Visual arts & new media

This week’s Work of the Week is Perception 3 by Robert Dmytruk.
 

About the Artist: Robert Dmytruk

After earning his B.Ed. in Secondary Art Instruction (1980) at the University of Alberta, Robert Dmytruk undertook three decades of teaching Alberta teens the values and techniques of painting, drawing, and mixed media. Using those same modes for his own artistic practice, Dmytruk began painting plein air landscapes, but then began obliquely depicting environmental themes in his exploration of rural and urban landscapes. At the same time, he was developing his own style with influences arising from artists such as Cy Twombly, Paul Klee, and Joan Miro. In Robert Dmytruk – Transitions (Rich Fog Micro Publishing, 2013), Julie Oakes remarks that Dmytruk “speaks volumes with his lines, textures, patches of colour and undulating toned-downed atmospheres. His paintings are in fact playful, lilting, and without a didactic hidden agenda, accepting the great opposites of our modern dilemma.”

Dmytruk has mounted numerous solo exhibitions, including at Edmonton’s The Works Festival, St. Albert’s Profiles Gallery, and Stony Plain’s Offenhauser Art Museum. The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection, the Strathcona Permanent Art Collection, and private collectors own selections of his work.

In addition to receiving the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in the Fine Arts, Dmytruk also won the Award for Teaching Visual Arts from the Emily Carr School of Art and Design—both in 2006.

After teaching and serving as an administrator in art schools, universities, and conferences in Canada and the U.S., Dmytruck retired to Summerland, British Columbia to create art full-time in his private studio.

This week’s Work of the Week is The Accident by Rita McKeough.

This artwork was part of the recent Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX) exhibition Mittenism and the Quest for Empathy. You can see all the artworks in this exhibition at alberta.emuseum.com/exhibitions/560/mittenism-and-the-quest-for-empathy.

This exhibition features etchings and lithography prints by renowned interdisciplinary artist Rita McKeough. Over the last 30 years, McKeough has been a major contributor to Canada’s strong reputation in audio, media installation and performance based visual art. Early on in her career, McKeough translated her ideas through etching and lithography techniques, creating several series of works that use inanimate objects to explore the complex emotion of empathy. Is this ball ok?, The Canadian Cookie Association and Manifesto of Mittenism initially appear childlike but through time reveal a conceptually complex narrative balanced with a quirky and sometimes dark absurdity.
 

The exhibition Mittenism and the Quest for Empathy was curated by Xanthe Isbister and organized by the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre.

About the Artist: Rita McKeough

Rita McKeough was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, studied printmaking and sculpture at the University of Calgary and received her BFA in 1975. She returned to the East Coast to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax and was awarded her MFA in 1979. Throughout her career she has instructed at numerous universities and art colleges across Canada, including NASCAD, the University of Calgary, the University of Manitoba and the Banff Centre, and since 2007 she has instructed full time at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD). She has become an influential role model and mentor who inspires colleagues and encourages younger artists.

Want to see more artworks by McKeough? On now, until December 12, is the exhibition Rita McKeough | darkness is as deep as the darkness is at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre.

In honour of Métis Week (November 15-21), this week’s Work of the Week is Making Faces by Métis artist Heather Shillinglaw.
 

About the Artist: Heather Shillinglaw

Heather Shillinglaw graduated in 1996 from the Alberta College of Art and Design (now the Alberta University of the Arts).

Her mixed-media work explores the bridging of cultures as she has experienced it as a Métis woman and as a traveler to other territories and countries. She is intrigued by the "similarities and differences" between cultures, something that her own heritage allows her to access more readily. In 1993, Heather partnered with National Film Board and Women of the Métis Nation using a film Daughter of the Country Series to create new works.

She is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections and is an active member of several Métis organizations including Women of the Métis Nation. She has exhibited extensively around Alberta over the past ten years.

This week's Work of the Week is Dark Horse by Calgary-based artist Yvonne Mullock. 
 

This artwork came into the AFA's collection in 2018 through the Art Acquisition by Application program. 
 

You can see this artwork in person at the Jarvis Hall Gallery where its currently on view until January 16, 2021 in the exhibition up front w/ Yvonne Mullock.

According the Jarvis Hall Gallery website: 

DARK HORSE is a multifaceted body of work that uses iconic symbols synonymous with cowboy culture – the stetson hat and horse as tropes to explore Calgary’s long and entwined history of ranching and the city’s historic annual Stampede event. Using print, video and sculpture DARK HORSE explores an innovative horse-centric printmaking method and invites viewers to delve into cowboy identity and Western mythologies that hover over the history, collective memory and folklore traditions in Calgary.

The Jarvis Hall Galley is located at 333B 36th Avenue SE in Calgary and is open by appointment only. Details online at: jarvishallgallery.com.

About the Artist: Yvonne Mullock

Yvonne Mullock is a graduate from Glasgow School of Art and is currently based in Calgary, Canada.

Her multidisciplinary art practice explores materiality and the processes embodied in the act of making. Incorporating collage, sculpture, ceramics, video and textiles, her work explores ideas of authorship, craft and labour for both gallery and site-specific installations.

WILL, Mary Louise Shannon
September 9, 1944 – Sampson, New York
October 20, 2021 – Calgary, Alberta
 

Mary Shannon Will, an artist known for colourful, witty ceramic sculpture and vibrant abstract painting, died of ALS on October 20 at Chinook Hospice in Calgary. A senior member of the Calgary art community, she was 77.

Shannon Will was born in Sampson, New York in 1944. Her childhood was spent in Seattle, Washington and then in Madison, Wisconsin, where Mary completed high school. Mary credited her father, an amateur artist who served in the US Navy and later worked in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, for encouraging her creative bent. After a year at Coe College, a liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she studied ceramics at the University of Iowa (1964–1967), the Tuscarora Pottery Summer School (1966–1967), and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (1970–1971). Mary moved to Calgary with her husband, artist John Will in 1971, and immediately set up her ceramic studio at their home in Lower Mount Royal.

Albuquerque was Mary’s life-long second home, a place she returned to annually. She loved taking trips into Santa Fe with her sister Michelle and her dogs to comb second-hand stores for unique pieces of turquoise jewelry and collectibles. While traveling throughout the southwestern United States and Canada, rarely would Mary and John miss a roadside attraction where a postcard, souvenir “floaty pen,” antique thermometer, or western-themed café cup and saucer would await them. Trips to New Mexico often included visits to Taos, Chaco Canyon, Acoma, Frijoles Canyon, and other ancient Pueblo sites that are home to the diverse Indigenous peoples of the Southwest and are places Mary held dear since first visiting them with her parents. Over the years, the people, light, colour, and cultures of the Canadian Prairies, New Mexico, and the Southwest intertwined to weave a strong network of relations and experience that shaped Mary’s life and art.  

Mary made art for over 50 years. During the 1960s and early 1970s she made functional studio pottery, but her pots quickly morphed into brightly coloured ceramic sculptures that recall sensuous botanical and biological organisms. Around 1980 Mary visited the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design while John taught summer classes there. Here her existing interest in systems, rules, and chance blossomed to guide her use of colour and pattern in a series of abstract geometric ceramic sculptures made between 1978–1985. These works with their glowing glazed surfaces of solid and graduated colour precisely patterned with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny dots and dashes mark the trajectory of her practice for the years to come.

Mary began to make prints, drawings, and paintings using highly subjective systems and processes from the mid-1980s on. In the mid-1990s, Mary was an artist resident at the Banff Centre for the Arts where she discovered a synergy between the pixelated digital technology of Photoshop and her method of working with generative systems, patterns, chance, and colour. After much trial and error—and good-hearted collaborative toil with the computer technicians—Mary began producing archival inkjet and mixed-media works with paint where grids of digital pixels glitch and dissolve under the artist’s subjective systems.

From 2005 on Mary returned exclusively to painting small, intimate, and square works where the layers of colour glow and shimmer to create a jewel-like depth. These works are intuitive responses to the people, places and things that shaped the artist’s experience and perception of the world in which she lives: a trip to India with her friends Gisele Amantea and Peter White, a place in New Mexico, a residency with Jeffrey Spalding at the Tao Hua Tan International Artist Retreat and Residency (China), a shape from a doodle done while watching film noir. Mary, being a bit of a rascal, was unlike other conceptual artists and never allowed the system to completely override her personal responses to the process or materials. Beauty was her endgame.

Mary, you are as unique, eclectic, and colourful as your work. We will sorely miss you Mary but are truly grateful to have shared in your life. Thank you for the rich legacy you have left us in your work, through it the depth and richness of your life will live on in full colour.

Mary Louise Shannon Will is survived by her husband John Arnold Will, her sister Susan Michelle Shannon (Los Angeles, California), her brother John Thomas Shannon (Missoula, Montana), and is predeceased by her brother Robert William Shannon.

You can view more of Mary's artworks in the AFA's collection through the AFA Virtual Museum.

This week's Work of the Week is Piano Lesson by Vivian Herman. 

One of the more famous compositions for the piano is Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, better known as Moonlight Sonata, by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was composed in 1801.
 

Beethoven is one of the world's most celebrated classical composers, and 2020 marks his 250th birthday! He was born in December 1770, but the exact date is not known. However, he was batized on December 17, 1770, and the custom of the time was to have infants baptized within 24-hours of their birth.

Click the arrows above to scroll through the images. 

It's with great sadness that the AFA has learned of the passing of painter Harold Feist. 
 

Harold Feist was born San Angelo, Texas and was a dual citizen of Canada and the United States.

Feist received a B.F.A. (Honours), from University of Illinois (Champaign) in 1967 and an M.F.A. (Hoffberger Fellow) from Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, ML in 1969. He was mentored and championed by the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg and painter Jules Olitski.

Feist eventually came to Canada to teach at the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts) from 1968–74. He later taught at Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB and at the University of Guelph.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing well into the 21st century, Feist was featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada and in the United States. He was an active and vibrant abstract artist, who was known for his large Colour Field paintings in acrylic and latex. His work can be found in public and private collections across and the United States and Canada including the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA) and Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, AB). The AFA is also pleased to have three artworks by Harold Feist in our collection. You can view them in the slideshow above. 

Harold Feist was a father to four children, including singer/songwriter Leslie Feist, who uses her surname Feist as her stage name. 

AFA Art Collections Consultant Gail Lint was fortunate enough to have Harold Feist as professor at the University of Alberta in the 1970s, and she'd like to share a fond memory she has of him: 

“Harold Feist was a professor of mine for the visual art fundamentals course at the U of A during the 1970’s. He co-instructed the course with Graham Peacock – it was a very interesting summer!

Harold was an excellent instructor, and a story he shared with me was how he arrived at titles for his abstract paintings. He was standing on a street corner and a piece of paper blew against his leg. He rescued it only to discover a pamphlet from the horse races. He adopted the names of the horses to the title of his paintings. I believe the AFA painting ‘High a Silver’  (shown above) is one of those titles.”

Our condolences to Harold Feist's family and friends. 

Read Harold Feist's obituary. 

Read the Globe and Mail's tribute to Harold Feist. 

This week's Work of the Week is "Distant Mountain" by Annemarie Schmid Esler. 

Today is International Mountain Day! Designated in 2003 by the United Nations, International Mountain Day calls attention to the importance of mountains to life around the world. For example, did you know that mountains are home to 15% of the world's population and host about half of the world's biodiversity hotspots? They also provide freshwater for everyday life to half of humanity! Mountains are truly amazing, and Albertans are incredibly lucky to have one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world right in our province - the Rocky Mountains!
 

About the Artist: Annemarie Schmid Esler

The daughter of German immigrants, Annemarie Schmid Esler was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

She had an interest in art from an early age, attending Saturday classes at the Winnipeg Art School, but studied sociology at university. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Manitoba in 1959, and travelled in Europe for a year before enrolling at the University of Munich for additional courses in sociology. Returning to Canada in 1961, she worked for a year as a social worker and in 1962 enrolled at the Winnipeg College of Art in the ceramics program. In 1968, she completed a degree in ceramic sculpture at the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts).

Her work expressed a highly developed knowledge of ceramic technique, and she utilized a variety of tools, including pencils, airbrushes, stencils, decals and photo-transfer to create her often humorous and ironic ceramic sculptures. She was interested in the opposing approaches of Modernist and Post-Modernist art, and also had a strong preoccupation with American blues music which, with its focus on themes of isolation and concern about the social condition, she saw as presenting an affinity with her own art.

Annemarie Schmid Esler's work was exhibited widely throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. A highly-regarded instructor and lecturer, she received several major grants and awards, and her sculptures are included in over two dozen public collections.
 

This week's Work of the Week is Opening Night by Petr Honcu.
 

On this day 128 years ago, one of the most famous ballets in the world had its opening night in St. Petersburg, Russia! Now a holiday tradition in many countries, including Canada, The Nutcracker made its debut on December 18, 1892. It was choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In Canada, the National Ballet of Canada has been performing The Nutcracker for nearly 70 years! Learn more about the history of the National Ballet of Canada performing The Nutcracker. 

Closer to home, the Alberta Ballet has made The Nutcracker a holiday tradition in our province for the past several years now. While you won't be able to see the Alberta Ballet's annual performance of The Nutcracker this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you can still enjoy this short film featuring Alberta Ballet Dancer Jennifer Gibson as The Sugar Plum Fairy.

Video courtesy of Alberta Ballet..

Group of Seven.

Three words that thrill Canadian art lovers everywhere. And while much of the work produced by the Group of Seven focused on eastern Canada, did you know there was a strong connection between Alberta and members of the Group of Seven?
 

This connection is explored in an exhibition now on view at Government House in Edmonton. Aptly titled Alberta and the Group of Seven, it was developed by independent curator and writer Mary-Beth Laviolette in partnership with Gail Lint, Art Collections Consultant with the Arts Branch.  

If this exhibition sounds familiar, a version of it, curated by Laviolette, travelled around Alberta from 2016 through 2018. The AFA Art Collection team installed the exhibition in Government House, made up of work from the Government House art collection, the collection of the Government of Alberta and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts art collection as part of our exhibition loan program. Click the arrows above to see a short slideshow of images of select artworks in the exhibition. 

Click on an artist’s name to see their work in the AFA art collection.*

Artwork ready to be installed at Government House. Far right: Illingworth Kerr, "Forest Reserve, Spring". 1973. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. 

I had an opportunity to ask Mary-Beth Laviolette a few questions about this exhibition and the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven.

AFA: What is the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven?

MB: A number of early Alberta artists like H.G. Glyde and Catharine and Peter Whyte sketched and painted alongside members of the Group such as A.Y. Jackson and J.E.H. MacDonald. Jackson, for instance, did not drive, so artists like Glyde and members of the Lethbridge Sketch Club drove him to different sites to sketch or paint outdoors. Banff’s Peter and Catharine Whyte knew MacDonald and Lawren Harris from their outdoor excursions in the Rockies.

AFA Art Collections staff, Gail Lint and Jackie Flaata, install an artwork in Government House

AFA: Why do you think these artworks still have so much resonance today?

MB: First of all, they are memorable works of art. I mean, Euphemia McNaught’s oil of Monkman Creek simply glows, while Jackson’s small 1935 oil titled Foothills, Alberta captures so much of the distinctive character of the coulees. There are a lot of striking artworks from this period that are not only landscapes but also depictions of small-town Alberta and especially their grain elevators. Most of those [the grain elevators] are now gone and were not admired as artistic subjects at the time. Annora Brown of Fort Macleod was even advised in her own town there was nothing worthwhile to paint, and she should go to Europe where they had windmills, such as France! I guess there was a feeling that art happened somewhere else.

AFA Art Collections staff, Neil Lazaruk (left) and Duncan Johnson (right) install on Government House H.G. Glyde’s "Stream Under Grotto Mountain, Near Canmore". 1948. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

AFA: What do you want people to take away from this exhibition?

MB: There is such a thing called ‘Alberta art’, and it has a very fine legacy that connects into Canadian art. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, but it needs to be said.

AFA: How do these artworks fit into the story of Alberta art?

MB: They all do. For example,  A.Y. Jackson’s 1943 painting of the newly constructed and remarkable Peace River Bridge was done at a time when the Alaska Highway was being built for reasons connected to the Second World War. H.G. Glyde, then of Calgary, accompanied him as an artist on this trip north.

Installed in Government House, Left: Euphemia McNaught’s "Monkman Creek". 1985. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts;  Right: A.Y. Jackson’s "Peace River Bridge". 1943. Oil on panel. Collection of Government House.

AFA: Do you have a favourite artwork or artist in the exhibition?

MB: I have a lot of admiration for all of the early artists no matter where they were based, like Euphemia McNaught and Annora Brown. It’s good to know that next year Brown will be one of the artists featured in a national touring exhibition being organized by the McMichael Collection of Art in Kleinburg, Ontario in connection with the Group of Seven’s centenary. Everyone will be asking who is Annora Brown and where is Fort Macleod?

Interested in seeing these artworks and more in Government House? Free, guided tours take place on Sundays and holiday Mondays.

Mary-Beth Laviolette is an independent art writer and curator based in Canmore, Alberta. She specializes in Albertan and western Canadian art.

*Note: Two artworks mentioned in this article are not part of the AFA art collection. A.Y. Jackson's Peace River Bridge and Foothills, Alberta are in the art collection of Government House.

Written by: Kimberly Van Nieuvenhuyse, Writer/Social Media Officer