La Petite Mort Gallery

Andrew Salgado

admin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:36:19 +0000

Andrew Salgado (b. 1982, Regina, Canada) has exhibited in the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, Venezuela, Thailand, Korea, Canada, and the United States. His bold, assertive, and generally large-scale figurative paintings have placed him as one-to-watch in both the UK’s and North America’s painting scenes; his recent solo exhibitions include In Order To Rebuild; Dosi Gallery, Busan, Korea (2012); and The Misanthrope; Beers.Lambert Contemporary, London, (2012). Forthcoming solo exhibitions include The Acquaintance, his first institution-exhibition at his home-town in The Art Gallery of Regina, Canada (Jan 2013); and solo exhibitions at La Petit Mort Gallery, Ottawa, Canada (May 2013); and One Art Space in New York City (October 2013).

Salgado’s practice is an evolving process exploring concepts of identity through assertive, gestural figurative paintings. Salgado’s practice (re)considers the tangibility and impermanence of the body, but also inwardly comments upon the fragility of self. Accordingly, Salgado exploits the purely physical properties of media to inform resonating themes within his work. In an effort to surpass a literal (re)presentation of his subject-matter, he prioritizes a visceral, sensual, topographic painting surface, toward an evolving language of figuration and abstraction. The work asks for consideration of what is visible, what is tangible, and what is suggested: pulling the viewer from the sutures of representation, and drawing attention to the painterly versus the metaphorical.

Salgado’s paintings have hung in London’s Courtauld Institute of the Arts (2010) alongside Tracy Emin and Gary Hume, was the highest-grossing work ever donated to Canada’s esteemed Art For Life (18^th Annual) Charity Auction (2011); included in the Merida Biennale of Contemporary Art (2010), the NordArt Carlshutte Biennale (2012); and is often featured in press and magazines, such as METRO, The Independent, Shortlist, Yatzer!, Juxtapoz, Colossal, Booooooom!, Beautiful Decay, Paradigm, Chaos, TOH! Italia. In 2011 he was featured in the Channel 4 (UK) documentary The Science of Art alongside artists Anish Kapoor, Howard Hodgkins, and Bridget Riley (2011). He has lived and worked in London, UK since 2008.

The Smallest Heart’s Desire, May 3-26 2013 – Statement

ALL WORKS SOLD 3 DAYS PRIOR TO THE VERNISSAGE

I am intrigued by the concept of truth and representation. Part of this has to do with my own personal struggles as conveyed through the notion that who one portrays in life is only part-truth – a performance executed on a multitude of levels. In many respects, identity is a performance executed through different guises, where as both individual and artist I’m curious to share this with my viewer through a limited articulation of the human face. The title, The Smallest Heart’s Desire, simultaneously references the formal properties of the works themselves, a cheeky reference to the scale of the paintings as well as the narrative explored. In my most recent (previous) solo exhibition, I took a conceptual look at misanthropy, and with these works, I continue this journey: the smallest heart is a metaphor for my own shortcomings and the process I have taken, and continue to take, toward resolution. The eponymous desire refers to that pursuit toward fulfillment so relevant and specific to each of us.

Certainly the works are not meant to be celebrations of humanity’s (or my own) glory, but are meant to explore the curious or unspoken aspects of ‘self’. I have set to unfold the darkest corners of my own self-awareness, which proves to be a trying task, and upon reflection, it occurs to me that I often consider myself something of an anti-hero of my own creation. To present a series of works in which my subjects appear ‘triumphant’ is of little interest to me, since I believe there is more to excavate and portray from human nature in the poetry of discontentment, the awareness of oneself, or one’s affect on his environment.

In the process I have taken myself out of the equation through a series of stand-ins, disguises, and doubles, in which an autobiographical perspective is explored through the use of a representative of sorts. Here, identities are obscured as a series of masks - figures lurk behind abstraction – but our cognitive processes still tie together and absolve what the subject himself lacks. I become narrator, weaving myself and my subjects in-and-out of fact and myth: where their histories end and my identity begins remains purposefully ambiguous.

The references to performance and masquerade in the titles of the works are resolutely intentional, and these were (and are) the formative elements that inspired and fuelled this exhibition from the very beginning. I see the whole show as a tiny little opera, in acts, with characters who are all kind of tragic and kind of ambiguous. My process is like the actor who adorns a tribal mask, which elevates someone from a corporeal self into a transcendent being – he is able to become a different person…As i am through the act of painting. At times I’m uncertain where I become only a medium for expression, like the ritual, the performance, or the metonym: the passing of one identity into another.

“At a time when painting itself often seems to be a threatened, even despised, form of artistic activity, Andrew Salgado emerges as a dazzlingly skillful advocate for the medium he has chosen to embrace.”
- Edward Lucie-Smith, 2012

Text by Edward Lucie-Smith

Sometimes – not often nowadays – at a contemporary artwork, or a series of contemporary artworks, I get a shock. Very often indeed, I am not at all shocked by things that are deliberately intended to provoke the audience. A case in point would be the now half-forgotten giant portrait of the murderess Myra Hindley (Myra, Marcus Harvey, 1995), which was perhaps the chief ‘sensation’ of the Sensation! exhibition of 1997, held at the Royal Academy, which established the YBA (Younger British Artists) group in the public consciousness. The fact that the image, copied from a police ID photograph of no artistic merit in itself, had been made, not with a brush, but with a stamp moulded from a child’s hand, caused a huge stir in the press, and provoked demonstrations from relatives of the children murdered by Hindley and her partner in crime Ian Brady. Simply regarded as a painting, a work of art made by putting paint on a flat surface, the likeness of Hindley was completely inert. It had less, not more, emotional force that the photograph from which it originated.

Where did it – does it – differ from the two portraits of Jeffrey Dahmer included here, another notorious murderer, which provided the catalyst for Andrew Salgado’s exhibition The Misanthrope? What they have in common with the painting of Hindley is that they have necessarily been generated from photographs. Yet Dahmer was killed in 1994 by a fellow prison inmate; he has been dead for nearly two decades, and was never physically within the reach of the artist. What is different is the sheer freedom and individuality of the handling: it lies in the power of the paint itself to convey intertwined thought and emotion. If you want a practical demonstration of what I mean, go to the Wallace Collection, here in London, a look at one of the most celebrated masterpieces in the collection: Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier (1624). A very different subject, but in many ways, a very similar set of effects.

Hals belonged to a small group of major Baroque painters who were virtuosi in the use of paint, and in particular, virtuosi in creating the look of life and movement through often very loose handling of their material. Rembrandt, in his later work, belongs to the same category. So too does the mature Velazquez. That is the tradition to which the works shown here seem to belong.

Not surprisingly, however, things have moved on since the 17^th century. The paintings are all heads, tightly cropped, not full length or half-length figures in the manner of Baroque portraiture. The focus is not only on the depiction of psychological states, but on the extreme rapidity with which the states can sometimes alter, like the shadows of clouds passing over a summer cornfield.

At a time when painting itself often seems to be a threatened, even despised, form of artistic activity, Andrew Salgado emerges as a dazzlingly skillful advocate for the medium he has chosen to embrace. These paintings tell us more than a video ever could about the characters whom they depict. A video narrative about the nature of misanthropy would never be even a quarter as informative. In addition, it is a narrative that we can study in our own time, at leisure. These are not paintings to be looked at only once. They do not operate within a fixed time frame. What they have to say will change from occasion to occasion, even when it is the same spectator involved.

Using a supposedly traditional medium, they are in fact contemporary in the best sense. We inhabit a society where feelings and perceptions are growing more fluid, rather than less. The paintings undoubtedly reflect that situation. However they go further, by reflecting it in a form where these changes can be held for a moment, and examined. They do not wriggle out of our grasp. Yet they always have something to add, something new to say to us.

Foreword by Kurt Beers

Director, Beers.Lambert Contemporary

The Misanthrope is painter Andrew Salgado’s second solo exhibition with Beers.Lambert Contemporary since 2008, and Salgado credits a quote by Lucien Freud as the exhibition’s starting point, in which the late Freud stated that “the painter’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.” Salgado attributes his impassioned relationship to personal and universal narratives as the continued source that informs his practice, interpreting this quote as the artist’s need to ascertain a sense of (unromantic) love for his subject. The concept behind the present exhibition arose and expanded while completing a work entitled A Question of Profound Regret, for Salgado’s previous solo-exhibition in Korea (June 2012). The piece features reverse ‘mirrored’ portraits of gay serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer; Salgado maintains the connection he feels necessary between artist and subject became a source of contention while completing the aforementioned work…how might one empathize with such a reprehensible figure became a personal struggle that led to further questions that thus informed The Misanthrope.

What may reveal itself to be of particular interest is Salgado’s insistence on the importance of the title’s semantic particularities: Salgado is very aware of both the intensity and the pejorative nature of the title, particularly for an exclusively figurative exhibition. He insists that the titular misanthrope has failed, yet the question remains whether the misanthrope has faltered because of his continued and expectant distain for humankind, or has he faltered because he fails to succeed at what the title suggests…? While Salgado remains evasive about the true intentions of the work, he posits that the misanthrope’s ultimate failure would be to experience love. Still, the title asks one to consider larger personal and societal questions than what is immediately evident through the form and/or content of the work, and ultimately, it appears to be Salgado’s affinity for narrative that propels further inquiry into the work and the questions that may remain with the viewer. As such, it appears that of greatest importance is the suggestion of hope that lingers; Salgado seems uncompromised in highlighting the beauty (both in terms of technique and content) emanating from each painting.

Above all, one notice’s Salgado’s love for his medium and an evolving technique and what is quickly becoming his signature style. His practice is an exploratory process that transforms the figure and reveres the medium of oil paint. While the works are undeniably figurative, Salgado maintains himself as more of an abstract painter, avoiding and defying the conventions of the figurative painting, marked partly through his most defiant use of a palette-knife (often in favor of the brush) to-date, and a paint-texture that appears at times both buttery and topographic. In a recent interview with Yatzer magazine he is quoted as stating the following:

“The truth is, at my core I feel more like an abstract artist than a figurative artist; I avoid adhering too closely or exclusively to any term because I believe it whittles what I do to something one-dimensional, didactic, in the sense that I’ve always felt it too superficial to simply aim for likeness in representation. In this regard, it’s important for me to question the nature of the painted image, the figure, and also those concepts not-so-visibly evidenced such as masculinity, sexuality, and identity. I suppose that the way I go about drawing attention to this is by loosening the grip on accuracy of representation; I want the viewer to be very aware that they are looking at a reconstruction – a mark of paint might vaguely (or not so vaguely) represent an eye, or the tip of a nose, but it also exists purely as a mark of paint, nothing else and nothing more. It is this duality of forms that I believe allows me (and hopefully the viewer) to question the painted image. In the act of questioning that, I think the entire figurative form becomes questioned. For me, the fact that I don’t implicitly ‘buy in’ to the image on the canvas, and am concerned about its (de)construction, prevents the work from becoming too solipsistic, self-indulgent, or banal. I like to keep things uncertain: the form, the concept, the figure itself…this is the only way that my viewer is going to approach my work with an open mind and leave the work with their own conclusions.”

April 2013

admin — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:57:57 +0000

Francois Escalmel

April 5 – 28, 2013

Vernissage Friday April 5 / 7-10pm

Underpopulated

This new series of drawings on canvas vibrates with the free spirit of early surrealist collages.

Different styles cohabit: old cartoons shake hands with a certain fanzine’s naive stance. To me, everything is fair game, everything that can be manipulated into poetry!

These pictures are not pretty! The surface is coarse and you feel the rawness of the crayon, as if a child had drawn on a wall.

Otherwordly, the characters stumble between a sense of drama and low comedy. They act in deceptively narrative or simple stories. Don’t be fooled! In the great expanse of white where sometimes space itself disappears, metaphysics are sure to be at play!

François Escalmel

More and more my paintings have an air of re-routed fairy-tales. These made-up stories, inhabited by well-defined characters are given a contemporary spin and explore themes that I hope resonate with our current times. When I create a painting, I’m not looking for a coherent narrative. I prefer elusiveness, mystery. It’s a search for the point of reunion between the universal and the individual. In the complex experience of painting, an emotional sense is given, disclosed by a myriad of possible interpretations, an invitation extended to the viewer to create meaning.

Increasingly, I find myself looking to the recent past for the sources of my iconography. I’m tapping in the luscious brushstrokes of the golden age of illustration. I’m also searching for inspiration in the shaky patented magic of traditionally made cartoons (dessin animé). These are not merely appropriated but reenacted (with make-up and costumes). Tales, subverted, fractured, open-ended, re-formed, re-imagined, given a new life, a new voice to comment on contemporary events. And so the past merges with the present, high art and popular culture mesh, embrace and speak volumes!

This diversity of references is given an echo in the representation of space. Verisimilitude is at times breached. Gone is the box-shaped, unifying perspective. Objects, decors and sometimes even people lose their depths, tonality gives way to hard flat colors. Space folds and unfolds between the second and the third dimensions. While it is important for me to draw the viewer in, I also relish sometimes in cutting the illusion open: the artifice is exposed, believability dies and a few inches away is born again! At the core of these explorations are questions of existence and identity.

I’m a storyteller working with the absence of words. A grassroots revisionist of my personal history. With an attitude that oscillates between fascination and criticism, I strive to create dark and comical fables, that I hope, are relevant. Improbable combinations that emotionally ring true, affirmative expressions of the human experience. »

Biography:

Born in 1969, Ottawa, Canada. Lives and works in Montreal.

François Escalmel has held many successfull solo and group exhibitions in Europe, the United States and in Canada. In 2006, he had the honour and pleasure of having many pieces included in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. And in 2009, his work was featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO).

March 29

admin — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:59:08 +0000

Parade Amoureuse Feat. Vedal Pearl – A Gallery 115 Fundraiser
Friday March 29, 2013 – 8 PM – 11 PM
Pre-sale tickets $7 / at the door $10 (RSVP https://www.facebook.com/events/589922534354118/?fref=ts)

The University of Ottawa’s Gallery 115 invites you to our gallery fundraiser at La Petite Mort Gallery for a soirée of music and dancing. Mellow, indie rock band Vedal Pearl will be performing their songs from their recent album Between Fishermen, available for listening at http://vedalpearl.bandcamp.com/.

Buy your tickets online for Parade Amoureuse featuring Vedal Pearl! $7 dollars (+ $1.38 processing fee) in advance, and $10 at the door!! – http://galerie115.eventbrite.com/

BONUS: With purchase of each pre-sale ticket, your name will be entered into a raffle to win a special surprise prize (to be announced shortly!)

Poster thanks to Betty Liang

gallery115.ca

* * * * * *

Parade Amoureuse Feat. Vedal Pearl – A Gallery 115 Fundraiser
Vendredi 20 mars 2013, 20h – 23h
Billets: 7$ pré-vente / 10$ à la porte (RSVP https://www.facebook.com/events/589922534354118/?fref=ts)

La Galerie 115 de l’Université d’Ottawa vous invite à sa levée de fonds qui aura lieu à La Petite Mort Gallery. Une soirée de musique et de danse, animée par le groupe de rock indie Vedal Pearl, qui joueront des chansons de leur nouvel album Between Fishermen (disponible sur http://vedalpearl.bandcamp.com/). Les boissons alcoolisées seront à 5$ seulement!

Achetez vos billets pour Parade Amoureuse (avec Vedal Pearl) en ligne! Billets en pré-vente à 7$ (+ 1.38$ frais de traitement), 10$ à la porte!! - http://galerie115.eventbrite.com/

BONUS: Avec chaque achat de billet, vous entrez automatiquement dans un tirage au sort sur des cadeaux uniques (à révéler bientôt)

Affiche conçue par Betty Liang

gallery115.ca

March 22

admin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:44:47 +0000

Esther Simmonds-MacAdam / it is natural paintings

March 22 – 28, 2013 / Vernissage Friday March 22 / 7 – 10pm

is it natural attempts to deconstruct cultural narratives of white western womanhood. I interrogate expectations around femininity, gender identity, sexuality, family, ethnicity and politics in an attempt to introduce a more fluid and nuanced concept of what is ‘natural’.

My painting practice is preoccupied with re-visioning the contemporary moment. I engage various artistic processes to develop critical approaches to portrait and figure painting. My background in Women’s Studies and Equity Studies strongly informs my practice. I am interested in the tension between the scripts we circulate about ourselves and how they feel in lived experience.

Drawing upon the historical authority of oil painting as a source of western visual language and narrative, in my work I use oil paint to highlight the space between our stories and ourselves.

Biography:

Esther Simmonds-MacAdam is a visual artist based in Toronto. She received her MA in Sociology and Equity Studies at the University of Toronto and studied Painting and Women’s Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. Her work is exhibited throughout Canada and her practice has been profiled on the BRAVO television program Star Portraits. In 2012 she was artist in residence at The Banff Centre. Esther’s practice has been supported by grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

March 17

admin — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:30:21 +0000

COLLECTORS GROUP for La Petite Mort Gallery:

Sunday 17 March 2013 at 10 a.m.

Artist’s Talk by Meaghan Haughian

Beechwood Cemetery at 10 a.m.

La Petite Mort Gallery at 11 a.m.

The work of Meaghan Haughian will be featured in a month-long exhibition at La Petite Mort Gallery from 1-31 March 2013. The exhibition entitled, Winter Garden, recounts the journeys of life, emphasizing the relationship between our connection with the earth and our physical, emotional, and psychological fragility.

Meaghan’s work is also featured in a very moving installation, Practice Saying Goodbye, a personal meditation on life, death, and mourning, which is on permanent display at the Beechwood Cemetery.

Please join us for an Artist’s Talk by Meaghan Haughian, which will begin at the Beechwood Cemetery at 280 Beechwood Avenue at 10 a.m. and continue at La Petite Mort Gallery at 306 Cumberland Street at 11 a.m.

For more information about Practice Saying Goodbye, please go to Peter Simpson’s article:http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/12/05/death-in-a-cemetery/.

For more information about Winter Garden, please go to: http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/march-2013/.

For more general info on the Collectors’ Group, please contact:

Julie Hodgson

Development Maven

La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa

julieh.lpm@gmail.com

March 16

admin — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 20:54:11 +0000

La Petite Mort Gallery & SPAO present

UNSEEN: THE SPACES WITHIN
Photography Group Exhibit
March 16 – 21, 2013
Vernissage Sat March 16 / 7 – 10pm

UNSEEN is an annual exhibition of photographs by students at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO), curated by Guy Bérubé / La Petite Mort Gallery. UNSEEN features new and recent photographic works that have not been previously exhibited or presented.

UNSEEN: THE SPACES WITHIN focuses on a recurring visual theme in student portfolios this year: the evocation and definition of space in photography. This selection of images includes empty architectural spaces, spaces marked by human passage, the suggestion of inner space and more.

The objective of UNSEEN is to support and encourage student photography, and to introduce new photographic work to the community. La Petite Mort is pleased to introduce these previously unseen works produced by students at SPAO.

http://www.spao.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/events/466302263438918/?context=create#

Mondays

admin — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:12:44 +0000

QUEER TANGO @ LA PETITE MORT GALLERY.

SAY WHAT?

Queer tango classes every Monday at La Petite Mort Gallery (306 Cumberland street)! Join us now!

Winter schedule
- beginner class: 7pm-8:30pm until March 25 (15, student: 12$)
- practica: 8:30pm-9:30pm (included)

Spring schedule (from April 8)
- beginner class: 6:30pm-8pm (15$, student: 12$)
- advanced beginner class: 8pm-9:30pm (15$, student: 12$)
- practica: 9:30pm-10:30pm (included)

FOR MORE INFO, CONTACT THIERRY: Queer Tango Ottawa queertangoottawa@gmail.com

March 8

admin — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:54:19 +0000

CAITLYN CHISAMORE / FRAGILE BONDS

March 8 – 14, 2013

Vernissage Friday March 8 / 7 – 10pm.

Intimacy, attachment and comfort are explored as I attempt to unravel the human desire for love and companionship. These connections are drenched with emotional, physical and psychological implications that are adaptable and transformative.

We are born with an inherent yearning for affection that remains a comforting communicative gesture throughout our lives. Touch is a reoccurring theme in my work and I often use it to communicate an emotional affect through physical presence.

These paintings portray personal interactions with domestic tension and nostalgia that are both comforting and chaotic. I wish to capture a narrative approach to interpreting how familiarity relates to time and affection. These portraits, tangled hands and shadowed bodies describe relationships through layers of joy, sorrow, passion, struggle and perseverance.

March 2013

admin — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:57:09 +0000

Meaghan Haughian / Winter Garden

March 1 – 31, 2013

Vernissage Friday March 1st / 7-10pm

Northern winters are all-encompassing. They bring long, dark nights and wrap us in cold whiteness, encouraging plants and humans alike to lie dormant. Hibernation draws us inwards, an opportunity to burrow, reflect and regenerate. In springtime, energetic buds magically reappear. The earth’s annual cycle of renewal reflects the human journey through birth and death, joy and sorrow, warmth and frigidity. The concept of seasonal growth and repair serves as the backdrop upon which these collaged drawings have developed.

After a few years primarily exploring objects and space, this series marks my deliberate return to the female figure. Now, however, she shares the stage with her surroundings: I have placed her in a vast northern landscape to observe what will happen. My interest lies in the relationships between interior/exterior and private/public, specifically as they relate to the female character’s identity. How does she respond to the outside world and how does it – the landscape, the garden – respond to her?

Winter Garden explores how we are shaped, and sometimes overcome, by our environment. These scenes recount the journeys of life, emphasizing the relationship between our connection with the earth and our physical, emotional and psychological fragility. The figure exists in her landscape, merging and separating. Clothing and other props serve both as protection and as a barrier. Snow and ice glisten and envelop. Flowers, trees and roots flourish and decay. Winter garden is a hopeful paradox: plant a seed in the snow and watch it grow.

- Meaghan Haughian, January 2013

Meaghan Haughian combines paint, photographs, collage, text and found objects to explore the experiences and emotions that we share collectively as human beings but often experience in isolation. She merges real and imagined narratives in an ongoing search for links between life’s contradictions and dualities. Meaghan earned her BFA (Printmaking & Photography) from Mount Allison University. She is a grant recipient and her work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the Ottawa Art Gallery, the City of Ottawa and the National Art Centre’s French Theatre.

February 15

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:51:28 +0000

SNOWBLOWER 2013

PRESENTS

NINA ARSENAULT / LOVE LETTERS TO ANTHONY

ALSO: MATT MIWA / PERFORMANCE ART

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 15, 2013 / 7 – 11PM

NINA ARSENAULT:

Nina is a Toronto based multi-disciplinary artist. She has worked in live performance, video art, photography, writing and popular national media to explore her continuing real life physical and psychic transformations. These performances and self-objectifications do much more than document her transsexual transition and the 60+ surgical procedures she has undergone in an unreasonable and heroic quest for beauty and femininity. They confront the audience with uneasy questions about the power of the image to transform reality, the interrelatedness of the body and the spirit, and the radical potentialities of womanhood. Furthermore, Nina’s work illuminates surprising paradoxes about the pains, pleasures privileges and powers she has taken from reinventing and embodying archetypes like the phallic woman, the empty vessel, woman as object, woman as art, and the sacred whore.

Her plays The Silicone Diaries and I was Barbie have travelled nationally to sold out houses and critical raves. Her performance art pieces (40 Days + 40 Nights; Working Towards a Spiritual Experience, Ophelia/Machine and Narcissism Will Heal the Sick –OR– For Every Time You Shattered Me I Made Myself Again) have been called “a spiritual gift” and “as stunning as they are ruthless.”

In 2012, Intellect Book published TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work, edited by Judith Rudakoff, a scholarly exploration of her life and art by 13 international artists and critics.

Nina’s video art collaborations (Plane of Immanence, Guadalajara Mexico City, Oh Superstar) have shown internationally.

She is currently developing a new theatre piece, as an Artist-in-Residence at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, called The Raping of Cleopatra / Love Letters for Anthony.

Her work has been called “profoundly moving,” “absolutely unforgettable,” “brutally honest,” and “as stunning as it is ruthless.”

PERFORMANCE STATEMENT:

Love Letters for Anthony

Very simply the most beautiful man I have ever met.
Confided in me your most violent stories.
Laughed at my accomplishments. Laughed at me!
Told me I was lost in fantasies of self-importance.
Winced at my make-up and wigs.
Trained me with punches that knocked the breath out of my body.
Stated simply and knowingly that you would make me into your personal whore.
You raped me, and I thanked you for it.
*
In the mirror.
*
I didn’t know I could be so beautiful.
My eyes were open so wide.
You said I was perfect.
I never had to try with you.
You called me an “addiction.”
*
The only thing which brings relief from your absence are memories of you.
I can feel you inside me.
You are in my mind telling me things.
Phrases I have heard you speak and also new rampages of abuse that could only come from you.
You are watching me from somewhere.
But it is horrible when you are not looking.
My body will not stop shaking.
Our moments together are happening to me all at the same time.
After you cut me off I was committed to The Centre for Mental Health and Addictions’ Crisis Control Centre on a Form 1.
A 72 hour suicide watch.
The drugs the doctor gave me only make things worse and better at the same time.
One of the nurses gave me paper and a pen so I could write.
*
If you could see me now, you would see how new I am again.
Anthony.
For all of the manipulations and our treacheries. You are my greatest love.
Nina.
March, 2005.

***

MATT MIWA:

Having spent his adolescence as a mediocre gymnast, Matt Miwa turned to performance art to find some good times and peace. In gymnastics, it was the double flipping that was too much for him; he lost himself in the air and fell a lot. Looking back, he can see there were too many desires to contend with while twirling all about. Womanhood was up there, so was rage, longing and all the sexiness he could not embody on the ground. (He wasraised in the suburbs) Still, the gymnastics was useful in that he learned the power of his muscles, flexed in great tension and moving at great speed.

Nowadays in performance, where the pace is more his own, he can float up there again, to bring things down. Always he is after Amy Winehouse, (with whom he shares a birthday) but at La Petite Mort Gallery, it will be Elizabeth Taylor…Matt’s performance practice is a marriage between his gymnastics training, his need and love for drag as well as a yearning to reach a spiritual wholeness. His other work includes short narrative video and theatre acting. Matt has been based in Ottawa for the last 11 years.

Snowblower is:

A festival that takes in all different aspects of our lives – for men who like men
A festival “umbrella” for a series of pre-existing community events for gay / bi / trans and other men who like men
A chance for local organizations to get the word out about their activities and recruit new members
A chance to link your organization with the lives of gay / bi / trans and other men who like men
An easy promotion opportunity for your organization to showcase what you can offer in the community: we supply the promotion, space and attention while you supply the activity

The festival prides itself in celebrating male sexuality and is a proudly sex positive, inclusive festival.

The essentials

Snowblower 2013 will be held from Thursday, February 7 to Sunday, February 17 in Ottawa. Events during the festival will include workshops, parties and cultural events.

Festival Objectives:

Snowblower aims to fulfill a maximum of the following long-term objectives:

Reduced rates of HIV infection among gay men
Reduced rates of STIs in gay men
Decreased social isolation in gay men
Increased community participation in HIV prevention and other wellness initiatives by gay men
Improved conditions around the process of coming out for gay men of all ages and cultures
Increased participation in the gay community by HIV+ gay men
Increased engagement of gay men in their own wellness
Increased self-esteem in gay men

History of the festival

Snowblower has been held annually since the first Snowblower festival in 2007. Since the beginnings of the festival the event has been proudly hosted by the AIDS Committee of Ottawa and continued as a major community event.

The festival began as a response to research identifying a community need for events that cater to gay men’s holistic health and wellbeing. The festival aims to meet these needs through a diverse range of activities that allow men to share, explore and socialize.

Audience demographics and projected attendance

Thousands of individuals will be invited to Snowblower through direct marketing and online social marketing.

The Ottawa gay community is especially sensitive to support from businesses and organizations and will direct purchasing decisions towards those businesses providing support to the community. The Ottawa gay community includes influential decision makers in the public and private sectors

Speak to us

Reach Nick Valela at (613) 238 5014 ext. 255. / Mens.health.project@aco-cso.ca / 251 Bank Street, Suite 700 / Ottawa ON K2P 1X3

February 14

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:17:14 +0000

Hi everyone,

On behalf of the LPM Collectors’ Group, I am thrilled to invite you to a special Valentine’s Day presentation of the film, “Herb and Dorothy,” which will be screened at the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Boardroom on Thursday 14 February 2013 at 7 p.m.

“Herb and Dorothy” tells the extraordinary love story of a postal clerk and a librarian, Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means.

In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, the Vogels quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb’s salary to purchasing art they liked, they collected guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Their collection included works by Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lawrence Weiner, Julian Schnabel, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, and Lucio Pozzi, among others.

“Herb and Dorothy” provides a unique chronicle of the world of contemporary art from two unlikely collectors, whose shared passion and discipline defies stereotypes and redefines what it means to be a patron of the arts.

The annual membership fee for the LPM Collectors’ Group is $100/year for adults and $25/year for students, and members are encouraged to bring a guest at no extra cost. If you know of anyone who would like to join the group, please ask them to contact me.

If you have any questions about the screening of “Herb and Dorothy” or about any upcoming events, please let me know.

Thank you and best wishes,

Julie Hodgson

Development Maven

La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa

julieh.lpm@gmail.com

February 8

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:16:14 +0000

2013

LA PETITE MORT présente / presents

STREET HEART

Expo collective | Group Exhibit

Mademoiselle Alizarine / Pascale Beaudoin

Anne-Marie La Lionne / Guillaume Perreault / YUGZ

8 au 14 février 2013 / Vernissage vendredi 8 février / 19 h à 22 h
February 8-14, 2013 / Vernissage Friday, February 8 / 7-10 pm

Illustration : Guillaume Perreault / Démarche – Statement : José Lafleur

DÉMARCHE ARTISTIQUE :

Vue d’en haut, le centre-ville n’est-il pas en soi un cœur qui bat, un micro-organisme vivant où tout est calculé : les trottoirs ramifiés, les rues veineuses, les artères névralgiques où voitures globuleuses y circulent, pulsions et électrochocs [de cultures, de genres, de classes sociales] y règnent. Une architecture à l’équilibre fragile, un art de vivre. La ville vibre au rythme de ses habitants, de ses créateurs. L’art insuffle vie, couleurs et passions, soulève questionnements, remises en question et débats de société.

Lors du Festival de l’Outaouais Émergent 2012, une rencontre impromptue entre un galériste et des jeunes créateurs, a donné naissance à un projet d’exposition collective. Cinq artistes de la région, ayant survécus à la dernière FOÉ du monde, nous présentent donc leur vision de l’art au cœur de la ville.

STATEMENT:
Seen from above, downtown is a beating heart, a living microorganism where every inch is calculated: streaming boardwalks, venous streets, neuralgic arteries where globular cars roam freely; urges and electroshocks [of cultures, styles and social classes] overrule. A fragile architecture, an art of living. The city vibrates to its habitants and creators’ rhythm. Art gives life, injects colors and encourages passion. Art raises questions, leads to reassessments and generates public debates.

During the 2012 Festival de l’Outaouais Émergent, a spontaneous meeting between an art gallerist and young creators gave life to a group exhibit. Five regional artists who survived the last “FOÉ du monde” take the pulse of the city and introduce their vision of STREET HEART.

February 2013

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:55:22 +0000

Guillermo Trejo / New Works

“At The Other Side of Lake Erie”

February 1 – 24, 2013

Vernissage Friday Feb 1st / 7-10pm

Statement

From September to November of 2012, I had the opportunity to do an art residency at Zygote Press in Cleveland, Ohio and work for an art organization called Young Audiences. As part of my residency, I taught at different inner city schools around Cleveland and produced the work for this exhibition. This opportunity gave me the chance to focus on printmaking and to experience life in the Midwest. Watching a Browns football game, seeing Obama up close and walking through the metal detectors in the elementary schools are just some of the experiences I could have never imagined…At the Other Side of Lake Erie, refers not only to a geographical location, but also to the cultural differences between Canada and the USA through the eyes of a Mexican.

Print media has particular qualities, it can be a functional product (advertisement, poster) or seen as an artistic work. This duality allows printmaking to be an open space for artistic and conceptual research through the creation of aesthetically pleasing works or by the exploration of the techniques involved in printmaking. For example, relief prints, silkscreen and letterpress have been an indispensable part in the socio-political landscape for the last 100 years. Print media is not only a system of communication but also the medium that creates and shapes ideas and consequently our reality.

In my work, I investigate the uses and history of printmaking. I am interested in exploring how the printmaking process is related to the way we understand politics and social issues. There is a particular quality of printmaking that is created through reproduction. In my artistic practice, I develop the complete editions as the material for the creation of a work, as the generator for installation works. My practice demonstrates the creation of the interactive nature where the quality of reproduction and the diffusion of ideas are evident. I explore the conceptual quality of printmaking and how this media has infinite possibilities of exploration.

January 25

admin — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:47:04 +0000

No Cure for this Condition: Collected works of G. Elliott Simpson

January 25 – 31, 2013 / Vernissage Friday Jan 25 / 7 – 10pm

My work is often very personal for me and speaks to my own experience. While it’s fair to say that ‘desire’ figures in to the images I make, I think it is true also to say that the desire I am retracing is a memory – of someone lost, or an unrequited something never attained. I am more haunted by the ‘characters’ in my photographs than I am ‘mused’ by the models I’ve used to portray them. But through these beefcake models, I’ve remade those characters from my past as mythic, desirable, iconic greek figures, comic book superheroes, suffused with some representational ideas about power and pleasure. Depravity and violence are there too, because so much of my memory has been tainted by a bitterness I feel about how I’ve been wounded, or perhaps a sadness at the losses endured.

Beyond these personal issues that infuse my work, I’m intrigued in a broader sense by how people transform themselves, and how others experience that transformation. It seems to me such transformation involves as much a self-deception as it does any expression of faith. People think themselves capable of all sorts of acts that are not possible. There is only so much a person can experience in the immediacy of one’s existing body, and it seems to me that any further awareness there is to gain must come through distortions to, and at the expense of, the regular order of ourselves – so that to break out of yourself, you must be willing to break yourself. Maybe that’s just a complicated way of saying that in order to move forward we have to evolve in to something more than what we are now, and also too, we’re going to have to be willing to pay a price for that advancement.

January 11, 2012

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 23:07:15 +0000

Be Not Still

Vernissage: January 11th, 2013

Curated by Adèle Brazeau-Feeley

Featuring 3 new emerging artists:

Christopher Comeau, Hannah Nicholls, and Ruth Stewart-Patterson

January 11th – January 17th, 2013

The importance of the relationship between water and humanity is ever increasing. It has the power to effect lives on a mass scale as can be witnessed by the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, or the impending melting of the polar ice caps. This relationship can take dangerous forms exemplified by the rising awareness of the detrimental effects BPA in plastic water bottles. Whether for consumption or pleasurable purposes, like canoeing during a camping trip, the relationship between water and how humans use water differs depending on the circumstances. Thus it is appropriate, living within a country scattered with lakes and surrounded by three oceans, to ask these artists to explore and consider the unique relationships they have with water. As a result, these artists dived into the theme to explore the familiar and the unexpected.

Christopher Comeau
medium: photography

C. Comeau began making photographic images with a Kodak brownie in 1956. A father’s professional darkroom nurtured a lifelong exploration of light to create aesthetic forms. With time, early creative attempts garnered recognition in various competitions in Canada and an exhibition in Lahr, Germany (1988) after winning the Canadian Forces Photo Competition for the third time. This view of creating images was shared with new photographers in Creative Photography Workshops, offered in 2001 and 2003. > Often void of human form Comeau’s images seek to find elegance and insight through precisely blended compositions that interweave mankind’s presence with the splendour of nature. The “water” images offer triptych and lone images that explore this vital fluid in its forms of air, water and ice.

Hannah Nicholls
medium: painting and mixed media

I have always been driven by an innate urge to create, and to make tangible my feelings and observations that bubble forth on a daily basis. The challenge I attempt to overcome during this process is to translate these personal elements into something collectively identifiable, and open to subjective interpretations.

My diverse background in sculpture, textiles, and painting has resulted in a tendency to explore the possible relationships between and among different mediums. Certain attributes have a tendency to reoccur throughout my work including a sense of whimsy, delicacy, and vulnerability.

For my current series I have chosen to delve into the ethereal and nostalgic scenery of the Canadian East Coast. Incorporating my Newfoundland heritage, these works have taken on a playful quality as I attempt to interpret the memories of my childhood, embracing their exaggerations and mystic qualities. >

Ruth Stewart-Patterson
medium: photography

Color, light and form are three things that I always focus on when I take photographs. I have never really worked with water before and I wanted to see how I could integrate my three favorite aspects. The fact that a single element can change the physical property of things (a drop of food coloring, the form a toy) is a phenomenon that is very intriguing. The approach I have decided to use is purely experimental. I used food coloring as my main subject because you can clearly see how the water moves and shifts things around like two people dancing and intertwining with each other. The challenge of working with time was also very intriguing for it is very important. You have to capture each moment, for every second, the aesthetics of the subject changes. Finally, I find it very intriguing how water changes things and makes things that more beautiful, or for that matter, that more ugly, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Things that are ugly are sometimes the most intriguing and bring out the most emotion. All I know is that water works in magical ways.

Nina Arsenault

admin — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:02:13 +0000

Nina Arsenault is a Toronto based multi-disciplinary artist. She has worked in live performance, video art, photography, writing and popular national media to explore her continuing real life physical and psychic transformations. These performances and self-objectifications do much more than document her transsexual transition and the 60+ surgical procedures she has undergone in an unreasonable and heroic quest for beauty and femininity. They confront the audience with uneasy questions about the power of the image to transform reality, the interrelatedness of the body and the spirit, and the radical potentialities of womanhood. Furthermore, Nina’s work illuminates surprising paradoxes about the pains, pleasures privileges and powers she has taken from reinventing and embodying archetypes like the phallic woman, the empty vessel, woman as object, woman as art, and the sacred whore.

Nina’s video art collaborations (Plane of Immanence, Guadalajara Mexico City, Oh Superstar) have shown internationally.

She is currently developing a new theatre piece, as an Artist-in-Residence at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, called The Raping of Cleopatra / Love Letters for Anthony.

Her work has been called “profoundly moving,” “absolutely unforgettable,” “brutally honest,” and “as stunning as it is ruthless.”

Available as muse, model for photography & paintings, video, and live performances.

January 2013

admin — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:11:12 +0000

La Petite Mort Gallery presents

The Visitors – Aliens, Ghosts & Saints

Group Exhibit Curated by Missy Marston

January 4 – 27, 2013

Vernissage Friday January 4 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy

Proudly Sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM

Statement

The Visitors – Aliens, Ghosts & Saints

People see aliens (or saints, or angels, or ghosts.) This is a fact. They see them. Do they exist in the world that is not filtered through their individual psychologies? It doesn’t matter. Not really. What matters is this: when the chips are down, when all possible solutions are abandoned, when the human mind cries uncle, it can turn to magic. There is something about this that I find reassuring.

In bringing together The Visitors, I invited some of my favourite Ottawa artists to explore this theme: Karina Bergmans, Natalie Bruvels, Jeremiah & Joshua Degrandpre, Peter Shmelzer and Guillermo Trejo. I was looking for work in a variety of media and for artists who were accomplished, but not afraid to be ridiculous. The show will feature paintings in oil and acrylic, fabric sculptures, prints and photos. All of the work has been created specifically for this show. It is crazy, varied and beautiful.

The Vernissage on January 4th will feature readings from local writers on the theme of visitation.

Notes on participants

Karina Bergmans’ uses fabric to create fantastic creatures, sculpture and her own clothing line (KBergmans.com). See www.kaleidoscopeart.com

Natalie Bruvels attacks paintings like a wild beast. Her images of women and babies are shocking and beautiful. See www.nataliebruvels.com

Jeremiah and Joshua Degrandpre are brothers and painters. Jeremiah is one of the most talented painters in Ottawa – he brings magic to every subject he takes on.

Peter Shmelzer paints in oils. His technique is flawless, almost photographic, and he is an expert at riding the edge between humour and horror. www.petershmelzer.com

Guillermo Trejo’s an artist and a scholar. He is a highly-skilled print-maker, whose work is full of power and menace. www.trejoguillermo.com

Missy Marston’s novel, The Love Monster, was recently published by Véhicule Press. It is about divorce, motherhood, and alien visitation. She has been called “an irreverent Canadian” by Commentary Magazine and Margaret Atwood says she “sure has chutzpah”. www.thelovemonsternovel.blogspot.ca

December 2012

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:16:15 +0000

La Petite Mort Gallery presents

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC goes GHETTO

December 7 – 30, 2012

Vernissage December 7 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Bic Mac Daddy

Proudly Sponsored by CKCU 93.1 FM

ALL MAPS ARE $300 EACH.

Statement:

National Geographic has helped to shape many of our personal perceptions of global identities throughout our youth, as well as into our adult lives. This connection is complex and evolving, and in time for the holiday season one cannot help but feel certain closeness to the global community at large. La Petite Mort has acquired several rare National Geographic maps, and these collectors’ items have been selected for an interactive artistic project. We’ve invited 25 artists to participate by making a selection – each artist will be given the opportunity to choose from an array of authentic vintage National Geographic maps, which range in years from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. These maps vary in size, colorization, detail, and even smell. They depict such exotic and historical places as the following: Historic and Scenic Reaches of the Nation’s Capital (Washington), India and Burma, Lands of the Bible Today, Europe and the Near East, New Zealand, Historical Map of the United States, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Germany and its Approaches, Countries of the Caribbean, Southwest Asia, the Pacific Ocean, California, and many more!

We ask you to imagine how you saw the world in your youth, what images or feelings were inspired by your interactions with National Geographic in the past? You are called to express a way of perceiving based on memory and recollection – how did we envision the world as children? How has this changed? The sentimentality one may feel towards National Geographic has formed how we interpret the world. We ask that you then put these recollections back onto the maps that inspired them in the form of an artistic piece. Once all the maps have been transformed, they will be hung in La Petite Mort. The end result will be a unification of the world, as the maps will be used to cover an entire wall. Our goal is to pull the world together using the medium of art. – Text by Laura Carusi, 2012

Mário Vitória

admin — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:09:38 +0000

Mário Vitória’s exuberant images attach to his prodigious imagination which allows him to create the most extensive narratives on a single canvas, with eminent dominion of metaphor, always bordering on the critic of the Human theatre.

This artist’s work is, thus, of an admirable depth, exhibiting complementarity by merging opposite forces, as if our origin is inevitably both Good and Evil.

Notwithstanding that Mário’s references range from Disney to Alfred Hitchcock, placing ingenuity, melancholy, aggression and even the grotesque in the same scene, always resulting in a clear violence of existence, as if existence, by definition, is dependent or born out of violence.

The irony in how this is assumed is accentuated on the present exhibit, above all on the canvas of dead nature being invaded by recognizable shapes from the childhood imaginary, mixing classic features with deep pop culture, between what might be immediately understood as a relationship between art and non-art, or minor art.

The direct citation that the artist makes of these cartoon characters gains a fundamental stress, since it is from them that preconceived notions of what a painting (of what is art?) are destroyed, treated as a contamination of the canvas from the unprepared quotidian of childhood.

This intermission of such figures on the canvas is the sarcastic mean which Mário found to denunciate the decline of good will, as if a disgraceful fate was hopeless, as if disgracing was the following prerogative of contemporary society and as if these values were already forced upon us by infancy games and plays, through that world of toys and images which detained us so lengthy and innocently in the tender years of our lives.

In conclusion, everything lives in conflict, in a state of fundamental crisis which evokes all and all defends, under penalty of perishing in such an ephemeral participation in life. Everything survives – ironic condition of being alive, survival -, like in a game where the body, the character, the quirk, the misfortune, or any other premise can rebel itself against our own viability or the viability of our intents, to hamper or impede us in our tracks.

Before Mário Vitória’s canvas all things in the world, and all stories, can be found, through his amazing capacity to leave clues without leaving them too clear in the open, without ever removing the possibility of the viewer to create as well, which is the same as saying that he leaves enough room for each and everyone of us to identify with till exhaustion, as it happens with great works, obviously.

Valter Hugo Mãe, October 2009

Born in Coimbra, in 1983. Lives and works in Porto.

Formação Académica

2009/2010 – Masters degree in Education in Visual Arts at Psychology and Education Sciences University of Porto.
Thesis name: Writing on the back of the leaves.

2006/2009 – Masters degree in Practices and Theories of Drawing at Fine Arts University of Porto.
Thesis name: Laughter and Violence in the artistic practices of drawing.

2006/2007 – Specialization in Practices and Theory of Drawing at Fine Arts University of Porto.

2005 – Erasmus mobility program, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Italy.

2001/2006 – Graduation in Painting at Fine Arts University of Porto.

1999 – Socrates mobility program, Lycée Leonardo Da Vinci, Lyon, France.

Artist represented by:

Ap’arte Galeria, Porto/Portugal (www.apartegaleria.com)
Galeria Neupergama, Torres Novas/Portugal
La Petit Mort Gallery, Ottawa/Canada (www.lapetitemortgallery.com)
5 Pieces Gallery, Berne/Switzerland (www.5piecesgallery.com)

Jan 15 – March 19

admin — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 01:42:17 +0000

Rekindling Creativity: The Artist’s Way

January 15 – March 19, 2013
Tuesdays, 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Location: La Petite Mort Gallery
10 sessions – 30 hours

Instructor: Tony Martins
Fee: $329.00
Level: Basic

Based on the immensely popular book The Artist’s Way, this course is a 10-week guided process of artistic self-discovery that will help students identify and overcome personal creative blocks for deeper and more free-flowing access to creative power.

Every creative person faces an evolving set of challenges, but the internal obstacles are by far the most difficult to overcome. In a 10-week program adapted from The Artist’s Way, students will share experiences of the individual growth they experience through use of daily journal writing, self-assessment exercises, and creative experimentation.

Recommended text: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Instructor: Tony Martins, tmartins693@gmail.com

As founder, editor, and creative director of Guerilla magazine Tony has collaborated with some of the country’s most talented artists, writers, photographers, and illustrators. Tony’s creative direction helped Guerilla magazine earn inclusion in the 2009 Applied Arts Advertising and Design Annual, taking top honours in the Complete Magazine Design category.

Tony earned multiple industry awards as a marketing creative both as a freelancer and while working with the McMillan marketing agency. As an educator, Tony has researched and lectured on topics including collaboration, creative journaling, and gender roles in popular culture. He has guest lectured extensively. Tony holds a master’s degree in language and professional writing from the University of Waterloo.

General Course Outline (subject to change)

Week 1 – Course overview; introduction to the text The Artist’s Way; introduction to the power of journal-writing; journal-writing exercises

Week 2 – The Basic Tools: intro to morning pages and sample exercise, intro to The Artist Date, signing of group “contract”

Week 3 – Identifying and overcoming Core Negative Beliefs; commitment to risk-taking and “looking bad”; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 4 – Deeper trust in Creative Self; dealing with criticism; dealing with guilt; Detective Work exercise; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 5 – Dealing with resistance to change; buried dreams exercise; reading deprivation tool; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 6 – The Need to make Money!;blaming money; freedom to be silly and to destroy; counting exercise; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 7 – Finding genuine creative interest; listening skills; battling perfectionism; jealousy exercise; archaeology exercise; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 8 – Block busters; it’s all about fear; Creative u-turns; Courage and the War of Art; block-blasting exercises; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 9 – Nurturing creative autonomy; selfish gifts to yourself; continually deepen the mystery; coping with success; the Zen of Sports; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Week 10 – Keeping the faith; nurturing trust; Escape Velocity and last-minute tests; reports from the field; tasks from text with volunteer sharing

Registration: Please contact the School of Photographic Arts

(613) 562-3824

admin@spao.ca