Jackie Huskisson & Jennifer Norman: Artists in Residence - Open Studio
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ODD Gallery-- Klondike Institute of Art & Culture 2nd Ave & Princess St (Bag 8000), Dawson City, Yukon Y0B 1G0
Jackie Huskisson & Jennifer Norman
OPEN STUDIO. Tonight 6-9pm
Our artists in residence have been working up a storm since they arrived! Come out and see what Jackie Huskisson (Calgary) and Jennifer Norman (Toronto) have been up to! At Historic Macaulay House, Princess and 7th. Macaulay House is part of Parks Canada's Klondike National Historic Sites Complex.
Bring an Appie and a bevvie and make it a party!
Jacqueline holds a B.F.A in Print Media from the Alberta University for the Arts and an M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Belfast School of Art. Her more recent exploits include solo exhibitions at Main Space Gallery (Alberta Printmakers, Calgary), and Poolside Gallery (VideoPool, Winnipeg). She has also been doing various projects, installations, residencies and performances around Calgary and Finland. She is the recipient of various local and national grants and was the inaugural receipt of the Scott Leroux Media Arts Exploration Fund. She is currently on VideoPool‘s Media Art Distribution list and works out of Burnt Toast Studio in Calgary.
She is currently the administrator for Elephant Artist Relief society and recently she has become the Gallery Chair for Alberta Printmakers Main Space Gallery. Current projects include the residency with KIAC (Dawson City, Yukon) and has an upcoming residency with Piltonkueche (Leipzig, Germany).
Jackie is using the month to research and start a new comic. As well as create a variety of drawings and animated gifs.
Jennifer Norman is a multidisciplinary artist with ecological motivations. Originally from Northern Ontario, she is now based in Toronto, ON. She received her BFA from OCAD University, and her MFA from the University of Ottawa, and she is now a member of faculty at OCADU and HSCAD, Fleming College.
Norman has been awarded multiple grants for the production of her work, most recently an OAC Chalmers professional development Grant, 2019. She has exhibited extensively, in Canada, Scotland, Italy, Korea and the USA, with her most recent solo exhibition at Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa, ON, 2018. Her work is included in several private and public collections, including the Canada Council for the Arts, National Art Bank.
With ecological leanings, Norman participates in numerous artist residencies including the Banff Center for the Arts, MASS MoCA, MA, US and the NARS residency in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently savoring all the magic of Dawson City, Yukon as artist in residence at KIAC.
While here, I will wander Dawson City, taking in all that it has to offer while gathering post-consumer waste for the renovation of tree branches. The collected treasures will then be re-assembled into prosthetic tree limbs and memorialized in intimate graphite portraits.
This work is an extension of an ongoing, site-responsive project where I collaborate with various environments/communities to create hybrid branch-creatures that represent the idiosyncrasies and ecosystems from which they grow. The quirky absurdity of the DIY branch reparations, made with trash and common objects like bread-bag-ties, pen springs or broken zippers playfully alludes to ideas of pioneering determination or post-apocalyptic resourcefulness. By assembling and repurposing rubbish in a futile attempt to emulate the elegance of an extended tree branch, these hybrid creations evoke contemporary renderings of traditional 17th century Dutch Memento Moripaintings by alluding to the fleeting quality and fragility of the lives they represent.
With ecological leanings, this work explores and conflates the junctures between the biological and the manufactured. The mischievous quality of this work affably engages with both environmental and social anxiety in any given ecosystem while leaving room for play and dialogue. Given a second life and transformed into artificial memories of the tree limbs they once were, the fragile branches represented in this work evoke a playful sense of optimism that follows Alice down a rabbit hole.