From April 6 to April 17, the Studio Art program’s 2019 graduates will present the annual SUMMA exhibition. Entitled Counterpoint, the show will be curated by Hamilton textile artist Hitoko Okada. For the first time in over 30 years, the McMaster Museum of Art will not house the show due to its ongoing updates. The exhibition will instead take place at the Cotton Factory.
McMaster Studio Arts is a small program, with the fourth year class consisting of only 19 artists. With instruction on a range of media and a focus on environmentally responsible practices, the program has produced diverse artists who care about the world around them. Counterpoint means “to combine elements” and is fitting considering the amalgamation of their various styles and the balance they try to strike within their individual works.
The graduates organized the exhibition themselves. While it gave them a chance to learn more about the lives of professional artists, it also taught them to work together. Coordinating among 19 people was not easy and after some bumps in the road to find the perfect venue, they are all relieved to see the show finally coming together.
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Fernando spends a fair amount of time in nature, drawing and photographing the landscape around her. Back in the studio, she takes the colours, textures and lines from the environment to create the emotional and abstract landscape paintings that she’ll be displaying at Counterpoint.
“For me, [Counterpoint is] about… this the balance between the organic and the artificialness in my work… [I]t's taking… different colors… , textures and mark making and creating harmony and balance between all those different things within one image and creating a sort of peacefulness in that work,” Fernando explained.
Throughout the process of organizing the SUMMA show, Fernando learned how to survive as an artist. She feels that she now has an art practice of her own and regards her peers as professional contacts. As she leaves McMaster to pursue teaching, she will take those skills and contacts with her.
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For Lee, Counterpoint refers to the way her class’s wildly different works complement each other. Having spent four years critiquing and supporting one another’s practice, the exhibition represents the harmony between their different themes and materials.
The Korean-Canadian artist explores traditional Korean materials in her work. She portrays these traditional materials in a modern, digital format and then incorporates threading to unite the two ideas.
“I always get confused between Canadian and Korean aspects of myself… [T]his sense of detachment, trying to attach to something or being porous, kind of like a sponge, absorbing a lot of different cultures in order to make up my singular identity. And just like maintenance of this traditional and modern form of art,” Lee said.
Currently aiming to go into interactive design, Lee feels she learned the reality of being an artist. She has been exposed to the business side of the art world by learning to solve problems creatively and produce even without inspiration. The program’s push toward using materials to convey subtle themes has evolved Lee’s art practice.
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Cooper didn’t have a lot of purpose behind his art when he entered the studio arts program. Four years later, he feels he is a more deliberate artist and currently explores ideas around memory and coming of age. At Counterpoint, he will be presenting acrylic paintings of Westdale, where he grew up.
“[W]ith my work, I just try and talk about what that experience was like… [D]ifferent places… might not necessarily be important to other people but I guess I have certain memories there,” Cooper said.
The fact that this is the last art gathering of his university career saddens Cooper, but he knows the entire class is proud of the show. Despite the challenges they faced, they demonstrated that they could accomplish anything with collaboration. The different backgrounds and art practices of the class would not seem to mesh, but Cooper feels a nameless common thread unites their work.
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McVeigh believes process and environmentalism brings together her diverse class’ work. A self-identified environmental artist, she explores interactions between living things with one another and with inanimate objects. Having grown up in a small town near Point Pelee National Park, she spent a lot of time in nature growing up.
McVeigh’s work for Counterpoint is a series of photolithographic prints. This long and old process of creating images is meaningful to her. She tries to present her dystopian and nonsensical images in an aesthetically pleasing way with vintage elements.
“I use a lot of vintage imagery in my work… [A]fter World War II… there was the baby boom and they created a very unstable environment where it was a throwaway society. Nothing was fixed, it's all just thrown away… And then it wasn't until the ‘90s when the environment became a very serious topic,” McVeigh explained.
Her work is personal, but the program has made her more comfortable with speaking about her art. By sharing these narratives with her classmates and professors, they all grew close. She anticipates that this graduation show will be bittersweet, but there is a lot from her time at McMaster that she will be taking with her. She learned to critique her own work and reach out for help, which will help her as she pursues a career in sustainable architecture.
After graduating with her Bachelor of Fine Arts with minors in theatre and film studies and music, Conti will be going into teaching. Her teaching program will focus on educational art programming in the community, something that Conti is an advocate for. She is excited about the fact that Counterpoint will bring her program’s work off campus and into the Hamilton community.
Conti will be showing a five-piece installation consisting of floating boxes with deconstructed paintings in them. Her work revolves around her experiences with depression and anxiety to open a dialogue about mental health.
“[S]o for this body of work, there's five different stories to which I'm telling, one of which is the story about my mother's cancer. Normally… they're more negative experiences that I'm trying to understand in a more positive way. So my strokes are colors that are brighter in trying to… accept these experiences and… learn from them but also move forward,” Conti explained.
With her theatrical background, Conti sometimes feels as if she is performing herself. There is vulnerability in her portrayal of her life and she explores privacy versus vulnerability in her work. However, her time at McMaster gave her the confidence to tell her story through theatre, music and art.
The graduation show will open with a reception at the Cotton Factory from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 6. The graduating class looks forward to sharing their work with the Hamilton community.
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On Feb. 16, the Hamilton Aerial Group is inviting the community to witness a story of wanderers with its sixth annual Winterfest cabaret show, La Nuit du Vagabond. Both one-hour shows will take place at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the third floor event space of the Cotton Factory.
The troupe wanted this year’s cabaret to be current and thus the performance’s individual aerial, acrobatic and puppetry acts weave a story of migration to a better place. Founder and artistic director of Hamilton Aerial Group, Lori Le Mare, was influenced by the displacement of people from war-torn countries.
“In particular I read about the exodus of people from Central America… and how it gained strength as people were moving and why they were leaving their homes… [I] guess just having that as a loose space for the story but not… preaching. You don't want to preach but we just want to sort of reflect [on] what's happening in the current times and then have people make up their own mind about how they feel about that,” Le Mare said.
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The group brainstormed how to represent this underlying theme and came up with imagery such as emerging out of a tunnel. Le Mare instructed the individual performers to put themselves in the shoes of someone struggling to reach a better place so that the component acts form a narrative.
The cabaret was not always a narrative piece. When it started in 2014, the show took on a more traditional cabaret format with 5-minute musical and circus acts. It began as a way to raise funds to move into a new space and buy new equipment. From the first year, there was a strong positive response with over 500 attendees.
After a few years of a cabaret style show, the Hamilton Aerial Group changed the fundraiser to be more a narrative-driven theatrical performance without as many musical acts. The change was driven by viewers saying they wished to see more aerial acts.
“[I]t's my love really to create a story… [W]e'd have a really interesting beginning and an interesting ending… but then we have all these other musical acts that didn't really go with the sort of story that we were establishing by having a beginning and an ending… [W]e thought that if we could take out the musical acts and just have those aerial acts… we could have more of a narrative storyline throughout it,” said Le Mare.
The narrative is also supported by the elaborate costumes that the performers wear. The costumes are made by Hamilton Aerial Group member Tanis Sydney MacArthur and usually evolve out of ideas that were not used throughout the year.
Le Mare also likes to work with local artists in the creation of costumes for the show. She has a long-time collaboration with Hamilton activist, artist and puppeteer Melanie Skene who has made puppets and masks for the aerial group over the years. This year, local artist Colin Christopher Palangio will also be making headpieces for the stilt costumes.
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Le Mare founded the Hamilton Aerial Group when she moved back to Hamilton after 23 years in Toronto. She became an aerialist while in Toronto and when she returned to Hamilton, began teaching classes through the Hamilton Association for Residential and Recreational Redevelopment Programs.
Teaching at HARRRP led to people asking Le Mare and those she taught to perform. This group of performing aerialists eventually developed into the Hamilton Aerial Group. People have come and gone over the years but the community that the aerial group created has endured.
“I think it's a really good place for people to… deal with any kind of issues they might have… [W]hen you become really strong physically and you're also in a group of strong, not physically strong but I think emotionally strong, women — and we are pretty much all women — then we just really support one another,” Le Mare explained.
Anyone is able to join the Hamilton Aerial Group as long as they have a passion for and willingness to learn the circus arts. Le Mare also recognizes that many viewers may not be able to see a large scale Cirque du Soleil show and strives to make her shows accessible.
Poster C/O Gord Pullar
The annual cabaret used to be pay-what-you-can but after having to scale down the number of attendees due to fire regulations, the show is now $28. However, there are a block of 30 tickets that are free for children under the age of 12. Le Mare hopes that in the future the annual cabaret will take place in a larger space so more people will again have access to the aerial storytelling of the Hamilton Aerial Group.
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Imagine you are in an art gallery but all the lights are turned off. You are immersed in lights and sound, absorbing different aspects of the audio-visual gallery. That is the best way to describe Atmospheric Studies II: Singularity.
The one-hour light and sound show is the second in the Atmospheric Studies series that began last March. This year more shows are lined up, with two to three shows a day from Jan. 17 to Jan. 21. On Jan. 17 and Jan. 18, the shows will be held at New Vision United Church while the Jan. 19 to Jan. 21 shows will be held at the Main Event Space of the Cotton Factory.
Sheridan College alumni Matt Cummer, Nick Grimshaw and Bea Macapagal, alongside their respective companies, Black Lake, Walker/Grimshaw and Camp 905, are the architects of the installation.
Cummer, who works in stage visuals, and Grimshaw, a composer, collaborated to create the project last year. After attending last year’s show, Macapagal reached out to the duo and became involved in this year’s logistics and visual planning.
Cummer took inspiration from the Day for Night Festival in Houston, TX. The festival, which takes place in an old industrial postal sorting facility, has digital installations spread throughout the space that participants can check out. Cummer was also inspired by the work he does in stage visuals.
“[W]henever you go to see a concert you have all these huge lighting fixtures on stage and that’s the context you see it in and it's just complimenting the band but… I always had an interest in taking that out of context and using it in a totally different way and then… marrying it with audio and making it kind of more come to life as its own thing rather than just complimenting something else,” explained Cummer.
From this desire to make lights and sound come to life comes the name Atmospheric Studies. The project is creating its own contained atmosphere for attendees throughout the duration of the one-hour show.
The other part of the name, Singularity, refers to a black hole, a feature of the storyline being woven throughout the show. The lights will be arranged in a circular fashion and take attendees through the creation of fusion that goes out of control and creates a black hole.
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This abstract plotline is a departure from last year’s project which was a more straightforward display. Introducing a story to the show is one of the ways in which Atmospheric Studies has grown from last year, in addition to introducing a new venue in the New Vision United Church and putting on more shows. The best aspects of the first installation will be preserved, such as the live responsiveness of the light to the music.
“One aspect of the show is that we take every little audio cue live that [Grimshaw is] playing and we input it into the visual system... [which] drives lights to do things right at that moment as well …[W]e try to make it very organic and feel like this is more special…[T]his isn't something you're ever going to experience again which is a once in a lifetime sort of thing,” explained Cummer.
Putting on the installation has been a learning experience for Cummer. As a film school graduate, he didn’t have experience in production design, lighting design or lighting operation. However, he has put his skills from his film background into good use for the design of this project. Last year’s project brought on some stress and hiccups but it was met with a positive response which ultimately led to the led to the continuation of the Atmospheric Studies.
If all goes well with this series of shows, Cummer would love to have a third part of the series. He would also love to expand the concept to be more music-oriented, perhaps with musical acts. No matter what the future holds, this installation is sure to take attendees into another world.
Atmospheric Studies II: Singularity will take place from Jan. 17 to Jan. 21 and tickets can be purchased on eventbrite for $10 or at the door for $15.
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Strangely enough, in a cartoon world populated by anthropomorphic animals, Netflix-exclusive comedy BoJack Horseman touches upon very real human emotions.
The main plot follows the fading star of actor BoJack Horseman (voiced by Arrested Development star Will Arnett) -- who is half-man, half-horse -- desperately trying to fill the soulless void of being an actor in Hollywoo (the letter “d” is stolen in one episode) in the twilight of his career. He fails miserably, betrayed at every turn by his incessant narcissism, while learning lessons the hard way by hurting everyone around him. That includes his roommate Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul), his shadow-writer and love interest (Alison Brie) and his agent (Amy Sedaris).
The show is pieced together with off-beat pop-culture references and fast-paced animal-based joke-telling centred around a reductive plotline. In that sense, BoJack Horseman is not unlike Family Guy or The Simpsons. The show’s writer Raphael Bob-Waksberg relies on a silly, self-loathing brand of humour to deliver a crisp 20-minute per-episode viewing experience.
Masked behind the clever guise of a cartoon setting and the humanization of animals, BoJack Horseman lulls the viewer into a state of vulnerability before introducing very human feelings into the fray. The show tries to catch viewers off-guard with childish jokes about breaking the fourth wall, for example, before delivering poignant statements on vulnerability and the emptiness of life through the childish setting of a cartoon.
That's not to say BoJack Horseman is a thought-provoking drama making grandiose statements on society like The Wire or The Sopranos. It doesn't. The show is a comedy at heart and whimsical in nature. It feels childlike. Innocence is implied.
But BoJack Horseman is also about making mistakes and the shattering of innocence that comes with growing up. BoJack (the character) learns this the hard way in the tail end of his youth. He confronts mortality and all wrestles its implications, running out of time to correct past transgressions. It’s a story of loss, offset by episodes of temporary redemption.
For a cartoon comedy involving quirkily drawn animals, BoJack Horseman elicits very real human emotion. Give it a shot the next time you're browsing Netflix. Suspend your cynicism and you won't be disappointed.
