These are dry times. Summer slips away faster than you can catch it – a dime down the drain. The sky hangs damp and icy today. Across the globe, powerful little men toy with the world’s future like it’s a game of chicken. Hurricanes have ravaged large parts of our earth. Families will suffer the effects for years to come. Terrorists won’t let London sleep.
This planet can get so ugly. So broken. So disordered. So many of our mirrors are shattered.
There is order in beauty. A divine order, I believe, but whatever your theology you can feel it. The affirmation of disparate parts falling into place.
Jennifer Berkenbosch’s Cultivar matters because the world needs beauty today. We need to be reminded that there is goodness. There is a solid bed beneath this wild river.
Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton brought together more than 30 artists (visual, musicians, writers) to create and share work about our fair city. It was a great evening, captured on camera by the fine folks at #WEAREYEG, and Aaron Maxwell Vanimere, to whom we are ever so grateful.
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
Marcie Rohr's submission to Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton was exactly what I was hoping to receive. Something beyond glowing praise for the city. An honest, gutsy wrestle with this blue collar town.
"I have to say that nowhere else I know of could have propelled me to create work that focuses so much on daydreams and naïve notions of escape, so I suppose a thanks is in order."
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
A few weeks back I told you about our Bridge Songs 2014 visuals artists. Today, I'm going to set that art to some beautiful music from 9 local talents. You can read my full post from today, a letter to Edmonton about her music scene, on the Dear Edmonton blog.
But if you just want the list, I'm excited to share this great round up of local talent right here and now. Look forward to hearing, and owning, some of their music with your Bridge Songs ticket for June 14.
Angela Power
Becky Pawliw
Brian Toogood
Cynthia Hamar
Dan Sabo
Dave Von Bieker
Lloyd Litke
Lora Jol
Reuben Anderson
It's a great line up of music I know you're going to love hearing.
We'll be having a performance from Venessa B during our Low Brow Art Gala after the show!
Three of these performers will be playing The Carrot, together, the week before Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton. For just $5 at the door, you can catch Becky Pawliw, Brian Toogood and Venessa B in a group show that's sure to get stuck in your head. RSVP on Facebook here.
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
I'm excited to announce a new website, and a video, for Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton - please watch and share!
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
Well friends, spring is in the air, summer is around the corner and for me that means one major project; Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton.
We've got an entirely new Bridge Songs website coming very, very soon. In the meantime, today I'm letting the cat out of the bag and announcing our visual artists for Dear Edmonton. Musicians, writers and any other participating artists will be announced later, but here are the visual artists you can expect to see at Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton on June 14!
"I usually paint scenes of the Edmonton cityscape, combining and experimenting with text, found objects and raw textures. My subjects include the idea of “epiphanies” and scenes that dwell on collective mindsets through every day things. I also maintain art community focused projects though “ellipsis” and an ongoing art critique blog, “the CRIT.” . Through these and many other pursuits I develop work aiming to challenge perception of our cities. urbanization and neighbourhoods." - from the Adam Tenove's online bio
Adam Tenove's skillfull paintbrush meets his playful exploration of words in his Dear Edmonton work. Adam has shared at the Arts Potluck in the past, has shown sculptural installation work at our #JusticeYEG Gallery, and we're happy to have him as part of the Bleeding Heart community.
View Adam Tenove's online portfolio at http://ellipsisartcollective.com/artistgallery/
Painting is an important expression of my love for life. Between working as a nurse and raising a family, painting has always been a pleasure. It is a delight to find the individuality of a moment or a setting and capture it on canvas. - From Cheryl Muth's online bio
Cheryl Muth's paintings are alive with vivid colour. Cheryl has displayed work as part of Bridge Songs many times in the past, and we are excited to see how her eye perceives the urban Edmonton landscape.
You can view more of Cheryl Muth's work and order an piece at her website, http://www.cherylmuth.com/
Julie's landscape paintings have been seen in many Alberta Avenue events, like the Kaleido Festival, where she also teaches paper-making.
For Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton, Julie has found beautiful landscapes within the city limits, in places like the Mill Creek Ravine, but she's also captured Edmonton's urban character. And snow.
View Julies vast collection of works on her website, shedrewit.com, where you can also read Julie's reflections on art and faith, and find out where she is leading workshops.
Kayla Muth is an emerging photographer, and does not have a website yet. Too bad, because from the work she has submitted for Bridge Songs, we like what we see.
Her images, like the one here of Edmonton's iconic Churchill statue, capture our city from a unique, skilled perspective.
We're looking forward to sharing new photographic works from Kayla Muth at Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton!
We're excited to include works by multimedia artist Lucille Frost, whose work was featured as part of last year's Works Art and Design Festival.
Here is a video featuring that work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49Fpzif0as
A resident of the Alberta Avenue neighbourhood, Lucille has this to say about her Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton work;
By making my work abstract it becomes no place and everyplace. I use specific textures and combinations of shapes to form images which are simultaneously familiar and surreal. In each of these paintings I am exploring the importance of a personal connection to a place, the figure in each piece is having a transformative experience with their environment. What exactly is the nature of the exchange occurring is what I allow viewers to decide for themselves, is it a transcendent enlightenment or an aggressive disturbance?
We Edmontonians know firsthand the struggle our climate can entail, but we are also intimately aware of the passion and determination it takes to make our lives in this place. - excerpt from the artist's submission statement
Anywhere But Here might sum up Marcie's Dear Edmonton work best. As Marcie struggles with her Edmonton identity, she wistfully longs for faraway places. But it is telling that these places are imagined and abstracted, more like dreams and memories than representations. Marcie knows that these places are out of reach, at least for now, and perhaps she also knows they are not likely so magical as they seem from afar.
Still, the spaces depicted in Anywhere But Here are lovely to visit, and I know you're going to enjoy her contribution to this year's Bridge Songs event.
You can view more of Marcie's work at http://www.papercastle.ca/html/index.php?p=40
We're so pleased to include a comic from Harcourt House Artist in Residence, Sara French.
Sara's contagious enthusiasm for the local arts scene shines through in her soon to be released Arts & Culture XL newspaper about Edmonton's visual arts scene.
"Sara French experiments with a diverse range of themes and materials. Overtime, her methodology has become a multidisciplinary process that fundamentally involves performance art. " - from the artist's website
Discover the wide range of Sara French's work at http://sarafrench.net/
With a website like iheartedmonton.ca, it is perhaps no surprise that our show includes local printmaker Stephanie Medford. But it is certainly a delight.
You will have seen Stephanie Medford's work at local maker's markets like the Royal Bison. For a while now, Stephanie has been printing iconic Edmonton images onto Edmonton maps, making postcard art.
You should also explore her Sketches of YEG tumblr. I'm a fan of the Dadeo's jukebox.
Wenda Salomon's current photo-a-day project is a departure from her other photography in many ways.
These works are taken on a smartphone - one of the newest forms of camera. Salomons is known for her pinhole work - the oldest, most primitive form of camera. These new images pop with vivid colour and sharp lines, where much of Salomons other work shows muted and monochromatic tones with blurred forms. Those works are far more abstract than these recent shots. Those works are shown in galleries. These one-a-day images are shown on Instagram. Until now.
We're so pleased to show Salomon's Instagram shots in our Dear Edmonton gallery. They may be different in many ways, but they are a testament to the same skilled eye for composition, and the same explorer's spirit that informs Wenda Salomons' pinhole work.
You can view Wenda's instagram work here, and the rest of her work on her artist website at http://wendasalomons.com
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
