Interview with Art Lab artist Jessica Field

Jessica Field is our Art Lab artist in residence from April 25 until July 10. During her residency in the Art Lab, Jessica Field will be experimenting with relational aesthetics and drawing to create a body of work that focuses on the influences that technology and science have on the way people socially develop their identities. Through her performance research, she will be creating fictional spaces and developing relational encounters with participants to create maps of how they relate to technology and science and attempt to place how their subjective values and feelings are connected. Most of Field’s works are parodies on the scientific methods, gender issues and the tension between subjective values, feelings, prestige and how these function in the technological complexity of our current culture. We sat down with Jessica to learn more about what she has been up to in the Art Lab…

The RMG: Hi Jessica! Please tell us a little about yourself.

Jessica Field: I am an artist who has lived in the Durham region for most of my life. Growing up in Pickering and then starting my own family here in Oshawa. I am a very curious person who enjoys spending an exorbitant amount of time trying to answer big questions. I am most fascinated by human nature in how complicated we are, on one hand we can be very dismissive and selfish, yet vulnerable but we have the capacity to choose to be very empathetic, imaginative and offer a safe unbiased space for others depending on how life is effecting us.

Jessica Field

Jessica Field in the Art Lab. Photo by Lucy Villeneuve.

RMG: Why did you apply to the Art Lab artist in residence program?

JF: I applied to the Art Lab to experiment with new materials and interact with the public to create interesting conversations and learn more about how we are programmed. I am also very interested in doing research in the RMG’s library and with the collection to assist in informing my work. I am also very excited about working in a large gallery to be inspired by a space designed for exhibiting work and becoming more involved with the Oshawa art community.

RMG: What will you be creating during your residency? What can visitors expect to find in the Art Lab or during one of your performance events?

JF: I will be creating a series of drawings that will attempt to grapple the impossible question of “how we are programmed.” Visitors can expect to see a room full of large format drawings that address these questions. In the coming weeks, there will be glass markers and chalk available for visitors to contribute their impressions of the drawings in the studio. Any visitor will be very welcome to interrupt my work and offer their insights into this impossible question of “how we are programmed” as these interactions are a crucial part of my residency. In this upcoming month, my focus is in the collection of information. Then the work will become about editing and fine tuning the drawing content, this is a space for visitors to enjoy viewing complicated maps and moving or adding their interpretation of what these drawn landscapes could represent.

RMG: Tell us a bit more about your artist workshop on June 12. What will students learn?

JF: The workshop on June 12 will be offering a technique for students to use to help them learn about creating systems and see how a system or methodology can eliminate such creative challenges as creative blocks, the stress of how strong an idea is and to find methods of expanding a personalized idea into something that becomes larger than the person who imagined it in the first place. The strategy of the workshop focuses on utilizing the student’s imagination, ability to empathize and drawing attention to the importance of developing impartial judgment. These values allow people to think in larger terms then their individual selves and thus learn an ability to create artworks that speak to the larger picture of what life is all about which is something everyone has invested interest in understanding on some level. The workshop will offer an activity to help students engage in this space to find their own important contribution to this large discourse that others will value and have the added effect of enriching their own creative goals and interests.

Photo by Lucy Villeneuve

Photo by Lucy Villeneuve

RMG: In a nutshell… what is “relational aesthetics” and how does this principle impact your practice?

JF: Relational aesthetics is rooted in a dissatisfaction in the art market where art is bought and sold. Those who work in this practice are really focused on the experience of art, the experience of seeing something that has qualitative value and can be enriching to a persons life whether this is an experience of awe, revelation or a strong emotional experience that becomes a lasting memory. The art as an object is always in danger of being superficialized by popularity or become convoluted and intimidating by our stress of how the art institution values the work.

Relational aesthetics is an attempt to bring a genuine and meaningful experience between the artist and the viewer where the viewer becomes a collaborator in the experience of the work and integral to its validity. There is an equitable exchange between the artist and viewer where the viewer in their participation receives an experience of value that they should feel compelled to cherish and the artist is given material to assist in creating a project that is larger than themselves and not limited by their personal biases and experience.

The use of relational aesthetics in my project is an honest art practice that can allow me to grapple an impossible topic like “how are you programmed.” I can set up a performance which is really a collaborative exercise with the people who wish to participate and in these actions we carry out together. The objective is to really become aware of human diversity and celebrate these differences as being something valuable and important rather than peculiar or unusual. This creates a space for people to feel comfortable with enjoying the pleasure of imagination, empathy and impartial judgment in a safe space to do so which is my responsibility in executing the performance.

drawing

Jessica Field. Photo by Lucy Villeneuve.

RMG: What inspires you? Is there a particular artist’s work that has inspired your practice?

JF: I have many references that inspire me and my inspirations are always changing and are very fluid. For this residency, I am focused on Yoko Uno’s drawings and instructions from the RMG library, the pilgrimage drawings mapping the roads of life, illustrations of human life created by Christian artists in the 1800s, the Zen Ox herding drawings, and the youTube channel the School of Life. In looking at these very diverse sources, I hope to find commonalities and create maps and flow diagrams. I am also very curious in receiving input from the public on how they relate to these maps and will hopefully offer insight into what this landscape could look like.

 

Interview with Gallery A artist Ruth Read

Ruth Read was our Art Lab artist in residence from March 30 until April 22. She began her project Nine Empty Rooms during her residency and now is transforming the space of Gallery A with an immersive installation project. We sat down with the artist to ask her about her practice. Join Ruth for an artist talk on May 15 from 1-3pm and learn more! 

Ruth Read received her BFA (sculpture) from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Since then she has exhibited in both group and solo shows at The Station Gallery, Whitby, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, the Visual Arts Centre, Clarington, and the Latcham Gallery, Stouffville, as well as other galleries in Ontario and St. John’s, Newfoundland. She has taught art classes at The Station Gallery, the Haliburton School of the Arts, the Visual Arts Centre, Clarington and for Fleming College.

installation in gallery

Nine Empty Rooms, Ruth Read, installation progress

The RMG: Hi Ruth! Tell us a little about yourself – when did you start making art?

Ruth Read: I started drawing seriously when I was about nine years old. My best friend liked to draw too. We took Saturday morning art classes from local artist Molly Greene Mitchell.

Later, when I was in high school, I went to the Doone Summer School of the Arts, the former home of Canadian artist Homer Watson. A working scholarship allowed me to take classes from professional artists in the afternoons when chores were done. Here I was introduced to artist quality watercolours. I worked predominately in w/c for the next 20 years.

After high school, I went to Queen’s U, Kingston where I received my BFA, sculpture major. And learned to drink coffee and beer.

art installation

Nine Empty Rooms, Ruth Read, installation progress

RMG: Who influences you and your work?

RR: I have continued to study drawing and painting between and around various jobs. Artists such as Peter Kolisnyk, Akira Yoshikawa, Joan Krawcyk and Ted Rettig have had great influence on my practice.

RMG: We’re so excited about your installation in Gallery A! How’s it coming?

RR: I started putting ceiling frames together. My brother lent me some corner clamps- fantastic, they really make the job easier.

art installation

Nine Empty Rooms, Ruth Read, installation progress

Conversation Pieces by Ramune Luminaire and Judith Mason

Since 2011 Ramune Luminaire and Judith A. Mason have been working on a series of collaborative drawings that explore experiences of relationship through mark-making.  Through a series of non-verbal exchanges, each artist takes their turn adding to what is on the paper. In time a composite image emerges; a visual dialogue of call and response.  The work organically grows into an art object, a visual text, saturated with traces of exchange, intuition, growth, development, collapse and re-development.

Extensions of this project have included staging the Conversation Pieces Café at Artspace in Peterborough, where artists were invited to work on several large collaborative pieces.  Luminaire & Mason see this as a potential model for building healthier personal and community relationships, a model requiring interdependence, not self-sufficiency.  Luminaire & Mason also facilitated workshops at RMG Culture Days in 2013 and 2014, inviting members of the pubic to converse on paper, co-creating mini-artworks in silence.

During the month of May Luminaire & Mason were the artists in residence in the RMG’s Art Lab. Their proposal was to create artwork in conversation with pieces from the gallery’s permanent collection. They selected works from the Go Figure exhibition. Below are extracts from the journal of their process.

Image above: Conversations #1 & 2, Ramune Luminaire & Judith A. Mason, mixed media on paper

Ramune: how do I have a conversation with an existing, completed, piece of work? By Morrisseau, an artist I love and admire?

Sacred Journey, Norval Morrisseau, 1977

Sacred Journey, Norval Morrisseau, 1977

 

Take my paper up to the gallery – blissfully silent, I am alone. Sit in front of the picture and meditate for 10 minutes, then open my eyes and just look at it for 10 minutes, breathing it in. My hand starts drawing a vessel, then I put in a shape familiar to me, the way I draw spirits in my journal. Two more figures and I realize I have drawn my mother, who died on Good Friday. The others in the boat are her (now dead) father and grandfather. I am drawing her journey into the afterlife. The bird is her totem animal, the snake a thing she feared. Decide to use Morrisseau’s colours and technique of framing each segment of the image in black paint. Makes me cry.

Nika’s Journey, Ramune Luminaire, 2105

Nika’s Journey, Ramune Luminaire, 2105

 

Judith:  Where to start?  Start with what is familiar.  Follow my hands, intuitions, thoughts – suspend judgement – no beginning, no end….. 

A. Y. Jackson, Indian Home (1927)

A. Y. Jackson, Indian Home (1927)

 

I once copied a drawing of  A.Y. Jackson’s – a pencil sketch of dog team.  What I remember about my drawing was my father’s excitement about how well I had copied it.  My father, a good place to start.  I chose Jackson’s Indian Home, (1927) as my first conversation. I use three sheets of paper – a triptych.  I begin by drawing a house, my Cape Breton summer home, not unlike the house in Jackson’s painting.  I remember the gentle rolling hills, the sea, the wind, Island storms – Island weather.   I draw the pond just below the house, the fire pit, the sound of the nearby poplars, the apple tree, the sharp needled hawthorn that supported my clothes line, the large maple trimmed to allow for the hydro line.  I draw from memory across three sheets of paper, bits and pieces, scattered here and there, without applying the proper rules of perspective.  My memory is scattered, it flints about, hardy landing before jumping to the next. 

Judith A. Mason, Response to A. Y. Jackson, pastel on paper 2015

Judith A. Mason, Response to A. Y. Jackson, pastel on paper 2015

I go back to Jackson.  I scan, then, study, his landscape.  I look at the colorful and shapely vegetation, the crudely painted pine trees, the clouds, the wind, the buildings, and finally the three figures standing outside their home. 

I mix up the order of my triptych.  Then, on top of my chalk pastel landscape I paint out areas in black, break the scape, make abstract what began as representation, create dead areas, deep space.

I look again at Jackson’s painting.  What is interesting here?  Can I honestly say, not “the Canadian landscape”?  That strange preoccupation has ever interested me. I am much more interested in the inner world – a place of relationships – the world of feelings, emotions, sensations, connection.  My eyes settle on the small figures caught in the all-encompassing landscape – is this a mother with her two children?

My eye is drawn to these three figures.  I draw them on two sheets of my disordered triptych, on the surface of my blacked out and coloured pastel abstract – immediately the abstracted landscape becomes a home and a family.  But who’s that lurking in the bushes, in the vegetation out front?  On the third sheet of paper I draw a window blind.

I begin a sketch of a section of the painting, getting to know all its relationships every curve, shape, form, mass.  My eyes fluctuate back and forth between the positive and negative.  I need to know both spaces in order to get this drawing right.  I need the dark and the light.

Judith Mason, Response to A.Y. Jackson2015, pastel and acrylic on paper

Judith Mason, Response to A.Y. Jackson2015, pastel and acrylic on paper

Ramune: I decide to work with Suzy Lake’s photographic piece because I really don’t like it, it makes me angry.

Impositions Maquette, Suzy Lake, 1978

Impositions Maquette, Suzy Lake, 1978

These photos are too calm, not enough struggle, she’s not really trying to get free. Even the graphite bindings Lake’s drawn on the prints look weak. You want to feel bound? I’ll show you how that looks. I make a gel medium transfer of one of Lake’s figures onto my page and scribble it solid. Her images are extended upward, mine becomes a column. A structure that’s preventing the women bound to it from moving forward. Nice girl trying to free herself. Even angrier, I keep working and my image becomes a frenzy of energy. If I draw myself free, can I extend the gesture to Lake?

Ramune Luminaire, Response to Suzy Lake, mixed media on paper, 2015

Ramune Luminaire, Response to Suzy Lake, mixed media on paper, 2015

Judith: I have been looking at both the Georgia O’Keefe photograph and the large blue painting of the young woman on the staircase.

Ramune: I find this portrait compelling.

Kevin Wolff, Shoes, 1995, acrylic on canvas

Kevin Wolff, Shoes, 1995, acrylic on canvas

It’s a portrait of an activist for people with disabilities. He’s wearing a built-up shoe. I just bought a pair of sandals to wear to a wedding with platforms that are almost identical, but I wear mine in an effort to look more beautiful. They are my first response to Wolff’s image – to draw my own leg in the wedding platform. I won’t work from a photo as I think it deadens the image. Why didn’t this artist just exhibit the photo? I’m never sure about the point of photo realism. One leg drawn, who else am I? A lot more than the woman in the debilitating girlie shoe… I find the boots I bought when I first went to art school. I wore them with a mini skirt because I thought that would make me look like a real artist. Then they became my sculpture studio boots. Now they’re my motor bike boots. The leg wearing them looks entirely different – more masculine. When I look at Wolff’s laces I realize he’s photographed his subject’s feet upside down. Why? Now I have to work from a photo, not the real thing. Feels so different, but I love who I am when I see the finished image. Wonder if Wolff’s portrait made his subject love himself more.

Ramune Luminaire’s feet, pastel on paper, 2015

Ramune Luminaire’s feet, pastel on paper, 2015

 

Judith: I find myself working with these two images simultaneously.

Shaun Downey (2013)   

Shaun Downey (2013) Large blue painting of a young girl descending the staircase at the Drake Hotel in Toronto.

Photograph of Georgia O’Keefe in her studio

Photograph of Georgia O’Keefe in her studio

I paint two paintings on the 3 ft X 3 ft canvases I brought into the studio.  Each of my paintings relate to one of these artworks.  A gift has been bestowed.  I step out of the way.

One painting is a modernist abstraction that I might call ‘a copy’ though it’s not a copy in the sense that I copied it. It’s a modernist looking painting.  And it is now that I realize there is an uncanny relationship between photography (the O’Keefe photograph) and modernist painting (the one I am painting).  It is a relationship between the flatness of the photographic image and the flatness of modernist abstraction painting.  I wonder if twentieth century modernist abstraction is the bastard child of design and photography?

I look at Georgia sitting in that seemly dark room accompanied by two large organic objects.  I want a make her and these two objects out of clay?  I begin to sculpt them.  There are obstacles.  I am looking at a two-dimensional photograph and sculpting a three-dimensional object.  There are missing bits of information; the object I am forming is not fully formed.  I remember Rodin’s Gates of Hell, I think about reliefs – as objects in the midst of transformation.  As Hannah Arendt suggests, as objects manifesting.

I look again at the photograph and decide to fold black paper back and forth like a fan. This gesture leads me to the image of an old fashioned camera – of her husband’s camera?  I decide to make an old-fashioned camera out of board, paper and masking tape.  I want to place the three sculptural forms inside the camera.  I want to place her inside the camera.   My whole life feels as if I am living inside a camera.  As a woman I live a life under constant scrutiny.  Even if no one is still watching, I am watching myself.

Make ten large old-fashioned cameras.   Set up the space inside each camera as an interior room in a house.  In each room place a woman with objects from her life. 

We are all living inside a camera.  Surveillance and Servitude.  A future exhibition.

Keep moving…..

The girl stands on the landing in the stairway casting a shadow on the wall.  I only notice the shadow after days of looking at the painting.  She looks like a cut out, a paper doll, a childhood activity I loved as a young girl.  On holidays, buying a book of paper dolls.  The delight of following the bold black lines with my scissors, first the dolls, then the clothes, each outfit complete with folding tabs. 

I go up to the exhibition and look at the painting again.  I am interested in the shadow.  I begin to paint the young woman with her shadow on my abstract ground.  Then a third figure appears, this one unclothed, raw and vulnerable. Then, I think about painting her out of her dress, leaving her dress suspended in air, having her standing naked beside it.  

The conversations stop, the residency is over.

Judith Mason, Three Dancers, acrylic 

Judith Mason, Three Dancers, acrylic

Judith Mason, Abstract O’Keefe, acrylic

Judith Mason, Abstract O’Keefe, acrylic

 

For more information:

www.ramuneluminaire.com

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

Call for Submissions: Motor City Stories

Submission Deadline: 6 April 2015

ABOUT THE PROJECT

In conjunction with the Toronto 2015 Pan /Parapan American Games, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in partnership with the Motor City Boxing Club, invite regional artists to produce new works inspired by the sport of boxing. Selected artists will be invited to visit the Motor City Boxing Club (Oshawa), observe athletes in training, work in situ at the club and produce new work based on their observations.

Artists are encouraged to work in a wide variety of visual media including drawing, painting, photography, media and integrated art forms. The resulting work will be displayed in a group exhibition in Gallery A @the RMG in conjunction with other PAN AM exhibition programming

ARTIST FEE

Selected artists are provided a fee of $250.00

TIMELINE

Notification: by 10 April
Drop off work (ready to display): Monday 13 July, 1pm
Exhibition duration: 14 July – 2 August
Opening Reception: Sunday 19 July 1-3pm
Pick up artwork: Tuesday 4 August, 9am
ELIGIBILITY

Open to all professional artists and collectives residing in the Durham Region

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Letter of intent (maximum 1 page)
3-5 digital images or other relevant work
A current artist CV and biography in PDF format

SUBMIT at https://rmg.on.ca/gallery-a-motor-city-stories.php

 

Images courtesy of Motor City Boxing.

Introducing Gallery A

Introducing Gallery A – Fulfilling the Legacy of Aleen Aked and paving the way for collaboration, local artistic exposure and the growth of our vibrant arts community. Please join us for the Grand Opening at RMG Fridays on 9 January.

Elizabeth Aleen Aked was an accomplished artist and a woman with a strong sense of the history and culture of the places she lived, especially her summer home and studio in Tyrone, Ontario. Miss Aked died in 2003; in her estate, a generous portion of her legacy was gifted to The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

With the support of the Aked Endowment and funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, the RMG is thrilled to embark on an exciting new initiative aimed at fostering a thriving local arts community.

During the summer of 2014, the RMG was under major renovations to create a professional exhibition space reserved for exhibiting the work of local artists, community collaborations, and themed group exhibits. The new space, features a professional gallery, an artist studio and rooms designed for bringing together arts communities.

Opportunities are available for community partnerships and special initiatives as well as artist residencies that prioritizes artists who wish to experiment with new ideas, collaborate, and work in new directions. Artists will have increased opportunities to give public talks, participate in professional development workshops, and give and receive critical feedback from peers. Programming of this space is separate from our curatorial planning and proposal selections are made with a jury of local artists and arts professionals.

We invite you to visit the new space, take a workshop or apply for an opportunity at Gallery A. 

Get Involved!

Grand Opening:

RMG Fridays on Friday 9 January, 7 pm

Information Session:

Thursday 26 February, 7 – 8 pm

Application Deadline:

Sunday 15 March. Projects will take place from September 2015 to February 2016. Application form found at www.rmg.on.ca

On View

1 December, 2014 – 1 February 2015
Gallery A & Art Lab: Pete Smith, artist residency

4 February – 1 March, 2015
Gallery A:  Ruth Greenlaw
Art Lab: Toni Hamel, artist residency

3 March -29 March, 2015
Gallery A & Art Lab:  Toni Hamel, artist residency

31 March– 12 April, 2015
Gallery A: Speak Up! Youth Art Exhibition

14 April – 28 April, 2015
Gallery A: Durham College Fine Arts Graduate Thesis Exhibition

Events

Sunday 1 February, 1 – 3pm
Talk and Tour with Artist, Pete Smith and Senior Curator, Linda Jansma

RMG Fridays: 6 February, 7-10pm
Opening reception: Ruth Greenlaw

Sunday 22 February, 1-3pm
Talk and Tour with artists Ruth Greenlaw and Margaret Rodgers

Sunday 29 March, 1 – 3pm
Talk and Tour with Artist Toni Hamel and Running on Empty Curator Heather Nicol

Sunday 19 April, 1 – 3pm
Opening Reception: Durham College Fine Arts Graduate Thesis Exhibition

Workshops for Artists

Register online – spaces are limited.

Saturday 10 January, 1 – 3pm
Drawing Workshop with Ron Shuebrook

Ron Shuebrook will lead a workshop about the use of memories as a catalyst for art, while also considering aesthetic forms and expressive processes. Participants will explore a variety of graphic media such as graphite, charcoal, or ink, based on their interests. All materials provided but students are welcome to bring their own tools and materials if they prefer.

Registration required. $25 Members/ $35 Non-Members / Free for adults registered in Winter/Spring 2015 art classes

Sunday 15 February, 1 – 3pm
Grant Writing and Funding Opportunities for Artists

Zhe Gu, Visual Arts Officer at the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) will lead this workshop aimed at professional Visual artists and Fine Craft artists. The workshop will cover the types of grants available, the selection process and how to prepare an effective application. Please bring any applications in progress, your artist statement, or previous grant text.

Free. Registration required.

Thursday 30 April – Saturday 2 May
By appointment during Gallery hours
Artwork Documentation Station

Over the course of three days, artists may document their artwork in an environment designed for effective, professional documentation. RMG staff will be on hand with the appropriate lighting, hanging and photographic equipment. Artists may bring their own camera, or alternately a 10GB USB memory stick to transfer images onto. Maximum of five artworks, no larger than 7ft x 7ft. Wall-mounted works only.

Free. Registration required.

Symposium
Sunday 7 March, 10am – 4pm

Abstraction in Canada: The Legacy of Jock Macdonald

Lunch and refreshments included.

$20 / $15 students / Free for RMG Members