The speaker series I am curating at Hot Art Wet City gallery kicked off last Tuesday evening with a talk by Kim Werker. It was a terrific talk centered around the value of failure and imperfection which led to an interesting discussion afterwards.
Lucky for those who missed it, Chris filmed the whole thing and you can watch it here:
The series, now titled Hot Talks, continues on June 25th with Bruce Alcock. More details about it, and to grab tickets, on the Hot Art Wet City web site.
Last week I attended an artist talk by Barbara Cole at Bau-xi Gallery, and it has left me with a whole jumble of different thoughts. I’m hoping I can sort out at least a few points here.
Barbara Cole is a fine art photographer I have admired since my days in Toronto. She creates dream-like imagery of the female form, and over the last ten or so years has been focused on underwater photography.
In her artist talk she took the audience all the way back to the beginnings of her career, and how through luck and circumstances she ended up as fashion editor for the Toronto Sun. Cole told this hilarious story of her very first assignment with the Sun, which was to cover Fashion Week in Paris. An unfortunate miscommunication left her without proper access to any of the shows, so at twenty years old she had to come up with a solution and boldly make her way, or risk not meeting deadlines and failing.
What I loved most about Barbara Cole’s talk was her willingness to admit most of the time she didn’t know what she was doing. Few people will admit to this publicly because it puts them in a vulnerable place, but really most of us don’t know what we’re doing more than half of the time. I wish more people would make this statement so we can all be okay with it. It’s not a bad thing to not know what you’re doing because this is an opportunity for learning. Cole’s solution to her lack of knowledge was exactly this: she simply taught herself what she needed to know.
Much of what was said by Barbara Cole was a good reminder of the value of learning by doing. She has done it for her entire career and it has served her well. As a self-taught artist I sometimes feel insecure about my abilities, as if they are less valid than someone who has an MFA or BFA in fine art. But then I realize even the most educated of artists needs to buckle down and go beyond what they’ve learned in school in order to fully evolve as an artist. I skipped art school (which would not have been a good fit for me) and went straight to the in-studio professional development phase of my artistic career. My work has matured by leaps and bounds over the last few years because of this dedication.
I admired Cole’s work before the talk, but now I think highly of her as a woman. She’s in her fifties, but comes across as a much younger person. She’s had a long and distinguished career, continues to create inspiring work, and explores new aspects of her fascination with underwater photography. Barbara Cole comes across as someone content with her life, relaxed with who she is.
It was refreshing to be in the presence of a confident woman. And perhaps it is this most of all I walked away with from the talk. The idea of not just the artistic career I aspire to, but the type of woman I want to be as I get older.
In my monthly newsletter I always share three or four links to items I’ve come across that have inspired me. I call the section, “Found Objects”, and I’ve decided to try and continue the same thing here on my blog.
For your May long weekend reading pleasure, I present a few items you should check out:
Mixed media artist, Carlyn Yandle, writes one blog post a week about art. Each one is well-written, thoughtful, and insightful.
Money Money Money, a series of blog posts by Kim Werker on money struggles for the creative person. It was inspired by a letter I wrote to her.
A beautiful post about body image and confidence by Vivienne McMaster. It speaks strongly to how women tear themselves down, but can also build themselves up.
The saying goes, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”. But what should an artist do when a piece of art with hours of work already invested into it starts turning to lemons?
I don’t often find myself in this type of situation because I am a process-driven artist and I don’t have a specific result in mind from the start. I am interested to see how something will evolve as I work. But once in awhile things still go awry.
The two cut paper vessels that I’m sharing in this blog post began life as a single piece of 19″ x 25″ black paper. My intention was to make a large rectangular structure I could hang from the wall. The more I worked on it, the less I liked it. I realized I was happy with the paper cutting but the structure was too boring. It also reminded me too much of a decorative designery thing for candles that someone would buy from Crate & Barrel.
I decided to salvage the situation by cutting the paper in half with the idea I would create smaller individual structures from each piece. I couldn’t leave it as one piece because I’d already scored the paper for folding into a rectangle.
I’d left an uncut edge along one side of each piece so I could attach a piece of paper and create a bottom to the structure. The first strip of cut paper became a wide cylindrical shape. It’s about eight inches in diameter and nine inches at the tallest point.
With the second strip of cut paper I decided to aim for an irregular structure. I had the piece of paper curve around three circles as the bases and wound up with what you see here. It was an experiment, and the end result is a bit wonky but interesting.
As a side note, the paper I used for these was a bit lighter than I normally work with and I think it may be a bit too delicate for creating more structural pieces. Working with black was also a nice change from all the white I’ve been doing lately.
Thank goodness this piece was flexible enough to salvage and transform into something else. I think what I’ve ended up with has turned out to be much more interesting than my original idea.
This is a really big deal to me but I seem to have forgotten to mention it anywhere, and its been live for weeks. I have a brand new online portfolio for the first time evah! The many different types of work I create, from portraits to paper, are all nicely organized and looking quite impressive together as a whole.
While this blog remains in wordpress the portfolio is built with Behance ProSite. I was really tired of my work looking bad in the half-assed galleries I’ve had on the blog for years, and really wanted something more professional looking.
I chose Behance because I use their free site to share my work with a larger creative community and the ProSite pulls my projects in from there. I like this aspect of having my work in multiple places at once. The interface is relatively easy to use and the templates are straightforward and simple enough to cleanly show off my work. Check it out as Behance ProSite is free to use until you choose to publish your site.
For your viewing pleasure, find this visual treasure trove of my work at portfolio.rachaelashe.com. Peruse at your leisure, and share it both freely and widely.
As part of a commitment to myself around contributing back and helping to build the arts community, I’ve recently taken on the role of organizer for a new speaker series at Hot Art Wet City. It’s a new gallery space on Main Street run by Chris Bentzen, the creator of CARDED!, Hot One Inch Action, and an on-going video interview series (which inspired the name of the gallery) sharing the work of Vancouver creatives. I admire what Chris does as a self-made curator building distinctive events, and I want to see the gallery thrive.
Show & Tell is intended to become a regular event at HAWC, with a different speaker each month. The series will feature enthusiastic amateurs to veteran professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds sharing and discussing something they’re passionate about.
The series kicks off with our first speaker, writer/editor/crafter extraordinaire, Kim Werker, on May 21st at 7pm:
Sometimes It Ain’t Pretty: How the Painful Parts of Creativity Can Be Our Strongest Assets
No amount of you-can-do-it cheerleading can prepare us for the inevitable pitfalls inherent to creative exploration. We’re going to struggle, we’re going to stumble, we’re going to fall flat on our face. The thing is, everyone does. So rather than avoiding failure at all costs, I say we allow – or even force – ourselves to dig deep into it for a while. From an intimate understanding of our relationship with failure we can become stronger, more flexible, less afraid, and more adventurous.
Boris and I visited the Graduation Show at Emily Carr University yesterday morning. I spent most of my visit looking at the visual art section, while Boris checked out design.
There was a very broad selection of work on display both in terms of medium and quality but I found a few gems to inspire me.
From Ashes, by Helsa Ahmadi.
(Detail of a larger work)
Chronology Manifested, by Heather Lippold
Dead Already, by Mac Hasselfield
Grus Americana #2, by Natasha Broad
(Detail of a larger work)
Islah & Her Mother, by Carolyn Lakowski
(Detail of a larger work)
Fine Lines, by Elizabeth Jacob
(Detail photo of a larger work)
Intersecting Space, by Pierce Jordan
(Detail photo of a larger work)
I never went to art school so it’s interesting for me to visit and see the results of four years (?) of art education. I still think self-taught is the way to go, but I’m probably biased…
Over the past few weeks I’ve been preparing for my upcoming solo show in July at the Ranger Station Gallery in Harrison Hot Springs. The exhibition is one part of the annual Harrison Festival of the Arts, which includes an art market, workshops, and plenty of live music.
It’s this musical aspect of the festival that has led me to create more instruments from paper. My friend Siobhan, a musician as well as a visual artist, loaned me a violin and a tambourine to use as reference. The violin proved to be a much trickier object than an acoustic guitar to puzzle out and reproduce as a three dimensional object in paper.
The tambourine was relatively simple by comparison. What I like best about making instruments from paper are the problem solving skills that kick in as I try to puzzle out how emulate some piece of the object normally carved from wood, or made from metal.
I will be making one final instrument for the show, a mandolin. I’m really hoping it will be easier to reproduce than the violin.
A few weekends ago Boris and I were in Steveston with friends to go on a Sea lion watching tour. We arrived a bit early and so our group stopped into the lovely Roccanini Coffee Roasters for coffee, tea, and delicious treats. Right outside the cafe is this pretty impressive piece of public art designed by my friend, Carlyn Yandle.
Located at the intersection of at No. 1 Road and Moncton Street in Steveston, this is the first scramble-style crosswalk in BC. Carlyn’s design, “was an attempt to weave together the history of the Japanese net-makers and the modern-day marine flavour of this corner of the Lower Mainland using a simple, enduring motif.” I think the results are very striking.
I would love to see municipalities commission more work like this, where the art is integrated fully into the cityscape. I think Canadian cities too often underestimate the importance of public art, but maybe this is in the process of changing.
At the beginning of this week I decided to take a much needed break from social media tools. I sometimes feel worn down by watching other people’s lives on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and all the unwanted noise that comes out of it. I do enjoy using these tools, and often find inspiration from them, but they’re also a HUGE distraction. It’s good to turn down the volume once in awhile, and now was as good a time as any because I have a lot of work to do.
Over the last few days I’ve found myself with iPhone in hand wondering what to do with the thing. By not allowing myself to check Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram I have much less distraction from my phone. It makes me realize just how frequently I look at the darn thing, and use social media to procrastinate or distract myself.
I sometimes wish I could do without these tools, but they play a large role in how I share my work with the world. I’m not sure how I would do this otherwise. They are also the source of connections with interesting people, events, and ideas, so it’s not all bad.
Sometimes you need to step back from familiar things in order to fully appreciate what they bring to your life. And I am reflecting on this as part of break. But until I return to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, I’m going to enjoy a quiet, centred, less distracted mind.
