Coming Into Being explores the earliest stages of creation, when ideas begin to surface and form is still unfolding. The exhibition emphasizes process over polish, revealing gesture, material, and decision within each work. The presence of the human hand remains central.
Featuring works by Brody Kunze, Lars Baggenstos, David Barnes, Kimberly Olsen, Sandy Kunze, Susan Grace Andrews, Craig Friesen with additional artists to be announced, the exhibition brings together ink, clay and granite sculpture, and material-based practices that emphasize process rather than polish.
Brody Kunze
Brody is actively involved with community-based salmon restoration efforts, participating in projects that release salmon eggs into local waterways and tracking their growth and survival over time. This lived connection informs his work deeply. In this series, his salmon seem to emerge as they do in nature: first conceived in the mind, then taking shape like hatch, fry, and finally full form within the stone. Through carving, Brody brings the underwater world into our visible one, what normally lives hidden beneath the surface is given presence above ground.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kimberly Olsen
Growing up in a creative family, we wasted nothing. Love was expressed through making homemade gifts from scraps for special or ordinary days, each one a gesture of care. These assemblages are acts of love and homage to my dad, Jack, reflecting his creative talents, resourceful nature, and many endeavours. His diagnosis with Lewy Body Dementia moved me to create these works and honour the influence he’s had on me as an artist and person. Dad, my brother, and I all attended Alberta College of Art and Design (now Alberta University of the Arts), where Dad and I both studied Visual Communications, and my brother studied painting. Dad and I worked in factories building accommodation trailers (he in Alberta, me in Montréal), we both worked as carpenters, enjoy problem-solving, share introspective natures, prioritize art, and love bread—especially Mom’s homemade—and potatoes, among other things. Over the last 45 years, Dad's resourcefulness filled his workshop with materials from his life: sanding papers, rusty screws, hardware, and countless bits and bobs, saved and sorted from his years as an artist, designer, carpenter, and renovator. With Dad’s changes and his spending less time in the shop, I chose to use some of these treasures to create small tributes to him. These works, made with joy, humour, and tenderness, are the result. The JO (Jack Olson) KO (Kimberly Olson) signature highlights our collaboration: Dad’s collected materials, shaped by his decades of making, now joined with my design background in these assemblages. This collection is a nod to those who have shaped who we are today.
Stop Smoking -
10" x 2 1/4” .$425 |
Dr. Hook -
10” x 1 1/2” $425 |
Hello Bear -
12” x 1 1/2” $425 |
Unhinged -
10” x 1 1/2” $425 |
Chain of Events-
12” x 2” $425 |
Hello Moustache-
12” x 1 1/2” $425 |
untitled
|
Saw You Yesterday-
10” x 2” $425 |
Nailed It -
12” x 1 1/4” $425 |
Susan Grace Andrews
Poetics of Rust Writing
Susan Andrews Grace
Over the last few decades, I’ve made a collection of rusty objects because I love to look at them. Lately I’ve been making rust stains on cloth using these domestic and industrial objects to make a kind of alphabet with which I plan to write asemic poetry on canvas scrolls. I’ve stained cotton, silk, raw canvas, and primed canvas which give quite different results. So far, the poetics is not really working out all that well but the testing is fun and makes a kind of meditation on matter.
In my practice I often think of cloth as a stand in for flesh. They are both tissues. In English the word tissue is used for the molecular construction of muscle or soft flesh in a slide dissection. In French the word for biological tissue is tissu. Our animal tissues must have oxygen to live: without it we are dead in three minutes.
We combine the oxygen we breathe into our body’s waters, blood, flesh, and bone. The corrosion of iron, and iron alloys such as steel by oxygen and water to make rust mimics what happens in our bodies over time. Our blood is reliant on iron mineral giving it a metallic smell and that rusty colour, especially when it stains cloth.
As we age, oxygen furthers corruption of our flesh. The longer we breathe the sooner we die.
Susan Andrews Grace
Over the last few decades, I’ve made a collection of rusty objects because I love to look at them. Lately I’ve been making rust stains on cloth using these domestic and industrial objects to make a kind of alphabet with which I plan to write asemic poetry on canvas scrolls. I’ve stained cotton, silk, raw canvas, and primed canvas which give quite different results. So far, the poetics is not really working out all that well but the testing is fun and makes a kind of meditation on matter.
In my practice I often think of cloth as a stand in for flesh. They are both tissues. In English the word tissue is used for the molecular construction of muscle or soft flesh in a slide dissection. In French the word for biological tissue is tissu. Our animal tissues must have oxygen to live: without it we are dead in three minutes.
We combine the oxygen we breathe into our body’s waters, blood, flesh, and bone. The corrosion of iron, and iron alloys such as steel by oxygen and water to make rust mimics what happens in our bodies over time. Our blood is reliant on iron mineral giving it a metallic smell and that rusty colour, especially when it stains cloth.
As we age, oxygen furthers corruption of our flesh. The longer we breathe the sooner we die.
Nail It. Rust print on primed canvas, 14x14 x3/4"
$490 |
Wire It. Rust print on primed canvas, 14x14x3/4
$490 |
Saw It. Rust print on primed canvas, 14x14 x3/4"
$490 |
Craig Friesen
I like to generate ideas obliquely and I look at these as a collaboration with myself over time. I’ve been gathering interesting images for decades with a vague sense they could be something. I was looking at them, and I started picking specific elements that stood out by themselves. I begin each of these pieces by drawing one of my collected image elements on a panel. Later, I return and add a second incongruous element. Then, I add a third element that seems to tie things together. Once I have three images, I perform conceptual calculations with the elements I’ve drawn to form a title(s). Working in this way helps to keep the work interesting for me and playful for the viewer.
Mystical Beard Brotherhood,
Pencil paint wood 15" 3/4 x 12" |
Its Spreading Like Wildfire
pencil paint wood 15 3/4" x 12" |
Brace for Impact
pencil paint wood 15 3/4" x 12" |
Trouble off the Port Bow
Pencil paint wood 15 3/4" x 12" |
Forever Changed
Pencil paint wood 15 3/4" x 12" |
Sandy Kunze
|
|
|