“Drawing turns the creative mind to expose its workings. Drawing discloses the heart of visual thought, coalesces spirit and perception, conjures imagination; drawing is an act of meditations, an exorcism of disorder, a courting of artistic ideas; above all it is the lean instrument of visual formulation and vortex of artistic sensibility. “ Edward Hill, The Language of Drawing, 1966.

Drawing, one of the oldest forms of visual expression has played a crucial role in the work of artists throughout history. Whether used a means to an end, an end in itself, or as a conceptual springboard that challenges traditional definitions, drawing continues to be a significant part of contemporary art practice.

The Language of Drawing shows the work of ten artists who utilize drawing in as many ways. From the classical figure drawings of George Koochin to the elucidatory graphics of Chuck Stake (AKA Don Mabie), the drawings in this exhibition are records of the artists’ perception of what is before them, within them and around them.

In all instances the use of material, the drawing surfaces, the quality of mark making, and the scale of the artworks tell us a story about how the artists perceive and interpret the complex world in which we live. Visual responses that are meticulous and obsessive in nature, as in Heather MacAskill’s Triangulations series and Guy Hobb’s renderings of wildlife, or highly emotive as in Deb Thompson’s Aviary series or Peter Vilesik’s landscape drawings, take us on a roller coaster ride as we adjust our understanding of how a series of marks can end up representing so many different things.

Drawing is, after all, a vocabulary of marks or lines – straight, curved, thick, thin, long, and short lines – that can be rearranged at will, to create images that tell a different story in each new arrangement or manifestation.

The stories in Language of Drawing are as varied as the artists’ marks, lines and materials, or the surfaces on which they draw. Carl Schlichting’s quick sketches tell of how he resolves the design and structural aspects of his non-drawing art work; Debra Rushfeldt’s labour intensive charcoal drawings are, in a sense, stories or portraits of her rural community; Wendy Toogood’s animated visual journals form a narrative of her life in a small interior British Columbia town; and, Brigitte Desbois’ quiet portraits speak of her ability to see, interpret and record the private, yet highly emotive nature of her models.

All of these visual stories speak about the artists hands-on and highly personalized involvement with their subject matter and materials. Whether created with unconventional materials such as ball-point pens, gel pens, markers, recycled paper, or the traditionally accepted conté, charcoal, graphite, oil stick, gouache and pastel, their work is visceral in nature, at times obsessive, and always evident of an intimate engagement with their art.

Helen Sebelius
Guest Curator
January 26, 2012

By layering paint, found objects, photography collage, and sculpture I strive to create windows into new realms, realms seen in the mind’s eye, the soul or perhaps, a dream state. To make these windows, I gather fragments from time and space, whispers from the layers that make up what we do and do not see, experiences generated by emotions spirituality & other human conditions. I paint compressed moments which express the flow of life’s endless spirals, the rhythms of the Earth.

I am inspired by the layers within reality. What is it that divides one realm from another? I am excited by the circles within my experience and how closely the dream and waking state really are. In my art I create a narrative between these layers, circles & webs. I explore balance, tension, and motion in the union of the material and spiritual world. I create playful connection to the world around me through abstract art.

Steve Howard
April, 2012

The Year 1912 is a small heritage exhibition featured this spring and summer at Gallery 2 Art and Heritage Centre. Developed for the gallery by Roger H. Boulet (who researched and selected the images for the permanent heritage gallery), the exhibition focuses on events of 1912. A central feature of the exhibition consists of digital prints of 10 large maps developed in 1912 for both Grand Forks and nearby Phoenix. The maps were produced by Charles A. Goad in connection with the fire insurance industry. They not only detail the layout of the streets, but often identify individual buildings and businesses as well. The Grand Forks maps, for instance, show no buildings at all on the north side of Market (formerly Bridge) street, since a fire in the summer of 1911 had destroyed all of them. By the end of 1912, merchants had begun to rebuild that side of the street, including the Woodland & Company drugstore (across from the Bank of Commerce), a hardware store and the building that would be occupied by Clark’s clothing store and the Gem (formerly the Empress) theatre.

There was also a real estate boom, occasioned by the decision of the Canadian Pacific Railway to move its divisional point from Eholt when that community was devastated by two fires. The Granby smelter enjoyed a record copper production that year, most of it coming from the Phoenix mines.

This was also a significant year for the Doukhobor community since the Provincial government appointed a special Commission in response to increasing concern over their presence.

The exhibit opened February 21st to kick-off BC Heritage Week and will be on display throughout the summer.

Born in Hong Kong when peace was declared at the end of the Second World War she was named Wai-Ping – Wai in Chinese meaning gift, and Ping, meaning peace. Childhood memories include her parents caring for orphan cousins and relatives fleeing from worn-torn China to British Hong Kong. She immigrated to Canada after having lived in Hong Kong, the United States, and Australia.

For the past ten years she has been focusing on exploring site specific installation work, aimed at integrating Western and Eastern sensibilities. “I reached into the roots of my Chinese heritage, studied ancient symbols and eastern philosophies. I experimented and challenged the innovative use of Chinese traditional art material of rice paper and ink. The result of this exploration is the creation of this large scale rice paper weaving installation Illuminating Peace.”

The centre of Illuminating Peace is Lantern (2009) an octagonal structure resembling a gigantic lantern, which is lit from within and hangs above a field of wheat. The eight panels of A Peace Project (2001) hang horizontally above a band of Jasmine rice. Long Scroll (2005) hangs vertically and occupies the height of the gallery.

Amy begins her work with the tactile process of transforming sheets of traditional rice paper into long weaving strips. They are then delicately woven into an integrated whole. Hand written calligraphy and computer-generated typography are used to weave together eastern and western languages, to intertwine world cultures and religions, in a universal vision for human relations. When viewers are close enough to read this work, they are presented with eight values vital in human relationships: compassion, kindness, respect, understanding, patience, tolerance, gentleness, and forgiveness. More than thirty-five world languages are interwoven into this work. This exhibit will also contain an interactive element for viewer participation.

Gallery 2 would like to thank the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for loaning A Peace Project from their collection.

There are many things in the world that are designed to accelerate how we live. With the fast pace of media generated news and views, quick access to information, and constant inundation of visual images, it is not often that we are given an invitation to slow down and truly contemplate what is before us. Vivi Harder’s paintings are such an invitation.

Too Slow To Move is, in a sense, an antidote to the speed that defines contemporary life. The calming effect of repeated square formats and subtle colour combinations, and the unmistakable traces of the artist’s hand, quietly jolts us out of 21st century frenzy.

Favouring the personal, intuitive and spiritual, Harder moves away from the immediacy of intellectualizing life in a “just in time” culture. It is with the former that she offers her invitation to decelerate, or even stop, for a moment when we can imagine another way of being.

Helen Sebelius
Curator
September 15, 2011

Although photographed in an industrial context which characterizes my art form, the CAUTION’s synthetic material is a marked departure from the previous subjects in metal, cement, and wood.

The CAUTION tape is transformed from brand-new, shiny tape with its sharp black letters, creating a forbidding linear barrier, to a dejected-looking, shapeless form, no longer able to stand at attention and perform its intended role. We see the bright yellow tapes everywhere:

It is a powerful symbol, causing us to detour around a site, despite the absence of human authority. This CAUTION has entered our subconscious, with its connotation of warning and danger, but do we even bother reading the words?

In our daily lives, we are continually warned of places in which we must not be: they are considered dangerous, off-limits; they are where access is denied; they are areas around which we detour. We are warned about behaviour in which we must not engage: we must not enter, spit, or eat/drink/smoke; we must not fold, staple, or write below this line; we must stop, yield, slow, or merge. These photographs intend to lead viewers to examine the CAUTION we have imposed on our lives, the insidious creep of CAUTION in our lives, both in the moment and as we age, and how CAUTION ties our lives into knots.

Since these tapes are largely seen in construction sites’ landscapes, they also CAUTION viewers about the continuous real estate development in Vancouver which increased significantly around 2005 and in a way that could overlook the social and economic long-term. While developers pursue profit, will Vancouver’s changing neighbourhoods drive residents out of their homes? Is it time to look at the changing values of our society progress, heritage preservation, culture and high-priced housing?

There is a place that exists, a forest and a river, which continues to have a powerful influence on me as I engage with the present. The process of drawing allows me to create and reflect on an ongoing personal narrative, one that is non-linear in nature and is a record of an intuitive action occurring somewhere between memory and the realm of imagination.

In a broad sense, I use the forest as a metaphor for imagination. Objects, human figures and spaces can appear recognizable, or ambiguous and dreamlike. What seems recognizable, then, acts as an invitation for the viewer to enter into this new visual world, and to contemplate theirown experience. I do not attempt to capture an objective reality. Instead, I hope my work conveys some essential quality of the place or moment that inspired the mark, while remaining open-ended in its narrative possibilities.

I am a drawer and a painter. My current research interests are in the intersection of creative writing and visual language. I am interested in the diary form and the lyric essay and how these writing genres interweave into a contemporary painting and drawing practice. This current program of research involves the act of memorial.

The genre of the lyric essay has a unique ability to intersect with drawing and painting for it has the ability to access the inner territories of memory, nostalgia and identity. The lyric essay is a form which combines poetry and prose and allows for meaning to be blocked in through suggestion, gives form to silence, articulates absence, and has the ability to compose through fragments. I am interested in these themes for their capacity to map the geographies of the changing landscape of identity and family.

The theme of memorial and memory is reflected in this body of work titled Nocturnes. The subtexts of Monuments and Inheritance emerged in the making of these works throught the opportunities of two creative residencies that I attended in 2011. In these works the written word is eclipsed by the deconstruction process that allows the repetitive echoes of shape to form a narrative of impressionistic language.