Erin Boake and Marnie Blair: Our Daily Bread

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Erin Boake and Marnie Blair, "Our Daily Bread," 2020, 2021

Erin Boake and Marnie Blair: Our Daily Bread

About the Exhibition

Our Daily Bread is a series of fifty photographs and fifty paintings that represent a year long journey between friends. The duo has been fueled by a need to create and desire to connect, with tremendous support from a community of like-minded women.

What began as a privileged act of staying home with the kids and making bread, quickly turned into a practice of making affordable art and a reliable source of income, for best friends Marnie Blair and Erin Boake. Blair is a sessional faculty member at Red Deer College and Boake is the owner and operator of Artribute Art School, in Red Deer. The Red Deer artists raised more than $1,800 in an online auction of the first fourteen paintings for the Mustard Seed.

With neither of them working outside of the home, Blair spontaneously decided she was going to take on a challenge — bake a loaf of bread every day for fourteen days.

Blair started sending pictures of her home-baked bread to Boake. That’s when Boake decided she wanted to pursue her own challenge. What started off as a joke quickly turned into a collaborative project and the connection they needed. The photographs exchanged between the two have become something to look forward to daily. Measuring ingredients, kneading, proofing and baking with her six year old, Blair found solace in the kitchen with her child. She was among the many who found sanity in recipes for stillness by channeling anxious energy into the kitchen instead of the studio.

Boake, the mother of a three year old and six year old, painted at night after the children were sleeping. A need to create and support from the community kept the duo busy making a series of fifty works. All paintings have been purchased by women who support the project. The work has become a series of pandemic time capsules and the project has strengthened their friendship despite being apart.

Artists’ Biographies:

Erin Boake grew up in the small prairie city of Red Deer, Alberta. Pursuing art as a career was a natural progression from a childhood filled with various artistic explorations. Erin attended the Red Deer College Fine Art program and completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at Alberta University of the Arts in 2003. She has since spent her time seeking creative stimulation through painting, traveling, and teaching. Boake has exhibited work and painted murals extensively through central Alberta, as well as in BC and the North. She is the owner and operator of Artribute Art School, in Red Deer Alberta, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

Marnie Blair is an artist from Northwestern Ontario, Canada. She received a BFA with distinction from Lakehead University and an MFA from the University of Calgary. She has studied at the Royal College of Art in London, UK, the Studio Art Centres International in Florence, Italy and has interned at Manhattan’s Lower East Side Print Shop. Blair has worked as the Print and Paper Facilitator at the Banff Centre, taught at Thompson Rivers University and is currently an instructor at Red Deer College. She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally.