SPONSORS:
Exhibitions for Storefront Windows
September 23 – October 2, 2016
Eight commissioned artists working in a variety of media and styles transform Charlotte Street
storefronts and our downtown street-scape into works of art.
BLINK brings together some of the city’s most imaginative visual artists in partnership with a variety of innovative business owners who lend their spaces, presenting new works of art right on the streets of the downtown. Wander along Charlotte Street and take your own tour or take a guided, interpretive walking tour of this exhibition with an Artsweek curator. These visually stunning installations responding to their specific locations include film projections filling windows and illuminating outdoor spaces, a glow-in-the-dark painting looming in the sky, stately trees growing inside a building, textiles transforming into abstract art, historical hand-tinted photography celebrating Peterborough’s past, and more. All eight artists were selected for their commitment to excellence in their disciplines and their unique approaches to transforming urban spaces. BLINK exhibitions will be installed in storefronts at the beginning of Artsweek and are available for viewing for the entire festival.
BLINK ON CHARLOTTE & GALLERY HOP
Friday, September 23, starting at 7:00 pm
Charlotte Mews Tunnel
This year’s featured BLINK artists and storefront partners:
Daniel Crawford The Art School of Ptbo
Elizabeth Sullivan Pammett’s Flowers
Andrew MacDonald Site host: Les French Locksmiths, Sponsor: Union Studio
Patrick Moore Kawartha Cardiology Clinic
Gather in the Mews Tunnel next to The Art School of Peterborough, 174A Charlotte St. to join any of the six guided tours available on:
- Friday, September 23 (two tours), 7:00 pm & 8:00 pm
- Tuesday, September 27, 2:00 pm
- Wednesday, September 28, 7:00 pm
- Saturday, October 1, 8:00 pm
- Sunday, October 2, 2:00 pm
BLINK Artists’ Profiles
Daniel Crawford / The Art School of Peterborough, 174A Charlotte St.
Dreams of the Electric City
Artist Statement: This work is a large-scale video projection and live musical performance that transforms the unique space and acoustics of the Charlotte Mews Tunnel. Shooting on location around Peterborough, using stop-motion animation to combine moments of chance and precision, recognizable landmarks and hidden corners will come to life in new ways as we move through the flickering dreams of the slumbering city. Fascinated by the power of stories to teach and entertain, Crawford has been drawn to the world of creative expression because he sees storytelling as an essential aspect of human nature: stories provide us with ways of understanding our relationships to each other and our world.
Biography: Daniel Crawford’s interests initially led to an Honours Degree in Literature from Trent University, where studying graphic novels showed him the power of combining narrative with fine art. Desiring to expand his capacity for expression, Crawford earned a BFA from NSCAD University where he discovered filmmaking as an ideal medium to unite my interdisciplinary practice. He currently lives and practices in Peterborough where he also teaches youth and adult art classes. Crawford has shown installation, painting and film work in galleries, public spaces and theatres across Canada and the United States.
Laura Madera/ LLF Lawyers, 332 Aylmer St.
Moonflowers
Artist Statement: A massive, glow-in-the-dark botanical watercolour of morning glories climb from the ground floor windows of LLF Lawyers up into the upper floor windows.
Biography: Laura Madera received her BFA from Emily Carr University in BC, and an MFA from the University of Guelph. Her practice explores the potential of watercolour as a poetic means to investigate phenomena and form in relation to perception and place. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Evans Contemporary in Peterborough, Monastiraki in Montreal, The Bakery on Franklin in Vancouver and is held in private collections across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. She was named as one of Canada’s most promising emerging painters by the Magenta Foundation. Born in Toronto, she currently lives in Peterborough, ON. She is a recipient of an Emerging Artist Production Grant from the Ontario Arts Council.
Elizabeth Sullivan / Pammett’s Flowers, 208 Charlotte St.
Symbiosis
Artist Statement: Elizabeth Sullivan’s paintings are a playful investigation of paint application and an exploration of colour, composition and space. Energy and movement are important in her work as she strives to create paintings with visual contradictions while incorporating moments of recognition. For Symbiosis, Sullivan dissects and reassembles found imagery from surrounding landscapes, plant photography, art history, visual culture and uses these cues to inspire an unexpected collection of paint and mark-making.
Biography: Elizabeth works as a forest firefighter during the summer months and spends the rest of her time making art. She grew up in Ennismore, Ontario and in 2012 she earned her BA from the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph, specializing in painting. Her work has been shown in Peterborough, Toronto and Guelph.
Andrew MacDonald / Site host: Les French Locksmiths, 320 Charlotte St., Sponsored by Union Studio
Outcast
Artist Statement: The things I make and the materials I use often shift between the familiar and the uncanny. Sculptural and figurative, aspects of knit clothing and other materials morph into ambiguous objects and installations that both reveal and conceal. Through processes of production involving textiles, my works are attempts at consolidating concepts of anxiety, humour, clothing for the body, static objects, spatial play, memory and time. Colour plays a large role in my work, often acting as a compositional element emphasizing form and surface in space. Colour tends to charge space through the forms I make and install, adding to the patchwork, humorous nature of my work. There is a conversation between the textile forms, textures and colour in space that is visually dynamic, engaging and enigmatic.
Biography: Born in Peterborough, Ontario, Andrew MacDonald is a graduate of OCADU and earned an MFA from the University of Western Ontario. MacDonald has had several solo and group exhibitions in Toronto, New York, and during the summer of 2014 he was an artist-in-residence at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He has received project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Keeping in mind a formal and figurative vocabulary, MacDonald explores the physical nature of textiles, involving the production of machine-knit and hand-woven textiles that he hangs, twists, stretches, layers, felts and binds.
Patrick Moore / Kawartha Cardiology Clinic, 327 Charlotte St.
How to Honour a Tree
Artist Statement: Patrick Moore makes graphite rubbings from living trees and brings them inside to affirm the spiritual component of the urban forest. Lengths of canvas and paper hung vertically ask the viewer to reflect on the nobility and importance of our trees. “We are part of nature, not separate from it,” says Moore.
Biography: Patrick Moore is a visual artist with a lifelong practice working in painting, printmaking, sculpture and set design. His site-specific painting song of the cataract was featured in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Peterborough in the summer of 2016. Recently, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council, he has expanded his arts practice to include specifically designed art projects with children and young people.
Russell Banx / Permanent Beauty, 354 Charlotte St.
Neospeak
Artist Statement: Neospeak is a study in the changing consumption of the printed word in everyday life as we move further into a digital society. By projecting a perversion of George Orwell’s 1984, Banx is realizing connections between the physical demise of the printed word, and the totalitarian dismantling of language in Orwellian “Newspeak”
Biography: Russell Banx is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Peterborough, contributing to the thriving music/arts community. He has participated in artist residencies in Ontario and Germany.
Ann Jaeger / Chasing the Cheese, 334 Charlotte St.
Rabbits vs. Monsters
Artist Statement: Rabbits vs. Monsters is a series of large black and white acrylic paintings with collage and hand-stitching on tarp. Whether we are witnesses or victims, what language can describe and help us process the 21st century diet of collective trauma and powerlessness, along with a side of banal entertainment?
Biography: Ann Jaeger is a multidisciplinary artist who trained at OCADU with a specialty in textiles. Her work often explores the intersections of visual art and text. She is the author of Trout in Plaid, an online journal about Peterborough’s art scene and is a contributor to Electric City Magazine.
Nadé Nixon / BE Catering, 356 Charlotte St.
SNAPSHOTS
Artist Statement: Snapshots are historic extracts of recreational life in Peterborough and the Kawarthas, joyful reflections of people moving through, and taking pleasure in, the land. The concept for this work is simple and uncomplicated. The work is meant to bring a smile to the faces of onlookers. It serves as a reminder of days, which are frequently too few and far between, where residents and tourists alike engage in fleeting moments of fun and frolic, summer vacations, and bright, breezy days. The sun and sky exaggerate what the city and the land surrounding it offer in the way of rest and relaxation. The images reflect the enriched lives of those fortunate to move through the land, physically and throughout time.
Biography: A graduate of OCADU with a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto, Nadé is a designer, multimedia artist, arts manager and arts educator. Nadé is best known for her residential lighting designs, produced locally and sold throughout Canada and the USA. Her background includes working with First Nations and Métis arts organizations, working in film, television and theatre costume design and special effects production for a decade. Nadé currently teaches visual arts and design, business studies and special education.
Ongoing on Charlotte St.
Thanks to our BLINK Program Sponsors:
- Chasing the Cheese
- Les French Locksmiths
- Union Studio
- The Art School of Peterborough
- Pammett’s Flowers
- LLF Lawyers
- Permanent Beauty
- BE Catering
- Kawartha Cardiology Clinic
- Artspace
- Market Hall
- Art Gallery of Peterborough
Melanie McCall, Insideout, BLINK Artsweek 2005