Repetition, Stollery Gallery, April 1 - 21, 2010

Activating the spatial parameters of the Stollery Gallery inside the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts, Repetition is the product of six months of work with artist and facilitator Sherri Chaba.

Image credit: Christine Jarock "Kite Flight" Photo credit: Kris Sentara, 2010

Focusing on the act of repetition as applied to found materials, the works by Scott Berry, Christine Jarock, Kenneth Hayward, Kevin Ashton, Raj Bagwe and Chaba herself range from the fantastical to the political, all the while creating a new perspective on how the gallery space can be engaged by Nina Haggerty artists.

Image credit: Scott Berry "Dog Park in 2019". Photo credit: Kris Sentara, 2010

From a black and white 3D cartoon of a futuristic dog park to intricate hanging wire sculptures emulating the physical manifestations of brain injuries and recoveries, the works from the Nina Haggerty Centre demonstrate a real departure from previous 2D works, which while reflective required less awareness of the body, it's perceptions, and choices.

Chaba's contribution builds upon her continuing research on the environmental consequences of human progress and development. Winding across the ceiling of the gallery, a form suggestive of a specter, or a pipeline, leads to the traces of human presence and nature drenched in a black viscous material baring a strong resemblance to tar--or black bile. Completely covering a pair of deserted rubber boots, it is difficult to differentiate between the tar and the boots, both being completely melded together and implicit in each others' presence. The casting of the pipe's shadow around the ground installation only further suggests the staging of an eco-apocalpyse narrative, one that for some are already underway.

Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts on 118 Avenue*

Since opening its doors this past fall with a much celebrated opening including the Minister of Culture, Lindsay Blackett along with Mayor Stephen Mandel in attendance, the Nina Haggerty Center for the Arts finally has a place to call home.

Shifting from its former location on the busy intersection of 97 St and 111 Avenue, NHC and its adjoining Stollery Gallery now enjoy a certain amount of walk in traffic, and has been connecting to community organizations like PAAFE, Family and Children Services, and Elizabeth House.

Located in the newly built ArtsHub building across from the Alberta Avenue Community League, the building project only took two and half years to realize, an indicator of the value and support the center gives and receives.

“It still feels new to me,” shares David Janzen, Exhibition Coordinator and Artist Faciliator, and a celebrated artist in his own right.

Paul Freeman, Lead Artist and a fellow peer to Janzen in Edmonton’s professional arts community, matter-of-factly states,“We would not exist if we were not willing to do things no one else would do.”

As an art center for adults with mental disabilities such as down syndrome, autisim, and cerebal palsy, NHC is demonstrating a wide range of entry points for various barriers and symptoms.

Once a week since the fall, Gerry Morita, Artistic Director of Mile Zero Dance, has been coming in to teach dance and movement, bringing dance to a community that would otehrwise not be able to access it.

Building a vocabulary to dance, using basic techniques like mirrioring, tactile and verbal imagery, Morita connects directly to dance therapy’s ability to pattern brain activity through the body, which she sees as a “great unfulfilled need in this community.”

Continuing on, Morita shares, “I’ve taught a lot, and this is just an extreme form of teaching where each person responds to different approaches. I could see drama and play therapy really thriving here as well.”

But both Freeman and Janzen are careful to note they are not delivering art therapy nor are they a drop-in center. Organized through registered attendance, Freeman speaks on the importance of nurturing the professional dedication of each artist, pushing the activity of arts beyond just recreation and leisure and into a valid pursuit of self worth and purpose.

“These are people who are told what to do each morning when they get up, what ceral they want to eat, what colour of shirt they want to wear, but here, they are left to do their own thing,” Freeman says, who believes are is therapeutic by nature. “We engage with materials and identify techniques and faciliate, but what we do is validate everyone’s creative potential rather than directing what the art should look like.”

The Stollery Gallery’s most recent exhibition was “Rangefinders”, a low tech photography exhibition with faciliators Wenda Salomons and Candice Makowichuck. Funded by the Lee Fund, the medium of photography opened up new channels to attendees who never took to drawing, painting, or ceramics, finding gratification in the art of pinhole and blue print chemistry. Viewing some of the center’s newly revealed photographers, Melody Zeggelaar, Robin Friesen, and Faye Frick, their respective works on trees, self portraits, and the neighborhood revealed a newly found confidence in exploring their surroundings and self-worth.

“We had set up the studios like how we would like it, give them supplies and the space to figure it out on their own,” begins Janzen.

“But it’s not for everyone,” continues Freeman. “It made me think of things differently as not every artist works alone. Some return just because they like the people and the atmosphere.”

With David Stokl, a blind musician, coming in once week to generously play the piano by memory, and the studios filled with works-in-progress, Morita sums it up best in saying,“It’s definitely artist-run in the real sense: artists empowering other artists.”

Every Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m., Community Art Night. Free, but must register by telephone. Led by Sue Seright,

Every Thursday evening, Family night, Kids welcome. Free, but must register by telephone. Led by Lorraine Shulba

*First published in the Rat Creek Press, January 2010

Prairie Artsters: Festival? What Festival?*

Compartmentalizing art makes it difficult to decide what goes in what showcase

Spending last week in Montréal for the 17th edition of The Edgy Women Festival, I return home to Edmonton with the same question two years in a row: would Festival City be open to this type of festival, and how would the works be viewed and contextualized? Last year's festival favourite Jess Dobkin returned with her first full-length piece, "Everything I've Got," and speaking as both a critic and organizer who has been trying to bring this piece into town, I remain at a loss as to which of our city's array of festivals her work could possibly fit in to. It's not just that the performance may be radically queer, which would align it to new kid on the block, Exposure: Edmonton's Queer Arts and Culture Festival, or that the work needs to be understood as performance art, which would fit into Visualeyez: Canada's Annual Performance Art Festival; or that it needs to be formally staged as a theatre piece exploring the physical vulnerabilities of the human body, which would maybe fit into The Expanse Movement Arts Festival.

Image credit: Jess Dobkin by David Hawe

Dobkin's works, like many contemporary works that are of interest, do not fall neatly or even hardly into any single artistic category—and nor should they. The question I am asking is this: if the most innovative works continue to exist outside of our predetermined themes, how will we ever make room for this type of work to be shown here in predetermined Festival City?

Shannon Cochrane, who founded and continues to curate Toronto's 7a-11d International Festival of Performance Art gave an exemplary performance of a work that could exist in various worlds, from white-cube galleries to site-specific to black box theatre. Cochrane's work is deeply methodical in its acknowledgment of its own art history, with a focus on intent and transparency. When following performances by old school circus theatre and aggressive contemporary dance from France, Cochrane was not contextualized nor constrained under a single lens, but existed as another shade of artistic engagement.

Audience development is always of interest, and always a learning curve when it comes to interdisciplinary work. The audiences that packed Tangente Theatre in Montréal were a real cross-section of the population that could have just as easily shown up to any art gallery, concert or just gone out to dinner. There was no framework that the festival was politically and formally aligning to queer feminist performance works, though that recurring theme was neither a given nor a surprise. This was mostly about a chance to see more women on stage, and though maybe the politics have been taken for granted, they also don't need to be repeated reassuringly into the marketing strategies—the programming should say it all. One of the resulting gems of lining up mixed nights is that no one art form can purport to be marginalized, as there is a false hierarchy between disciplines such as theatre, dance, music, film and performance art that many artists have unfortunately lived up to.

Art has been said to be a state of encounter, one that I read as mutually affecting both artist/performer and audience in an almost chemical way that is also visceral and mental, emotional and spiritual. I believe this, and so I wonder why we continue to group our intakes of art into such discrete compartments.

While pedantic, disciplines are important for distinguishing formal concerns and progress, though there has always been constant and vibrant overlap between the disciplines throughout history that push each form to grow and remain relevant. Once a discipline has been named, we as artists, audience and media need to remember that disciplines are not fixed, but fluid concepts that should be open for questioning.

Reviews from Edgy Women can be found on edgywomen.ca

First published in Vue Weekly