Absence Inhabited is curated by Ashley Slemming, and Dear Alan is curated by Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por. Both exhibitions have been generously funded though the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Emerging Curator Fellowship.  
 

Absence Inhabited

This exhibition represents 29 artworks by 27 Alberta artists. These artists all highlight unique perspectives on object-hood and have contributed to a rich survey of domestically-situated artworks. These works ring into focus notions of intimate home spaces within a continually growing and interconnected relational world. 

Curator's Statement (excerpt)

The works featured in this exhibition all tell different stories. The represented objects all appear to hold a patina or residue of life, yet all the objects presented are inanimate lifeless forms. Absence Inhabited consequently serves as an examination of absence representing presence and the inherent states of being that are reflected in these various artworks. The range of objects represented allows for consideration of the concept of home and being from a variety of viewpoints - and challenges us to think about how we live, communicate and function on a day-to-day basis. 

Ashley Slemming, curator, Absence Inhabited

About the Curator: Ashley Slemming

Ashley Slemming is a Canadian embroidery and print artist based in Calgary, AB. Her work invites curiosity into our sentimental connection with repetition, pattern, and colour in both nature and textiles.  In her conceptual art practice she often explores the parallels between human and animal behaviours that are revealed by our relationships to our living environments, both man-made and natural.

In addition to the AFA's Emerging Curator Fellowship, Ashley has explored curatorial avenues as a Curatorial Intern with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. She has completed her BFA with distinction in Printmaking from the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Dear Alan

This exhibition represents 32 artworks by 31 Alberta artists. 

Curators' Statement (excerpt)

Dear Alan brings together a dizzying number of landscapes from the AFA permanent collection, displayed in a digital gallery, salon style. Rather than present works within a cohesive curatorial theme, based on typical modes of exhibition-making that rely on continuities such as concept, form, or historical period, this exhibition seeks instead to show varied, and at times disparate, artistic approaches to landscape representation, across time and medium—a curatorial methodology that speaks to an impulse to approach art through a productive un-knowing, a state of wonder, that eschews the reliance upon expertise in a given area of research. Like the permanent collection itself, which in all institutions shifts and morphs with changing leadership, access to funds, and artistic vision, Dear Alan chronicles the ebbs and flows of the AFA’s ever-changing collecting ethos and the evolving artistic and political sensibilities in Alberta more broadly.

Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por, curators, Dear Alan

About the Curators: Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por

Natasha Chaykowski

Natasha Chaykowski is a writer and curator based in Calgary. Currently, she is Director of Untitled Art Society. She has organized numerous exhibitions, discursive programs and arts-based events. Chaykowski held a curatorial assistant position at Art Gallery of Ontario, co-curated the annual Emerging Artist Exhibition at InterAccess in Toronto with Nancy Webb and is the co-recipient of the 2014 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. She was Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Curatorial Studies and the Editorial Resident at Canadian Art magazine in 2014. Her writing has been published in Carbon Paper, the Art Gallery of York University, esse: arts + opinions, Canadian Art, Gallery 44, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

Yasmin Nurming-Por

Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Toronto, Ontario. In 2017, she was the recipient of the 5th Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, and an Alberta Foundation. In addition to the Emerging Curator Followship exhibition, Dear Alan (co-curated with Natasha Chaykowski), 2018, other recent and upcoming projects include In shadows of the individual (2017); My curiosities are not your curios (2017); TV Dinner (2017); ARCTICNOISE (2015); At Sea(2015); and Blind White (2015). In 2015-2016 she was a sessional faculty member at Humber College in Toronto. In 2017 the position of Assistant Curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and currently holds the position of Research Assistant at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Both exhibitions are available to view on Google Arts and Culture. 

About the Emerging Curator Fellowship

This fellowship is designed to support the growth and development of curatorial talent by contracting an individual or ensemble of individuals to develop content for an online exhibition of Albertan visual art. 

This initiative is intended to bring a new perspective to the artworks and artists featured in the AFA collection.

Jim Picco's Plastic Bag is part of the exhibition Absence Inhabited. 

Alan's Untitled is part of the exhibition Dear Alan.

This week’s Work of the Week is Fifty-51 by Edmonton artist Alayne Spafford.
 

Alayne Spafford is an abstract artist whose work attempts to reconcile her natural tendency to organize and polish, with her strong desire to reject those principals in favour of chaos and disorder. Her paintings begin with a spontaneous and unstructured first layer of collage, drips, and spray paint. In the second layer, Spafford adds more depth and mark-making, then tries to find the shapes within. Her process mirrors her internal struggle to find balance between the opposing but complementary aspects of life.

This artwork came into the AFA’s collection via the Art Acquisition by Application (AAA) program last year and is now on loan, through the AFA’s Extended Loan program, to the new, award-winning YW Hub facility in Calgary.

About the Artist: Alayne Spafford

Alayne Spafford received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and drawing from the University of Saskatchewan. After studying textiles at Concordia University and the Centre des Metiers d’Art en Construction Textile (CMACT) in Montreal, she worked for many years in the costume department of Cirque de Soleil, dying, printing, and hand-painting costumes.

Spafford was awarded a Pouch Cove residency in Newfoundland in 2019 and has exhibited throughout Western Canada and the USA including Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa, Sopa Fine Arts in Kelowna, Zinc Contemporary Arts in Seattle, and the Front Gallery in Edmonton. Her work is in the collection of the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Alberta, and the PCL Corporation. Spafford resides in Edmonton, and concentrates on painting full time.

This week’s Work of the Week is January by John K. Esler.

Did you know: The month of January is named after the ancient Roman god Janus? Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions. He also had two faces – one looking forward into the future and one looking back towards the past.

About the Artist: John K. Esler (1933 – 2001)

John K. Esler was born in 1933 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and attended the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1960. He continued studies there, receiving a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962, and in 1964, after a period of travel in Europe, took a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts). He joined the faculty of the University of Calgary in 1968 where he taught intaglio printmaking, staying there until his retirement in the 1980s.
 

Esler was well-known in the Calgary arts community, and did much to raise the profile of printmaking in the province. He played a major role in the expansion of the printmaking department at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary and in partnership with artist Ken Webb, established Trojan Press to provide a facility for local printmakers to develop their skills. Esler's works were exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad and he is represented in many public and private collections. His awards included the C.W. Jefferys' Award from the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the G.A. Reid Memorial Award from the Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

John Esler had an irreverent, somewhat Dadaist sensibility which he expressed in his art and in his teaching methods. He encouraged his students to experiment, to make art with a mind open to unexpected possibilities. A series of artworks that offered a typical example of his approach were called Relics of the Twentieth Century and involved the use of cast-off garbage and refuse that he ran through the press to create relief prints. Objects that became fodder for the creative process for this series ranged from a squashed lunch box to the flattened chassis of a television set.

This week’s Work of the Week is Ancestor by Indigenous artist Florence Shone.

About the Artist: Florence Shone

Florence Shone is a mother of two and self-taught artist who uses acrylic and canvas as her medium.
 

She is originally from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, but has resided in Edmonton most of her life. She has a degree in Native Studies from University of Alberta in Edmonton. 

Shone says that she has always been an artist. She began drawing at an early age, but it was only when she was almost finished university that she took an art class and learned that painting allows her to visually express and release her emotions onto canvas. Subjects include Blackfoot people from archival photographs, portraiture, landscape work and other intuitively created pieces.

She regularly participates in local exhibitions in Alberta and has had work on display at the Royal Alberta Museum.

This year, National Indigenous Peoples Day also coincides with Summer Solstice on June 21. It is a great way to celebrate the unique culture and achievements of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples of our country.
 

During National Indigenous Peoples Day and June's National Indigenous History Month, explore:

• amazing artwork by Indigenous artists in the AFA's collection
• upcoming events throughout the province
• resources and events across Canada

About the artwork:

Poitras enjoys working in a variety of media including painting and mixed media collages that incorporate historical and contemporary symbols, newspaper clippings, and painted elements. In her work, 'Legacy of a Liberated Culture', she uses mixed media to create a colorful collage to highlight her diverse culture.

View the artwork in Augmented Reality. And click on the pink 'AFA virtual museum' below to discover other artworks by Poitras from 1984 to 2019.

About the Artist:

Jane Ash Poitras was born in the northern Alberta Cree community of Fort Chipewyan. Even though it was recommended for her to pick another career, as it was perceived it would be impossible to make a living as an artist, her resiliency helped her achieve a successful career. 

She has garnered her many accolades and achievements through her career, including being a recipient of:

• the Alberta Centennial Medal (2005)
• Order of Canada (2007)
• Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award (2011).

Image description

Multi-color images of an Indigenous person wearing a black and red feathered head dress, brown dog-like animal, yellow and red bird-like animal, black and red and turquoise abstract faces, and various black and white historic symbols. Four tipis with various colors including brown, yellow, whilte, red, green, blue and pink are at the bottom of the painting.

Wheel Week is the first week of June and this year it falls on May 30 to June 5, 2022. It also coincides with Anything But a Car Day (ABCD) on June 1 and The ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge (June 1 - 30, 2022) to encourage the community to get active.

Get active by walking or travelling by bike, scooter, skateboard, rollerblade or wheelchair and discover public art along the way! Share what art catches your eye with us on social media: 
 

• Is it a public art sculpture, street art ... art from a gallery or museum or festival ... or poetry at a transit station? 
• We encourage you to share using the hashtag #TakePartInArt and #MyAlbertaArt

About the artwork:

Kids/Nobleford, Alberta by Wally Houn was acquired by curatorial purchase to the AFA art collection.

Check out 13 artworks by the artist showcasing different parts of Alberta and daily life of Albertans. The various artworks range in date from 1973 to 1976, and can be viewed on the AFA's Virtual Museum (click button below).

About the artist:

Wally Houn is a photographer, writer, and actor who immigrated to Medicine Hat from China when he was ten years old. He first became interested in photography as a junior high school student, and in the late 1970s, when Houn was living and teaching in Hussar, Alberta, he began exploring documentary photography. 

Houn graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Calgary, and taught English in public schools in Swift Current, SK, and in various communities in Alberta - Nobleford, Edmonton, Hussar, and Strathmore - until retiring from teaching in 1996.

Since then, Houn has worked as an actor, with speaking roles in films and TV, and is a member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists (ACTRA).

Image description

A black and white photograph shows seven children in front of an old house-like structure with the sign "Village of Nobleford" on top of a giant white door. Two children are on bikes, one child is in a ride on toy car, and one on a tricycle. The other three children are posing while one is carrying a dog.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the official recognition of May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada! The month is an opportunity to celebrate the amazing contributions of Canadians of Asian descent, who have helped to make our country a vibrant place to live.

Immigrants to Canada from East Asia, Southern Asia, Western, Central and Southeast Asia have enriched our country with their rich cultural history, including diverse languages, art and traditions. It is also a month to remind us to appreciate the achievements of Asian-Canadians and to stand together against all forms of anti-Asian racism and discrimination.
 

We're celebrating Asian Heritage Month by highlighting a few of the diverse artworks in our collection by Albertans of Asian descent! ​

• click the arrow icons ( < or > ) above to scroll through the images.

About the Artist: Amy Loewan

Born in Hong Kong, Amy Loewan immigrated to Canada in 1978 and is based in Edmonton. Amy enjoys creating artwork that promote peace and understanding. "A Peace Project" has been designated as a Certified Cultural Property of Canada in 2010.

About the Artist: Marigold Santos

Born in Manila, Philippines and immigrating to Canada in the late 1980s, Filipinx-Canadian artist Marigold Santos is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice ranges from drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and tattoo.

You can read more about Marigold Santos and her artistic practice here: AFA Alberta Artist Profile - Marigold Santos.

Image descriptions

A Peace Project: six sheets of long hanging weaving strips of rice paper are hanging in a gallery. Each sheet has different abstract lines and dotted lines.

Flight: various colorful kites of black, orange, blue and rainbow colors are in the blue and cloudy sky. The kites are overlooking a green and grey land.

This week's Work of the Week is Bassano-Summer Sky 2008 by Danny Singer.

The first, full week of summer is coming to close, but don't worry, there are many more to come!
 

We hope you will be able to get out and enjoy an icon of the prairies - the wide expanse of clear blue sky, like in this stunning photograph, Bassano-Summer Sky 2008.

About the Artist: Danny Singer

Danny Singer is a photographer living and working in Vancouver. He began his career as a cameraman and director for the CBC.

In 1970, he moved to Montréal, where he made the transition to still photography. Working out of the tradition of documentary photography and using contemporary photographic techniques, Singer records places found in Canada's western prairie provinces and presents them as grand panoramas.

Singer has been the recipient of many awards and grants, including the Hamber Foundation Award of Merit. He has exhibited solo shows across Canada and his work can be found in private and public collections across the country including the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.

This week’s Work of the Week is Tents by John K. Esler.

It’s the start of the May long weekend, which is always the unofficial kick-off to camping season in Alberta! So, if you’re headed out this long weekend to pitch a tent and enjoy the great outdoors, we wish you happy camping!

About the Artist: John K. Esler (1933-2001)

John K. Esler was born in 1933 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and attended the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1960. He continued studies there and received a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962, and in 1964, after a period of travel in Europe, took a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts). He joined the faculty of the University of Calgary in 1968, where he taught intaglio printmaking, staying there until his retirement in the 1980s.
 

Esler was well known in the Calgary arts community and did much to raise the profile of printmaking in the province. He played a major role in the expansion of the printmaking department at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary and in partnership with artist Ken Webb, established Trojan Press to provide a facility for local printmakers to develop their skills.

Esler's works were exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad and he is represented in many public and private collections. His awards included the C.W. Jefferys' Award from the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the G.A. Reid Memorial Award from the Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

John Esler had an irreverent, somewhat Dadaist sensibility which he expressed in his art and in his teaching methods. He encouraged his students to experiment, to make art with a mind open to unexpected possibilities. A series of artworks that offered a typical example of his approach were called “Relics of the Twentieth Century” and involved the use of cast-off garbage and refuse that he ran through the press to create relief prints. Objects that became fodder for the creative process for this series ranged from a squashed lunch box to the flattened chassis of a television set.

This week's Work of the Week is Sun Dog by Carroll Taylor-Lindoe, because we are in the dog days of summer!
 

The dog days are commonly identified as occurring between July 3 and August 11. It is traditionally the hottest and most humid time of the summer. But what does it have to do with dogs? It really has nothing to do with our four-legged friends and more to do with the placement of the stars in the sky - specifically one star, Sirius aka the Dog Star. 
 

According to the Old Farmer's Almanac:

This period of sweltering weather coincides with the year’s heliacal (meaning “at sunrise”) rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Majoris—the “Greater Dog”—which is where Sirius gets its canine nickname, as well as its official name, Alpha Canis Majoris. Not including our own sun, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.

In ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome, it was believed that the dawn rising of Sirius in mid- to late summer contributed to the extreme weather of the season. In other words, the “combined heat” of super-bright Sirius and our Sun was thought to be the cause of summer’s sweltering temperatures. The name “Sirius” even stems from Ancient Greek seírios, meaning “scorching.” For the ancient Egyptians, the dawn rising of Sirius (known to them as “Sothis”) also coincided the Nile River’s flood season. They used the star as a “watchdog” for that event.

Of course, the appearance of Sirius does not actually affect seasonal weather here on Earth, but its appearance during the hottest part of summer ensures that the lore surrounding the star lives on today!

So get out and enjoy the warm weather, because, before you know it, the dog days are over.

About the Artist: Carroll Taylor-Lindoe

Carroll Taylor-Lindoe attended the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts), Calgary, from 1966 to 1967, and again from 1974 to 1975. In 1968, Taylor-Lindoe attended the Instituto de Allende in Mexico.

She has held many solo exhibitions, including many at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery in Toronto, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, and the Glenbow Museum. She has participated in two-person and group exhibitions, at the Triangle Gallery of the Visual Arts (Calgary), the Works Festival (Edmonton), TrepanierBaer (Calgary), the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), and more.

She has been given teaching positions at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax), Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary), and the University of Calgary. She has been a Visiting Artist at many places as well; she was Visiting Artist at Sir Winfred Grenfell College, Memorial University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge, and at Queen's University, Kingston, again, amongst many, many others. Taylor-Lindoe's work can be found in the collections of Petro-Canada (Calgary), the Glenbow Museum, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Royal Bank (Montreal), Department of External Affairs (Ottawa), the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), and numerous private and corporate collections.

She lives and works in Calgary.