Thank you for including a photo of one of my tapestries in the “fabric arts” article accompanying the Judy Chicago piece (Fall 2009). Now to my quibbles, both of which swirl around definitions. What I do is woven tapestry, not stitchery. Tapestry is a weft-faced weave with a design made by the use of discontinuous threads. And then the British use the term for needlepoint and the Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidery, so it becomes very confusing. Also, as an umbrella term, “fabric arts” is outdated. Fibre arts is a more inclusive term and can encompass weaving, surface design (another relatively new term) felting, installations, paper, stitching, wearable art, and so on.

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Thank you for your intelligent, well-considered article The Blockbuster Effect (Spring 2010). However, having created the Warhol performance at the Glenbow for its 2002 Pop Revolution exhibition, and expanding upon it for both the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2004 and for The Factory Project in Montreal in 2008, I must point out that this program involved far more than simply playing a “mascot.” The structured theatre performance I developed helped to contextualize Warhol’s life within a narrative I would like to think was engaging, accessible and creative for museum visitors, as well as enhancing their ability to understand the works in the exhibition.

This letter is in regards to some errors in the review of The Works Art & Design Festival (Fall 2009). The first has to do with the scope of the festival, described as “Northern Alberta’s biggest art festival”. With over 200,000 visitors, more than 500 participating visual artists, and 18 contributing arts organizations, The Works is justifiably the largest outdoor, free art and design festival in North America. Second, in relation to the layout of the main festival site, the review suggests that art is hard to come by on Sir Winston Churchill Square. In 2009, exhibits and installations could be found on The Works giant gateways at the South and North entrances, on the east lawn of the site, inside the Works Gallery in the centre of The Art Market, and in The Works Big Tent, a 45' x 90' outdoor weatherproof venue, which held two major festival exhibits and saw 10,000 visitors in 13 days. There were also demonstrations, workshops and events throughout the festival, including the MADE Street Furniture Competition, The Portable Festival of Portable Art, and Raku firing demonstrations for the 2009 HEAT theme.

INTERNATIONAL SHOW EXPANDS BEYOND SCULPTURE

With most of the monumental public sculptures in place around the city, the Vancouver Biennale is set to move into phase two, which will fill spaces with new media and performance art. The second Biennale (the first, in 2005 - 2007, resulted in the city acquiring five important pieces of public sculpture) the scope of the show has expanded well beyond its original mandate, and has become more interactive and widespread.

Among the trendy condos and hotel resorts at Whistler village is a cedar and glass complex built into a landscaped hillside, housing the cultural and historical treasures of two First Nations groups, the Squamish and the Lil’wat. “The two nations have overlapping territory in the Whistler area, and there were on-going disputes,” says operations coordinator Josh Anderson. “In the end, we decided to build a centre together.” He adds that combining two First Nations groups under one roof is a unique concept.

The first thing often said about Pat Strakowski’s highly personal, myth-laden sculpture is that it dwells somewhere in the realm of folk or outsider art. But as curator and art historian Andrew Oko shows in this colourful book about the Calgary-born artist, appearances can be deceiving. This is a fascinating example of an artist who has reaped the rewards of a family heritage rich in the folkloric traditions of Ukraine.

Strakowski is also an original, making fanciful creatures out of the most elementary of materials — papier-mé— painted and sometimes exuberantly embellished with fabric, beads, small trinkets and found objects. I enjoyed Oko’s insights into Strakowski’s work, but wondered if there could have been room for some discussion about where it fits in the context of contemporary Canadian art. Perhaps that mainstream is still too narrow a channel for the likes of her.

From the series The Unheralded Artists of B.C., this second volume highlights the careers of three artists who emerged in the 1950s and ‘60s. Only one, the Hungarian-born Frank Molnar, is still alive today. Mid-century modernists — LeRoy Jensen belonged to the Victoria-based Limners group — who were overtaken by the stampede of contemporary art trends, they share a similar place in the creative history of B.C. The very definition of “artist” changed irrevocably in their time.

In his perceptive introduction, Max Wyman describes them as “three examples of bloody-minded, damn-the-torpedoes creative individualism”. This insular paradigm, without any regard to the ongoing discourse on art, is less admired and less noticed by critics, curators, academics and large public institutions. Still, this handsome book, filled with artwork and photographs, is part of a commendable effort to address the “absences” and “others” that exist in every community, region and place.

Jeff Chiba Stearns, who created a short animated film about his life in to-do lists, will receive an Emily Award from Vancouver’s Emily Carr University at this year’s convocation in May. Awarded annually to a distinguished alumnus, the Emily honours emerging artists who have reached important milestones early in their careers. A 2001 graduate of the Bachelor of Media Arts program, specializing in Film Animation, Stearns tells the story of his life before and after graduation in the film Yellow Sticky Notes. It’s a fast-paced, six-minute whirl through dreams, reality, the mundane and the monumental, with detours into politics and world events, all told in the margins of to-do lists. Based in Kelowna and Vancouver, Stearns’ film, which has screened at more than 70 international film festivals, was one of the first shorts acquired by Youtube’s Screening Room, where it has since attracted more than 1.2 million hits.

Before the Group of Seven, painters and photographers from the Canadian Pacific Railway artist pass program defined Canada’s art, and its emerging sense of itself. The program began in 1888, so they may be Canada’s first school.

“Canadian artists of the time...attempted to give life to a poetic expression they perceived in the landscape,” writes curator Roger Boulet. The CPR had its own corporate agenda, there was the smudge of imperialism and colonialism, and the fact that the artists, schooled in picturesque tradition, were kind of old-fashioned. But despite all these insights, there was still a concerted and substantial body of work made along this “new highway to the Orient”.

Published in conjunction with the Vistas exhibition last year at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, the book takes a journey through scenic western Canada. A large portion of the trip concerns the treacherous mountain views of Alberta and B.C., making Vistas particularly insightful into the early history of Canadian mountain art. Contributor Terry Fenton takes an engaging look at the mountains’ first painters (the Chinese) and why large-scale painting of this type declined in the late 19th century. Generously illustrated and beautifully designed, Vistas sets a new standard in the study and appreciation of this largely overlooked accomplishment.

In 1969, Robert Davidson carved and raised the first totem in 90 years on Haida Gwaii. It was a monumental achievement, setting the course for his life as an artist — as a painter, printmaker, jewellery designer, and carver of masks and totems. This year, Davidson’s work was honoured by the Canada Council for the Arts. He was awarded a 2010 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Descended from a family of great carvers, and taught by his father and uncle, Davidson began carving at the age of 13, and in the late 1960s worked briefly in the studio of Bill Reid before leaving to study at the Vancouver School of Art. His work is found in public collections, including those of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Davidson was among eight recipients of 2010 GGs, including Andre Forcier, Rita Letendre, Tom Sherman, Gabor Szilasi, Claude Tousignant, Ilona Thorkilsson, and Terry Ryan, who was honoured for his work as the long-time director of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, and Dorset Fine Arts in Toronto.

A Calgary-based public art project has repurposed an older Calgary-based public art project, resulting in one of the first instances of recycled materials put to use in outdoor banners. Bridge Works is a series of wholly handmade decorative banners on bridges over the Bow River, made by artists Marci Simkulet and Stefanie Wong. Using different repurposed materials, including recycled material from older bridge banners, the artwork incorporates textile techniques including knitting, felt-making and weaving. The work is commissioned by the City of Calgary’s Urban Design and Heritage Group, and is designed around specific historic and design contexts of each bridge. Simkulet is a Calgary-based graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, who has created works that knit unusual materials like copper and handmade paper. Wong, also an ACAD grad, works in textiles as well as wood, video, and stop-motion animation.

The city of St. Albert, Alberta has embarked on a project to restore a historic schoolhouse to transform it into a public educational and art space. Originally known as the Father Jan School, the Little White Schoolhouse was built in 1946 to accommodate growing post-World War II families. Its compact design was typical of prairie schoolhouses at the time, and is one of the few schools remaining from the era, which spurred the idea of the restoration. Though regular classes ended in the late 1980s, the school has been home to some continuing education classes, and once the $640,000 restoration is complete in 2011, it will host regular classes and public events.

In February, Amber-Dawn Bear Robe was appointed director of Urban Shaman in Winnipeg, an artist-run centre with a focus on contemporary Aboriginal art — installation, film and video, photography, and painting. Originally from Siksika, Alberta, Bear Robe is finishing an MA in art history at the University of Arizona. She studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and completed curatorial internships at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Glenbow Museum, and the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre.

At the Kelowna Art Gallery, new executive director Nataley Nagy arrives in the Okanagan from her role as executive director of the Textile Museum of Canada, in Toronto. With previous directorships at the SAW Gallery in Ottawa, and the Art Gallery of Windsor, Nagy is a graduate of the Getty Museum Leadership Institute. She was instrumental in an expansion at the Art Gallery of Windsor, and in raising the profile of the Textile Museum.

While the popular sculpture show around the Vancouver Biennale is in full force, artists and curators in the lower mainland are looking for other ways to express themselves outdoors, moving their work in 2-D onto large, open spaces. Following on the success of the O Zhang show at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite space, the region has opened two new outdoor exhibition spaces, for projection and static art. In a partnership between the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, CBC, and JJ Bean (world’s greatest coffee place), Other Sights for Artists’ Projects debuts the first piece, Eric Deis’ Last Chance at the site, called THE WALL. The work looms over CBC Plaza in downtown Vancouver, an architecturally scaled photograph of a little house and a large condo building, evidence of a true-life stand-off between a resolute homeowner and the city’s inexorable construction frenzy.

A little further from downtown, the Surrey Art Gallery has launched an outdoor projection space for a rotating series of works. The venue, the 96-foot-wide Urban Screen, on the side of Surrey’s Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre, debuted with the screening of Glocal, a projection-based work created in the Gallery’s Tech Lab, using open source software, digital photography, and social networks. The summer show, July 3 to September 12, Checking in with your hotspots, examines the relationship between humans and traffic.

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, Parks Canada will embark on a Totem Tour, travelling back to Haida Gwaii with a historic 130-year-old totem pole. Carved in the late 1800s in Masset, on the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Raven Totem Pole was acquired by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1915, and transported to the train station in Jasper townsite, Jasper National Park. It stood there, part of the scenery, until 2009, when it was taken to Vancouver for restoration. This summer, the pole will be part of the Totem Train Experience, with Parks Canada and Via Rail bringing the totem on a viewing tour through Calgary and Edmonton, and back to Haida Gwaii, where it will be returned to the Haida people on June 21, National Aboriginal Day. In the meantime, master carvers in Haida Gwaii are carving a new totem for Jasper, which will be installed in the Park this summer, with the finishing decorative touches added on-site.

Contemporary Canadian craft received a gift of sorts during the 6th Cheongju International Craft Biennale — works from Canada were showcased in a special exhibition and program devoted to Canadian artists. This was no small matter. It was an invitation from a country with its own well-developed crafts tradition stretching back over a 5,000 year period, its artists honoured with a special title for outstanding contribution to Korean craft, and an official website (Korea.net) devoted to its craft heritage.

There’s a quiet, somewhat macabre sense of what’s left behind in the photographs of Alex Kisilevich, winner of the 2009 BMO 1st Art! Competition for the best art students in the country. The winning image, called Untitled (Legs), is a photograph of old fashioned prosthetic legs propped on a bench in a strangely ornate room. It’s from a series Kisilevich created called “…and then you die.” A student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Kisilevich was chosen from a field of students nominated by deans and instructors of post-secondary visual art programs from across Canada. Each institution nominates three students, and the BMO jury chooses one national winner, and one winner from each province and territory. Other 2009 winners included Andy Yang from the Alberta College of Art & Design, Michael Macri from the University of British Columbia, Quppa Jaw from Nunavut Arctic College, and Suzanne Hale from the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City.

Vancouver Island-based artist Arthur Vickers has spent the past three and a half years deciding how to make the most of an old-growth cedar pulled from a burn pile and reclaimed. His description of working with the wood involves several months of waiting for the right inspiration, and the spirit of the tree to reveal itself to him. In the end, Vickers created a piece of furniture fit for a prince or a politician — in this case Gordon Campbell, premier of British Columbia.

Raised in Tsimshian towns along the remote coast of B.C., Vickers now lives and works in Cowichan Bay, where he has his own gallery. He works in serigraph, sculpture, gold relief, glass and granite, red and yellow cedar. The desk, presented to the premier last fall, was designed and painted in the form of a traditional bentwood box, which in Coastal cultures has been used to keep treasures, and to tell stories.

Built last year over the course of six months, University of Alberta fine art professor Keith Harder has given a new focus to a bit of Canada’s key wartime history. His installation, Children of Icarus – Dereliction of Memory, was built in a farmer’s field near Nanton, south of Calgary. The town is home to the Nanton Lancaster Air Museum, with a mission to restore old fighter jets and bombers, and Harder was able to access the remains of 12 decaying Anson airplanes.

The Avro Anson was the workhorse of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, teaching airmen how to fly during World War II, but was obsolete as a combat plane even before the war broke out. Rescuing the planes for his installation, Harder wanted to spotlight a little-known aspect of Canadian military history. Measuring 100 yards across, the planes are set up in a carved compass rose pattern, easily visible to pilots flying over the site.

LOST WILLIAM KURELEK PAINTING MAKES A FORTUITOUS RETURN

There’s an odd sense of serendipity in the timing around Shaun Mayberry’s latest high-profile acquisition. The Winnipeg-based art dealer, one of the proprietors of Mayberry Fine Art, received an email from England in the middle of the night. It was the summer of 2008, and Mayberry checked the attachment — an image of a painting by William Kurelek that required an appraisal. The 1958 painting, King of the Castle, was one of the missing links in the artist’s catalogue, a masterwork that had long been thought lost, or at least very difficult to track down.

Victoria-based new media artist Jackson 2Bears joins seven other mid-career artists, in multiple artistic disciplines, given a 2009 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award by the Canada Council. A Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) artist with a track record of live performance and DJ work, 2Bears mixes critical Native sociological concepts with the sleekest modern technology. His multimedia work pulls from new music, video, and contemporary culture to remix Native stereotypes and transmit indigenous teachings. Worth $15,000 and awarded annually, the winners of the Lynch-Staunton award are chosen by peer review.

A Vancouver artist molds clay into collage

The two finalists for the 2009 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramists couldn’t have been more different. Both from British Columbia, one works on a grand scale, while the other works on the kind of collectible artifacts found in craft galleries and online artisan shops. Nelson-based ceramist and installation artist Ian Johnston has branched into huge, room-filling statements. Jasna Sokolovic, winner of the Shantz Award, given by the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario, is focused on encapsulating common memories in delicate objects and utilitarian vessels. A $10,000 prize given annually to an emerging ceramist (with a companion award for a glass artist), the Award supports travel, study, and mentorship.

Originally from Yugoslavia, but now working out of a studio on Vancouver’s Granville Island, Sokolovic creates tiles, vessels and objects that become surfaces for collage and sketchbook-style imagery. She has participated in residencies at The Banff Centre and at the Ceramic Research Centre in Denmark, and has exhibited her work in Canada, the United States, and Korea. Inspired by the colour and form of traditional Mexican ceramics, she plans to direct the award to further study in rural Mexico.

Painter Andrew Valko took home the 2009 Kingston Portrait Prize, winning $10,000 for his work Personal surveillance. Valko is an accomplished printmaker who studied in Japan, and he’s known particularly in western Canada for a series of photorealist portraits that capture private moments between subjects and technology, filtered through mirrors and reflective surfaces. In Personal surveillance, a teenage boy is lit only by the light from his handheld video camera, which he has trained on himself.

Awarded by the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, the Grand Prize is chosen by an invited jury, which in 2009 included Guelph-based art critic Robert Enright, Lily Koltun of the Portrait Gallery of Canada, artist June Anderson, and Eliza Griffiths of Concordia University. The Prize, given bi-annually as a program of the Kingston Arts Council in Kingston, Ontario, attracts hundreds of entrants from across Canada. About 30 finalists are chosen for an exhibition that travels across the country — in February through April 2010 the exhibition will be at the Art Gallery of Calgary.

Requiring 5000 square feet of open space and spanning 25 separate works consisting of 40-channel installation, audio and mixed-media dioramas, soundscapes, projections, mirrors, false walls, windows, lighting, surprise cut outs, and every other semblance of dreams brought to life, David Hoffos’ sprawling installation Scenes from a House Dream (2003 - 2008) challenges the viewer at every turn, and as it turns out, is an even greater challenge to tour.

Every summer for the past 24 years, The Works Art and Design Festival has taken over Edmonton’s downtown core with a spectrum of international art and design. Highlighting the work of fine artists at various stages of their careers in lobbies, basements, and hallways, The Works remains Northern Alberta’s biggest art festival. With the 2009 theme of "Heat", arts and crafts tents and a spacious beer garden cover most of the main area of Sir Winston Churchill Square in Edmonton. The art exhibitions can be found near the north end of the Square, tucked away to the side of the road.

Ian Wallace, a conceptual artist based in Vancouver, has been awarded one of two $50,000 Molson Prizes from the Canada Council for the Arts. Awarded annually to one recipient in the arts and one in social sciences, the prize recognizes outstanding achievement throughout an established career, and ongoing contribution to the arts and humanities in Canada. Winner of a 2004 Governor-General’s Award in Visual Art, Wallace taught for 16 years at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and evolved his art practice from minimalist sculptures and paintings to include work in photography and new technology, and has published criticism in catalogues, anthologies and magazines.

Opening with a show by fine art photographer O Zhang, the Vancouver Art Gallery has created an outdoor exhibition space for art in the city’s downtown core. Set at the base of the Shangri-La Hotel at Georgia and Thurlow Streets, Offsite will catch passers-by with sculpture, video, installation and photography, with rotating shows that change twice a year. Zhang’s Horizon (Sky) captures rural schoolgirls in the artist’s native China, in frames expanded to monumental proportions.

With the installation of Michael Zheng’s The Stop in Vanier Park and Charleston Park and Lithuanian artist Vladas Vildziunas’ Barbora outside Pacific Central Station, the 2009 – 2011 Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale officially kicked off in late summer. With plans to install 30 monumental outdoor works by international artists in 12 Vancouver neighbourhoods, Biennale organizers plan to expand on the last sculpture event (2005 – 2007). They have left six “legacy” works from the previous Biennale, and will add the 30 more through the fall. In the spring, organizers will add a new media component, with works in video, robotics, animation, and interactive technologies installed along the new Canada Line rapid transit system. The Biennale will also feature a new performance art aspect in 2010, with plans to draw viewers in to the possibilities of accessible, outdoor art, and engage the city through its Olympic year and beyond.

Members of the Coast Art Trust recently announced that that they have donated more than 100 works to the permanent collection of the University of Victoria’s Maltwood Museum. The Trust, set up in 2005 to collect groups of work by contemporary coastal B.C. artists — paintings, sculpture, collage, mixed media, and photography — has put together representation of three decades of work by 45 artists. Started by artists James Felter, Kal Opré, and Gregg Simpson, the collection includes work by Eldon Grier, Frank Perry, Sylvia Tait, and many others. The works will be kept as part of the Maltwood’s permanent collection, and will contribute to documenting the art of western B.C. in the second half of the 20th century.

A long-time resident of Winnipeg, Leo Mol left a lasting legacy to the city with the donation of a collection of 300 bronze sculptures and other works, many of which enhance the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden on the bank of the Assiniboine River. He was best-known for his immense bronzes — portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill, now in the Winnipeg garden, the sculpture of John Diefenbaker on Parliament Hill, and three bronzes of popes, installed in the Vatican. Originally from the Ukraine, Mol settled in Winnipeg in the 1940s and never left, reflecting the Manitoba landscape in the sketches and paintings he made in addition to the famous bronzes. Mol died in Winnipeg on July 4 at the age of 94.

If Indian summer days are expected, there are worse places to spend a long Thanksgiving weekend than Gabriola Island, off the coast of B.C. The vibrant island art community there plans an open house of more than 30 artist’s and artisan’s studios all over the island. Hosted by the Gabriola Arts Council, visitors can design their own studio tours, and see painters, photographers, potters, jewelers, weavers, and more October 10 to 12.

Four western Canadian artists and one two-person partnership have been shortlisted for the 2009 RBC Painting Competition. With a $25,000 grand prize (and two $15,000 honourable mention prizes) at stake, the competition recognizes the best emerging painters from across Canada. Juried by a panel of nine, including Vancouver artist Ken Lum, Nathalie de Blois, curator of contemporary art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and Benjamin Diaz of the Toronto gallery Diaz Contemporary, the winners will be chosen in early October. Among finalists from west, central and eastern Canada, the western shortlist includes Noah Becker of Victoria, Brenda Draney of Vancouver, Calgary’s Dave and Jenn, Ryan Peter of Vancouver, and Joseph Tisiga of Whitehorse.

A new project through the Department of Archeology at Simon Fraser University will reunite members of the western Arctic Inuvialuit people with cultural artifacts lost more than 150 years ago. Part of the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage project at SFU, researchers will visit Washington’s Smithsonian Institution to study the Inuvialuit pipes, tools and clothing in the Museum’s Arctic Studies Center collection. The elders’ examination of the more than 500 pieces in the collection will be recorded by researchers, expanding the knowledge of traditional craft and culture in the high Arctic. The artifacts were bought in the mid-19th century by Hudson’s Bay Company trader Roderick MacFarlane, and later became one of the founding collections of the Smithsonian. One of five recently launched projects that will explore exchange of knowledge in indigenous cultures around the world, the SFU researchers plan to create an interactive exhibition and school curriculum to share the work with the Inuvialuit.

Sculptor Liz Magor, an artist whose work consistently challenges interpretation and intellect, has been awarded the 6th annual Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. Awarded by the Vancouver Art Gallery and funded by the Audain Foundation, the $30,000 prize is given each year to an outstanding British Columbia artist. Over a 30-year career, Magor has shown across Canada and internationally, including participation in the Venice Biennale and Documenta, exploring form, material, and meaning. Hand-formed objects in a multitude of media take on layers of story and context in each of her complex installations.

With an announcement in early April, Simon Fraser University ratcheted up the buzz on its eagerly awaited new downtown Vancouver location. Built on the site of the historic Woodwards Department Store on West Hastings, the new School for Contemporary Arts will open its doors in January 2010. To get ready, the school has already scheduled a lineup of arts programs to fill its public spaces, including an inaugural performance written and directed by Canadian theatre guru Robert Lepage (see the schedule at sfuwoodwards.ca). Designed by Henriquez Partners, the School is part of a larger, Woodwards-site community development, and will house undergraduate programs in fine and performing arts, as well as multiple theatre, performance, and gallery spaces.

The MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina has just made a great hire, with the appointment of Stuart Reid to the position of Executive Director. A curator and writer originally from Scotland, since 2001 he has been Director and Curator of the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery in Owen Sound, Ontario, a small collecting gallery with a strong commitment to the collection and exhibition of both historical and contemporary Canadian art. Reid is currently President of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Galleries Association, and sits on the exhibitions committee of Toronto’s Textile Museum of Canada.

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria also welcomes a new Director and CEO – John Laughlin Tupper, most recently the Director of the Confederation Arts Centre in Charlottetown. An artist and grad of the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, Tupper has directed Canadian galleries including Winnipeg’s Plug-In and the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre.

Over in Vancouver, the recently opened Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art has appointed former Glenbow Museum CEO Michael Robinson as CEO. As part of the role, Robinson has been appointed Director of the Bill Reid Foundation, created in 1999 to preserve the work and legacy of seminal Northwest Coast artist and master carver Bill Reid.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery will keep a champion of Manitoba art and artists in the ranks with the appointment of Helen Delacretaz as Chief Curator. Beginning at the WAG in 1998, she has worked her way up to, most recently, Head of Exhibitions and Public Programs, bringing in popular international touring exhibitions and promoting the work of talented locals.

The Board of Directors of the Mendel Gallery in Saskatoon has made the first move toward a complete revitalization of the Gallery, throwing in a proposed name change while they’re at it. In early April they announced the intention to move to the city’s new River Landing development, on the south bank of the South Saskatchwan River, creating a new cultural district adjacent to the city’s new Persephone Theatre.

With a proposed price tag of $55 million, the Gallery is currently seeking Federal funding to complement committed funds already in place from the province and the city of Saskatoon. The idea behind the River Landing project, which will include some residential buildings, as well as dining, retail, and greenspace, is to create a cultural destination that will boost traffic to the Gallery substantially, helping to offset the cost of a purpose-built project.

The Mendel had already outgrown its current location, and discussions had been ongoing about whether to renovate the existing building, or to move. Mendel Executive Director Vincent Varga says that the original expansion plan, developed in 2001, had already become insufficient for the Gallery’s growth.

As part of this move forward, the Gallery will be renamed The Art Gallery of Saskatchewan, maintaining the current name with a Mendel Gallery inside the new building. The Gallery was originally named for its benefactor, local meatpacking magnate and art collector Fred Mendel.

In 1996, artists Dean and Fran Francis embarked on an ambitious project just 30 miles south of Dean’s original family farm. “We just wanted to be out here, have a studio and paint,” he says about their home and work space, Sagebrush Studios, right by the Alberta boundary west of Leader, Saskatchewan. When his hometown church in Mantario came up for sale, he bought it and moved it south onto his 80 acres. It’s now one of three churches on the property devoted to art-making and exhibition.

German-born photographer Birthe Piontek is always looking for the individual — people who leave the beaten path in their quest for self-discovery. She’s a fan of oddball film director David Lynch, whose TV series Twin Peaks influenced her recent Idea of the North portfolio. “I’m drawn to the quirky, interesting odd characters that are at the end of the road,” she says. “I also love the atmosphere Lynch creates. It’s the whole idea of telling stories and creating atmospheres — of giving little hints instead of telling the whole thing.”

While recently clearing what remained of the historical Malaspina Hotel for a downtown revitalization project in Nanaimo, B.C., workmen uncovered a piece of Canadian art history. Painted in 1938 as a wall mural, E.J. Hughes’s Lieutenant Malaspina Sketching the Malaspina Gallery was once again brought to light.

Vancouver painter Gordon Smith and Calgary-based installation artist Rita McKeough are among this year’s nine honourees for one of Canada’s most prestigious visual arts prizes. The Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards were announced March 24 in Ottawa. Valued at $25,000 each, they’re awarded annually to recognize career achievement.

Originally from Tofino on Vancouver Island, Mary Bradshaw has worked in the Yukon arts community since 2004. After a stint coordinating the Odd Gallery for the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson City, Bradshaw returned to the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse as Acting Curator. When the Centre re-envisioned that role as Director, Bradshaw was hired. Now, she’s seeking curators to collaborate on shows for the only Class A gallery north of 60.

When the roof and the walls of the historic Prairie Art Gallery in Grande Prairie, Alberta collapsed under heavy snow on March 19, 2007, the art community in the region was left homeless. Not so the art itself. In the days and weeks that followed the disaster, gallery staff slowly and meticulously rescued the entire permanent collection from the ruins of the building.

Tim Lee, a Vancouver-based artist working in photography, video, and sculpture, has won the 2008 Sobey Art Award, one of Canada’s premier awards for young artists. Given annually to an artist 40 years old or younger, the award comes with a $50,000 prize.

Following a remarkably successful, years-long partnership that has created groundbreaking work in installation, sound and video art, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have been awarded the third annual $50,000 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award. Long associated with the arts community in Lethbridge and the University of Lethbridge, they currently divide their time between central B.C. and Berlin, Germany.

In early December, the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver found itself in an unusual situation. Third-year industrial design students had debuted Homes for Less in October, a creative answer to the problem of homelessness in lower mainland B.C. Designed in partnership with the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Advanced Wood Processing program, the end result was a collection of small homes that could be set up anywhere in the province.

Built for less than $1,500 each, the homes are pre-fabricated in componenets, many of them made of recycled materials, and can be assembled easily. They’re designed to accommodate one person, and were created with the input of homeless people, and directors of shelters and support agencies. Each one has 64 square feet of living space, plus a sleeping loft (washrooms are extra), and two of the shelters can fit in one standard parking space. "The main objective of this project was to construct an experience about the reality of homelessness that would connect with people more than the statistics we keep seeing — and get more of us talking about real solutions," Emily Carr associate professor Christian Blyt said about the project.

The homes were set up on Granville Island, close to the University buildings, but by mid-December, despite interest piqued among several lower mainland municipalities, the shelters didn’t have a post-exhibition home. At press time, Emily Carr was trying to find takers for the innovative, low-cost units.

Runners-up for the annual Sobey Art Award will now receive $5,000 in prize money, which makes the Sobey easily one of the richest prizes in Canadian art. The increase is in addition to $50,000 awarded to the winner. Organized in conjunction with Scotiabank and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Sobey Art Foundation shortlists artists from regions across Canada (one criteria is that they have to be under 40), with the help of a curatorial panel. This year, the panel included Gemey Kelly of the Owens Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Nathalie de Blois of the Musee National des beaux-arts du Quebec, David Moos of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Anthony Kiendl of Winnipeg’s Plug-In ICA, and Scott Watson of the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia.

Shortlisted artists for 2008 include Vancouver photographer and video artist Tim Lee, Winnipeg media artist Daniel Barrow, Mississauga-based mixed media and performance artist Terence Koh, Quebec-based installation artist Raphaëlle de Groot and Moncton, New Brunswick painter Mario Doucette. Work by shortlisted artists is on at the Royal Ontario Museum, where the winner and runners-up will be announced on October 1.

By day, he’s chairman of Vancouver-based Polygon Homes, but Michael Audain’s real passion is the visual arts. He’s an enthusiastic collector and evidence of his passion for British Columbian artists can be seen on the walls of Polygon’s 9th floor office — paintings by Jack Shadbolt, Gordon Smith and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun mix with photorealist works by Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham and Tim Lee. His volunteer commitments include years as a director at the Vancouver Art Gallery — he now chairs their endowment fund.

More than 80 artists from close to 30 countries will have work in the first-ever Edmonton Print International September 26 to October 17 in the city’s Capital Art Gallery and at satellite locations such as SNAP Gallery and the University of Alberta. Selected through a combined curatorial process and open juried competition — the jury included Tetsuya Noda from Japan, Belgium’s Maurice Pasternak, and Canadian print artist Davida Kidd, more than 1,200 works were submitted.

The point is to present both the art and the technique behind printmaking. Artist Walter Jule, general secretary for the EPI, says that traditional printmaking will be shown alongside contemporary digital techniques, and print-based sculptures, installations, and video projections, book plate miniatures, digital murals, and fabric.

Born from the remnants of 2002’s TrueNorth Biennial, EPI 2008 has been growing in momentum, in large part because of Jule. Edmonton, and particularly alumni and faculty of the Fine Arts program at the University of Alberta, have done particularly well in international competitions and awards during the past 30 years. The city’s print community has participated in international exchanges for decades, but this show will bring together the breadth of contemporary international printmaking into one setting. The EPI jury will award $30,000 in prizes during the show.

There are at least 50 print biennials around the world, most of them in Europe, and EPI hopes to fill a gap in North America. “I compare the development of printmaking to weather patterns,” says Jule. “A new movement starts in one place and it flows around the world, partly because of these kinds of shows.”

If expenditure is any indication, Calgary has reached a new high in the realm of public art acquisition. Launched by Torode Development for their downtown condo project Arriva, the $1 million art commission went to Toronto-based conceptual artist Micah Lexier, who has worked on multiple exhibitions and projects in Calgary, and whose new work, called Half K, is large and public enough to draw new attention to the city’s recently slumbering art scene. Made of a half-kilometre of painted steel pipe, Half K twists itself on a grand scale around the heritage school building that Torode has incorporated into the condo development. Lexier’s work was selected by a seven-member jury, headed by CEO John Torode, that included Alberta College of Art and Design president Lance Carlson, Calgary artist Chris Cran, and Rene Marcous-Devine, former art program director at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park.

Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology has moved on to phase two of an ambitious expansion project that will increase its size by 50 per cent by 2010. To do that, the Museum will close its doors until early March of next year. By then, though a portion of the site will still be under construction, most of the Museum’s public spaces will be reopened. The full gala re-opening is planned for January 2010, coinciding with the Cultural Olympiad. Some of the Museum’s public programming will continue off-site during the full closure.

Most recently guest curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Jordan Strom has been appointed interim curator at the Kamloops Art Gallery. An artist, writer, and curator of contemporary art, Strom has taught video art and experimental film at Emily Carr University. Some of his recent projects have included curating a group exhibition about the connection between art and domestic space called Interior of Design at Vancouver’s Republic Gallery, and a collaborative installation at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

Ten years after Haida artist Bill Reid died, his memory will come alive with the opening of the new Bill Reid Gallery for Northwest Coast Art in downtown Vancouver in early summer. Many of the Gallery’s 150 rarely-seen works were bequeathed to the Bill Reid Foundation by private donors, including Reid’s wife Martine, who wanted to create a lasting legacy for the sculptor and master carver. Finding a home for the collection — everything from a monumental bronze of a killer whale to miniature works in gold and silver — was a five-year quest, but Foundation president and former director of the Canadian Museum of Civilization George MacDonald says the space at 639 Hornby (formerly the Canadian Craft Museum) is a near-perfect fit.

Winnipeg’s Urban Shaman Gallery has hired Melissa Wastasecoot as Interim Director, now that former director Steve Loft has taken up the newly created position of Aboriginal curator-in-residence at the National Gallery of Canada. Most recently president of Urban Shaman’s Board of Directors, Wastasecoot was asked to step in to see the gallery through the transitional phase before the Board chooses a new director in Fall 2008.

At the Nanaimo Art Gallery on Vancouver Island, Ed Poli has been appointed Gallery Manager. He comes into the position after a career in business, civic involvement, and community activity, including involvement with the Downtown Nanaimo Arts, Culture and Entertainment Committee, and the Downtown Business Development Committee. After a management career in the civil service, Poli was instrumental in the development of the city’s Community Economic Development Strategy.

Almost 25 years in existence, the popular ceramics show and sale that hits the town of Metchosin on Vancouver Island runs May 30 to June 1 this year. Originally held in the lush garden of artists Judi Dyelle and Robin Hopper, who founded the event in 1984, the show has moved to the Metchosin Hall, where 11 member artists will exhibit with three invited guest artists and one special guest artist — University of Victoria sessional instructor and raku specialist Walter Dexter.

Cape Dorset artist Kenojuak Ashevak, Alberta painter Alex Janvier and Vancouver-based conceptual artist, curator and teacher Eric Metcalfe are among this year‘s recipients of the Governor General‘s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Created to honour career achievement by Canadian artists and presented by Governor General Michaëlle Jean, each of the Award-winners receives $25,000, making it one of the most valuable prizes in visual and media arts in Canada.

A unique artistic endeavour is taking place in a nondescript building in the mountain town of Canmore, Alberta. For the past year, the Corridor Collective Studio and Gallery, the brainchild of Cheryl Baxter, who runs Canmore’s Elevation Gallery, and her husband Chris Beck, has provided five Bow Valley artists with a place to work, experiment and show their work.

An unexpected respite from the angst of public transit, Charles Fox’s audio installation Wildurban brings the soothing sounds of nature to Saskatoon’s downtown bus mall. Piped in on an eight-channel outdoor system, Fox’s meadow sound effects are interspersed with the gusting exhaust noise of the city’s buses, and Saskatoon Transit’s own Muzak soundtrack. It’s part of Aneco, a three-year civic initiative to break out of the box of public art with site-specific works including video projection, new media and photography.

For Chai Duncan, the medium matters less than the exploration process. His work is varied and includes short narrative and experimental films, encaustic drawings, installations, and found objects encased in wax and resin, just to name a few. Recently, he’s returned to photography. “I grew up in a family involved in the photography business and have always used a camera the way some people use a sketch book.” His most recent series of works involve juxtaposing porcelain bird statues with old nature pictures and paintings, then photographing the results. “There’s a naivety and sweetness to how nature is represented in the figurines,” he says. “There’s a pathos captured in the images that speaks of a nature lost and a longing for what may have been. Yet in reality, it’s just fake on fake.”

With an influx of cash from the BC government — almost $50 million announced in November — work continues on one of the most ambitious creative revitalization projects in Vancouver. Breaking ground in a location that’s popularly known as “the old Woodward’s building,” Simon Fraser University is building their new multi-disciplinary School for the Contemporary Arts on the city’s East Side. Part of a larger redevelopment of the site that is expected to become a cultural magnet for the city, the School is set to move there in late 2009.

The school has a 30-year track record in education for a variety of fine and performing arts disciplines, including dance, theatre, and visual arts, and this new site, designed by the Vancouver firm Henriquez Partners, will include a ground-floor contemporary art gallery that will have an artistic and curatorial teaching component.

One of the most heralded art books to hit the market in the past few months is Roald Nasgaard’s Abstract Painting in Canada, a lavishly illustrated compendium of almost one hundred years of Canadian painting history. Written over the course of five years by the former chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the book traces early attempts to break from the figurative and realist techniques by painters such as Kathleen Munn and Lawren Harris. It leaps through eras defined by artists, notably Jean-Paul Riopelle, and includes western Canadian masters such as Jack Shadbolt and Takao Tanabe. Published by Douglas & McIntyre, Nasgaard’s book concludes with a forward look to the promise of the 21st century.

Other notable books recently published include the long-awaited study of the life and work of celebrated Saskatchewan-born abstract painter Otto Rogers. Published by Radius Books and called, simply Otto Donald Rogers, the book finely illustrates the breadth of Rogers’ talent. The book is available through galleries that represent the painter, including Gallery Jones in Vancouver and the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary.

An assistant professor in the Fine Art department at the University of Regina, MacDonald has established a practice that easily breaks the boundaries of ceramic art. His work weaves the functional history of fired clay — as architectural embellishment, building material, and industrial component — into innovative fine art. Most recently, his work was included in a group show organized by Regina’s MacKenzie Art Gallery called Mobile Structures, about the line between architecture and ceramic art.

Arabella Campbell, a painter based in Vancouver, took home the national prize for the 2007 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Awarded the $25,000 top prize for her work Physical Facts Series #6, Campbell was among 15 semi-finalists, chosen from almost 700 entries from across Canada. Another western-based painter, Chris Millar from Calgary, received one of two Honourable Mentions for his work FACEBITOR — The Untimely Transmogrification of the Problem. Established by RBC to recognize emerging Canadian painters, the annual competition leads to a traveling exhibition showcasing all the semi-finalists.

Established by the late Right Honourable Ramon Hnatyshyn, former Governor General, the Foundation supports a selection of important awards in the arts, volun-teerism and law. The Visual Arts Awards are given annually, one to an artist in mid-career, and one to an outstanding Canadian curator. This year’s curatorial award was given to Montreal-based gallery director Louise Déry.

Vancouver-based sculptor Martha Sturdy has brought a splash of colour to the Wellness Garden at the Vancouver General Hospital with the donation of a steel sculp-ture painted poppy red. Made of two abstract figures, at 28 feet and 24 feet, Sturdy says the work symbolizes the bonds between beings — doctor and patient, parent and child, husband and wife. It was donated as part of the hospital’s Art Committee initiative, which has brought more than 500 artworks by mostly Canadian artists to the foyers, lobbies and waiting rooms of VGH buildings. A long-time supporter of the hospital, Martha Sturdy is known for her three-dimensional works of fine and decorative art in steel, brass and resin.

Steve Loft, who until very recently was director of the Urban Shaman artist-run centre in Winnipeg, has been appointed to the position of first aboriginal curator-in-residence at Ottawa’s National Art Gallery. Further sign of the Gallery’s commitment to bringing Canadian aboriginal art to a more prominent place in the public consciousness, Loft’s appointment is particularly promising because of his track record for developing and supporting the work of contemporary artists in photography, video, and new media…With the retirement of president and CEO Mike Robinson, Calgary’s Glenbow Museum has appointed noted artist Jeffrey Spalding to the position. President of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Spalding was most recently director and curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He was also instrumental in building the permanent collection of the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery by thousands of important works. As an artist, Spalding has participated in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the McMichael Canadian Collection…One of Jeffrey Spalding’s protégés, Ryan Doherty has been appointed curator at Lethbridge’s Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG). Returning to Lethbridge after finishing a Master of Arts from Bard College in New York, Doherty previously worked as a curatorial assistant at the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, and as assistant curator at SAAG. In his spare time he also curated the current show of abstract work at the U of L, Big Bangs …The MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina has recently appointed Michelle LaVallee as assistant curator. An interdisciplinary artist and curator originally from Newmarket, Ontario, LaVallee was a recipient of the Canada Council’s grant program for aboriginal curators, and had been developing programming in 2007 for A Space Gallery in Toronto.

Noted BC artists Dana Claxton, Jayce Salloum and Henry Tsang have been commissioned to create new original work in contemporary media as part of a unique funding program tied to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. The work is underway through the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, which was awarded $107,000 for creation and development of the commission by the Arts Partners in Contemporary Art, a partnership between a group of funders including The City of Vancouver, the Canada Council, and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

The project, titled Edges of Diversity, shares a $1-million grant with only seven other arts organizations in the province, and is earmarked for development of a creative project that underscores the province’s diverse culture.

During a life that spanned 100 years, Vaughan Grayson became particularly adept in recording the landscape of the west in paintings, silkscreens, sketches, and words. Her particular subject was the Canadian Rockies, though later in life she recorded the views near her house in the Okanagan, and traveled extensively with her paintbox. In a finely curated show now on at Banff’s Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, every aspect of Grayson’s life as an artist and traveler is represented.