhibition which celebrates the stories and experiences of the many Nations of Indigenous Women living on this land we call Saskatchewan. We share our stories through our art to amplify, inspire and educate about the diverse relationships and transactions we have to this land and each other.
• Donna Langhorne: Common Truths - Humboldt and District Gallery

  Presented By: Humboldt Area Arts Council
  
  

  

  "Common Truths continues my work of examining how challenges facing Indigenous people today can be identified and addressed artistically with reference to traditional teachings and concepts. Since 2015 I have been specializing in the use of the Woodlands style innovated by renowned Anishinaabe painter Norval Morrisseau. This was at the encouragement of recognized elders and practitioners in the Woodlands movement. As a member of Fishing Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan [Plains Ojibway], my ancestral roots are Anishinaabe. I have been drawn to this movement and my voice is wholly authentic and endorsed by this community of artists. This has served as a calling for me, and has proven to be immensely fulfilling artistically.
  Because the lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples under colonial dominance represent a set of Common Truths, this project looks to another shared manifestation within Indigenous cultures to confront them: the organization of social structure and roles as represented by the clan system and the totems. For purposes of this project I use the corresponding Anishinaabe/Ojibway term doodem. [The works and titles] outline the connections I am making between the five classes within Anishinaabe clan structure [using four representative doodem per class] in order to confront 20 common truths impacting Indigenous people. References drawn from the TRC, the media, and/or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, are included for each of the 20 Common Truths."
  -Donna Langhorne
• Family Ties - Council Chambers, Leader Town Office

  Presented By: Leader & District Arts Council
  
  

  

  Belinda Harrow, Jennifer McRorie, Elizabeth Munro, Wendy Winter
  Toured through OSAC’s Arts on the Move program, curated by Zoë Schneider.
  Family Ties explores familial bonds through the medium of embroidery. Halifax based artist Elizabeth Munro creates embroidered and surface manipulated non-objective ‘portraits’ of her parents that include audio elements to convey impressions of her parents from childhood; providing a nuanced concept of a portrait filtered through the subjective experience of one person’s memory. Regina based artist Belinda Harrow reproduces photographs of her maternal grandmother at different ages into embroideries. Floating within the outlines of the human figure are colourful depictions of animals. The outlines of the humans are black thread on a cream felt background while the animals are vibrantly hued. Moose Jaw based artist Jennifer McRorie reimagines her daughters’ drawings in ‘whitework’; a type of embroidery where the colour of embroidery threads are the same colour as the fabric on which they are embroidered. McRorie states that "I was compelled to make this series of work as I wanted to honour my daughter, who was born with a genetic disorder, to recognize her voice, abilities and creativity. I love her drawings, her wonderful expression of line and so by embroidering her drawings, I’m acknowledging that even though she is marked by her genetics or biology, she will make her own mark, hence the title of the series." Wendy Winter is a Regina based artist that uses embroidery on vintage and upcycled fabrics to interpret her daily life and personal philosophy. The artists in this exhibition use embroidery in different ways to consider the complexities of the bonds with our families.