Friday Finds: Edmonton Awesome Right Now

With all of the Dear Edmonton, submissions rolling in, I've got our fair city on my mind. I'm grateful, for instance, for my daughter's experience making sculpture with Lyndal Osborne at the AGA yesterday. Today, I join her class for the final day of Museum Week - where they get to experience the AGA through hands-on art making.

Our art gallery is certainly one bit of Edmonton Awesome to be grateful for, and if you haven't seen the Lyndal Osborne show Bowerbird: Life as Art yet, perhaps your Edmonton weekend starts there.

In this spirit of appreciation, perhaps the only antidote to the dragging doldrums of a long winter, I dug into what our city has to offer art enthusiasts, just this very weekend. And I didn't have to look far. Here are a few highlights if you're still making plans.

124th Street Gallery Openings

I love the 124th street galleries. They are concentrated in a little walkable area suited to a Saturday stroll. Some of my favourites are having openings this weekend. That generally means the artist is in attendance, and there are snacks. Can't get much better than that.

Peter Robertson Gallery

Double Blind, by Paul Bernhardt, is one of two shows opening this weekend at the Peter Robertson Gallery. The write-up begins by reflecting that,

"Our tenuous faith in science and technology's ability to solve society's most pressing crises, which tend to be ethical in nature, is interrogated in Berhardt's recent work.”

Check it out at http://www.probertsongallery.com/component/exhibition/

The Front Gallery

Another favourite spot of mine, The Front Gallery houses a great selection of artists. The show opening from Paddy Lamb looks to be no exception.

"Paddy's work explores the imprint of society on nature in a variety of locations, offering a personal narrative concerning human migration and attachment to the land. His recent work explores aspects of abandonment, neglect and disuse as part of the physical landscape.” (from the show invite)

Visit http://www.thefrontgallery.com

EPL Makerspace

The EPL Makerspace is just a miracle of democracy to me. At the downtown public library, there is now a room packed with computers and digital goodies for making all sorts of digital creations. Keyboards for making  music. A giant green-screen for photography and filming. All the professional software you could want. A 3D Printer. A book-making machine. The possibilities are huge. Oh, and it's all free to use. You only pay for the hard-costs on what you produce (the paper for a book, for instance). If you haven't dropped into the Makerspace yet, you really should.

According the to video above, the EPL Makerspace even has a banana-piano?

http://www.epl.ca/makerspace

Night of Artists

Not quite in Edmonton, Night of Artists takes place over the weekend at the St.Albert Enjoy Centre - a glass-walled sanctuary from the lengthy winter, made all the better when filled with local art.

With a couple of evening gala events, and plenty of time for afternoon strolls through the many represented artists on Saturday and Sunday, it may be worth a short trip out of town to check out this long-running event from Phil Alain and friend Lewis Lavoie.

From the NOA website,

"Night of Artists is designed as an opportunity for artists to showcase their artworks with other artists through a fun and exciting event that appeals to the masses. The idea behind the show is based on collaboration and team work. Thus the shows success for over 16 years has been a reflection of community coming together in support of the arts."

Get all the details at http://www.nightofartists.com

Here is the video trailer for the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qTq_RVCaEU

(Thanks to artist Jennifer Noseworthy, who will be displaying work at Night of Artists, for pointing this out to us on Facebook!)

Edmonton's Neon Sign Museum

I plan on driving by this weekend to check out this new kid on the museum block in Edmonton. I love vintage signage – especially vintage neon signage – so I just cannot wait to see what is only the beginning of this unique outdoor museum project.

Thanks to Eli Ritz for point us towards this post full of (finally!) awesome photos of the Neon Sign Museum - http://spacing.ca/edmonton/2014/02/22/neon-sign-museum/

What is Your Edmonton Awesome?

What are you loving in Edmonton this week? Share your recommendations in the comments below.

Take The Grow Your Art Challenge

Lately I have been feeling stuck. I’m unfocussed, muddy-minded and have a vague sense that I’m not quite where I’d like to be creatively. January is, of course, the season for reflection and for making resolutions as a way forward, but I’ve been hesitant to make resolutions for fear I will lapse and fail and end up worse for wear. But I want to grow. I want to grow my art and my self this year.

The best way I know to grow well is with the support and accountability of community.

I’m giving myself a challenge, and I encourage you to join me.

In the most simple terms, we will each move towards some definite, individual creative goal and we will connect here on the Bleeding Heart Art Space blog to report progress, failings and offer support so that we can all finish 2014 having accomplished our goals. In the end, we will have grown as artists, as individuals and as community.

Sound good?

Here is how the challenge works.

1. Define a Measurable Artistic Goal for 2014

I could say my 2014 goal is to ‘be a better songwriter’. That goal would likely fail, because I have no way to measure success. Or I could ‘succeed’, without any way to quantify that success. It would probably all depend on how optimistic I felt and how much grace I offered myself at the end of this year. A vague goal like that will not do. We need a goal that can be measured, and held to account.

A better goal for me could be “I will write 10 new songs this year”. That is a goal that either will, or will not, happen. And once I put it out there, I’m accountable. You can hold me to it.

As I think about what my goal ought to be, I can reflect on questions like, ‘how do I want to grow as an artist’, ‘what skills would I like to improve’, ‘what creative endeavour would be life-giving for me’ or ‘how could I serve others well with my art this year?’ Another question may be ‘what have I wanted to create for some time, but have not been able to make it happen?’

When I think of these questions, a clear answer comes to mind. I would like to record and release a collection of songs. A full album of my own.

What will be your artistic goal for 2014?

2. Evaluate Whether Your Goal is Realistic

One of the worst things about setting goals is the sense of frustration and failure when we do not reach them. The challenge we always face is setting the bar high enough to stretch us, while not so high we cannot possibly reach it.

We all have only so much time in the day, and most of us are not making art full time. For many of us, art is mostly or solely a labour of love, wedged between other roles and responsibilities. It will serve us well to acknowledge our reality in setting goals.

Is my goal of recording and releasing an album realistic? To be honest, likely not. The project will require a lot of work - writing many new songs, recording, mixing and mastering those songs and figuring out the whole world of how to release the thing. Even if I could write and record one song a month, which is about all I can manage realistically in the midst of normal life, that leaves no time for mastering, distribution and the like.

I am going to take my original goal and sand it down a bit. I am going to commit to recording an EP of 6 songs. I am going to have that EP finished at the end of this year. I will leave the release of that EP to early 2015. This I can manage, but it is still more than I would be doing this year without this challenge. It is still a stretch I will be proud of.

Do you need to refine your goal to make it realistic?

3. Share Your Goal Publicly

This challenge includes community. I encourage you to find friends or family who you can share your goal and your progress with over the coming year. Having real, face to face conversations about your goal will be and important part of accountability. If you like, I’d love to have coffee and chat about your goal, too.

We will also share our goals here, in the comments of this post and future posts related to the Grow Your Art Challenge. Typing your goal into the comment form below is a small, but definite step towards achieving it.

Are you ready to share your goal publicly in the comments below?

4. Plan to Reach Your Goal Through Small Steps

Your goal may be very simple (“complete that painting I started”) or very complex (“stage a play at the Fringe Festival”). The more complex the goal, the more important it is to break it down into small, measurable steps that you can complete one by one.

I get overwhelmed very easily by complex tasks. Without a razor-sharp focus on the next ‘to-do’, I can almost literally feel my brain-gears grinding at the thought of the whole project.

In planning out any project, I find it helpful to work backwards from the deadline, then define key parts that need to be completed, and assign deadlines to each smaller part as necessary. Essentially, you come up with a plan that is realistic, knowing that if you can manage to get this part done by this date, and that part done by that date, you will, in the end, have completed the whole thing.

Let’s take my 6 song EP. Through simple math, I can divide the 12 months of this year by 6 songs and know that I need to complete one song (write it if need be, record it, mix and master it) every 2 months. If I can do that all year, I’ll have finished 6 songs.

Is this a manageable timeline for me? I think it is.

You should also consider how you will keep track of each step of your project. A simple notebook may work well for you, or a series of reminders in your preferred Calendar app. For larger projects I use a free online service called Trello (trello.com). It works on the paradigm of a bulletin board where you can stick and re-arrange cards, each holding some bit of information about your project. As the cards can be freely moved around the board as your thinking about the project changes, I find it especially useful for tactile, visual thinkers.

Don’t get distracted by choosing a system to manage your goal. Just keep it simple and go with a system that works for you. The important thing is to have a plan.

How will you track your progress?

5. Share Your Progress in Community

I will post my progress here each month this year, the first week of the month, keeping the challenge alive. I invite you to keep track of how you are doing and share your progress in the comments, regardless of how well you are faring.

You may find encouragement to keep going, or help in an area you are struggling with. You may find others willing to come alongside and hep you succeed when you feel stuck.

You should also plan to meet regularly with those friends you chose to share your goal with. You can define what those meetings look like, and what you mean by ‘regularly’, but being intentional and accountable is a key to success.

Community is vital for me because I am a horrible self-critic. My self-doubt can easily become suffocating. Left to my own devices, I will likely talk myself out of this project. I am counting on you to keep me at it.

How can this community help you reach your goal?

6. Celebrate Success in Community

At the end of this year, we will have a party. Not just a ‘chat in the comments party’. I mean a real-life party. With treats.

We will bring our completed projects to the party and show each other what we’ve done. It will be a listening party for my EP, and perhaps a viewing party for your series of photos or your short film or a a reading party for your new book of poems.

Even if, for some reason, I have only 4 songs done, I will play those for you. We will celebrate success together and offer ourselves grace where we’ve come up short.

I imagine, even if all of our goals have not been met, we will have grown and we will have succeeded in other ways we did not plan for.

Will I see you at the party?

The Challenge is Before You: Grow Your Art

So there is our challenge. I’m going to record a new EP. What are you going to create in 2014?

Dear Edmonton, We Need to Talk

Dear Edmonton, On June 14 myself and some citizens, hopefully quite a few, are going to tell you how we feel about you. We’re going to send you a message through original songs, visual art, spoken word, poetry and performance. We may even create some short films and write some letters.

You're very important to me, so I want to warn you now that it might not all be pretty and praise. I for one am going to take a long hard look at our relationship and let you know, really and truly, what you mean to me. We've been together so long, Edmonton, I think it's about time we talked.

We're going to share all of this with you at an event called Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton,. All those who have known you are invited to take part in this day of live music, spoken word and art across mediums. We're going to make an album, too. You can keep that and I hope you'll like it because it's going to be all about you. All of this will happen in one of your best neighbourhoods; Alberta Avenue.

You may be wondering how this is going to happen. Well Edmonton, Bleeding Heart Art Space is inviting your artists to explore their relationship with their city. We're asking artists, 'How does the city shape your work?' and  'How does your work shape the city?'

We're starting with a basic question;

“If you could write a letter to your city, what would you say?”

I imagine the answers to that question could come in a million different forms, as uniquely creative as your kaleidoscope of artists. It is those creative answers I am hoping to show you on June 14 at Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton,.

We’re looking for work that addresses the importance of place, and explores artists' relationships with you, Edmonton, our unique northern city. We'll think about some of the names you've been given, like 'City of Champions' or 'Festival City'.

You know I love you, Edmonton, but sometimes I wonder if there are easier places to make art. Can art thrive in a blue collar town? Are you really the best place to make a life as an artist, or, perhaps, a better place to start and move on to somewhere bigger and brighter. I know it must hurt you when that happens, but you've gotta understand the reasons.

And then there are your winters, which we are just entering again now. How can I create while I have to hibernate? Some days all the cold and dark gets depressing. I know it's not your fault, but still.

It's not all bad, of course. I'm still here, right? I love the river valley and the festivals and my own neighbourhood and the special feeling of hope and promise that just doesn't seem to leave your streets. I love how your beauty changes with each season, always unassuming, but always breathtaking in sacred, small ways.

I'm hoping we can explore all of this and more. I'm hoping that other artists help me see who you are in new ways, with new eyes. I'm hoping to become a prouder Edmontonian than I am today. I think you deserve all of that.

So consider this your formal invitation, Edmonton. Please come, see and hear what we have to show you on June 14. We've got a lot of work to do in the meantime, so no peeking.

With all my bleeding heart,

Dave Von Bieker

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Submit Your Work

So, artists, I hope this letter has got you thinking and dreaming and scheming. I cannot wait to see what you come up with.

We're looking for songs for our album and performance, visual art of all types for our gallery, dramatic pieces, short film, writing and more for our evening performance. We want to see a great variety of mediums and explorations of the theme, Dear Edmonton,. You have until March 14 (February 14 for songs).

You can download the official Call for Submissions here

Edmonton is listening …

Remember The Number 14

Last week, on November 14, we leaked this theme to subscribers of our email newsletter. What? You’re not on the list? Let’s fix that right away. You can subscribe at the bottom of this post, after the comments.

All submissions for Bridge Songs: Dear Edmonton, must be received by midnight on March 14 (February 14 for songs).

The event itself will take place Saturday, June 14, 2014.

I hope all of these fourteens make things a little easier to remember. And no, there is no secret significance – although if you have any theories I’d love to hear them.

If you have any questions about the theme or the event, please post them in the comments below and myself or someone else from Bleeding Heart Art Space will do our best to respond.

Beauty At The Table: Our First Arts Potluck in Review

Just one week ago, we held our first Arts Potluck. It will not be our last. The invitation was simple. Bring some art and bring some snacks. In my living room, propped up on every chair we could find, 15 of us shared, listened and saw wonder-full art.

I began the night by sharing its inspiration – an event held during the Glen Workshop called The Thomas Parker Society (at least, I'm fairly certain that was the name). A few dozen people had crammed into a rented suite on the college campus where the Glen Workshop was held. We read stories, essays and poetry long into the night. It was beautiful, intimate, moving, and sometimes hysterically funny. It left me hungry for more.

Of course, we have plenty of creative folks right here in our city. Heck, right here in my neighbourhood. We could do this. In our own version, The Bleeding Heart Arts Potluck, the evening expanded to encompass any art form.

Here's how it worked for us.

TJ McLachlan shared first, with a bit of an extended time and focus, seeing as he was with us all the way from Vancouver's and Emily Carr University. Having worked with TJ McLachlan on some pre-Carr projects, it was inspiring to see how far he's come, how his ideas about what art is and what art does have evolved, and what his grand hopes for future projects are. TJ talked about large-scale sculpture, installed in nature, outside the culturally loaded context of the "white box gallery". He spoke about work that is not a metaphor for something, like 'tension' for instance, but is tension itself, showing us an example of a sculpture whose very materials are in tension. There were some big ideas (should art convey meaning and how?) and some great conversation. We even talked a bit about what it means to be pretentious, or not, and how those of us who label others as such may be the most pretentious of all.

More than all of that, our time with TJ and his very artistic wife Cora was a visit with friends. Community was perhaps the most beautiful thing on display all evening.

What followed – the work you all shared – was a kaleidoscope of creativity. Almost everyone brought something (in one case it was samosas wrapped in swiss chard – some very creative food). There were poetry readings. We heard an excellent concert review of The Replacements. An original song. Ink sketches of the Canadian North. A capella vocal performance. Paintings. Art made in collaboration with children in India. Lego and collage by my two kids.

But here is what sticks out for me.

It's the last piece before my kids – up too late – have to go to bed. Aaron and April Au are with us. Aaron, a part-time player with the ESO, pulls out his violin, stands just outside the circle, and plays Bach. Intricate, incredibly full Bach on a single violin. The sound is perfect. No one moves. We barely breathe. Except my kids. Jack is play conducting and they stifle nervous laughter. But they are listening. I survey the room. We are all listening. We are all realizing, at this moment, just how incredible this is.

It hits me all at once. I've been with hundreds of creative people for an intensive week, hundreds of miles away, at The Glen Workshop. But I don't need to travel at all to experience art, faith and community. I am blessed. I live here, on the fringe of Alberta Ave. Blocks away from this violin virtuoso. So close that here, in my living room, my kids get to experience something I never did. A house blessing. I choke back a few good tears.

Moments like this are why we do Bleeding Heart Arts Potlucks – why The Bleeding Heart does anything at all.

If you were not with us, and now, having read this, wish you were, I have succeeded.

What will you bring next time?