MARGIE KELK: SUBSTRATAE

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Wei Li and Margie Kelk Invitation

Two New Exhibitions Open at Harcourt House on August 10, 2017 at 7 pm

Margie Kelk, a Toronto-based visual artist, takes an exploratory and experimental approach as she appropriates and reconstructs visual fragments of ideas through diverse artistic media: ceramic sculpture, multi-media installation, drawing, painting, and animation. She has been exhibiting her projects in Canada, the United States, and Europe.  Margie Kelk is a graduate of Wellesley College, The John Hopkins University (PhD.), and the Toronto School of Art (Diploma Program). 

Substratae, Kelk’s first stop-motion animated film, has been featured in several film festivals, including The New Renaissance Film Festival (London, UK), The New Animation and Cartoon International Film Festival (West Hollywood, California), and The New York State International Film Festival (New York City, NY), to name just a few. 

The inspiration for Substratae and the film’s main characters have come from the events from Kelk’s childhood and her exploratory travel to Iceland in 2014.  In the film, individual and unique clay and Fimo characters interact with metaphorical electronic components that symbolize hidden underground energies.

According to the artist: “energy currents move everything and everyone; thus they drive the earth and the mythological humans who inhabit a rugged terrain not unlike that found in Iceland …. A large assortment of sculptural heads complements the characters in the film, as they emerge from their hiding places. They are display like souvenirs from a journey into a mythological world …” Alan Sondheim, an experimental computer theorist and sound artist, created the original score for the animation. Sondheim employed the guqin, a seven string Chinese instrument of the zither family, to weave an enchanting musical bed of perfect choreography for Substratae.