Downstream: Reimagining Water, Concourse Gallery, March 6th – 14th
Opening reception begins at 7pm, March 7th

The show features works by a wide range of artists who approach water with an equally varied perspective. The artists in Downstream explore our perceptions of watery systems and take a look at how our interactions with this substance shape and change us.

Artists:
Sheinagh Anderson
Micaela Baer
Neil Chung
Caitlyn Connors
Alyssa Dusevic
Jennifer Hagel
Maegan Harbridge
Julia Hong
Basia Irland
Maria Lantin
Nathalie Lavoie
Jennifer Martin
Caroline Mousseau
Fabiola Nabil Naguib
Alex Phillips
William Phong-Ly
Emile Rubino
David Roth
Diana Lynn Thompson
Gu Xiong

We are in perpetual collaboration with water and in this exhibition that collaboration takes on the form of play, biology, interdependence, ecology, place, spirituality as well as voyage.

We hope to see you at the opening reception.
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Curatorial Coordinator
&
Rita Wong
Project Coordinator

For more information on the Downstream Research Project and information regarding events centered around World Water Day, March
21st, please visit our website:

http://downstream.ecuad.ca/

I recently got a commission to make a beaver fur hat. It’s beaver fur and black suede with felted wool lining. The warmest I tells ya. I made a pattern from a hat that my grandma Joanne made for my dad when he was just a few years older than I. $200 if you want one. I have white hide and white rabbit fur too if you wanna go whiteout for $150.

Last weekend I got to participate in a dope workshop with Dylan Miner and built this bad boy. We built 4 bikes for the 4 directions, mine was white; the North. It’s going to be part of the Beat Nation exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

“Beat Nation reflects a generation of artists who juxtapose urban youth culture with Aboriginal identity in entirely innovative and unexpected ways. Using hip hop and other forms of popular culture, artists create surprising new cultural hybrids—in painting, sculpture, installation, performance and video—that reflect the changing demographics of Aboriginal people today.

In Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Nations have been a meeting ground for urban Aboriginal youth for decades and, since the early 1990s, hip hop has been a driving force of activism in the community. The roots of hip hop culture and music have been transformed into forms that echo current realities of young people, creating dynamic forums for storytelling and indigenous language, as well as new modes of political expression. This movement has been influential across disciplines—similar strategies appear in the visual arts where artists remix, mash-up and juxtapose the old with the new, the rural with the urban, traditional and contemporary as a means to rediscover and reinterpret Aboriginal culture within the shifting terrains of the mainstream.

While this exhibition takes its starting point from hip hop, it branches out to include artists who use pop culture, graffiti, fashion and other signifiers of urban life in combination with more traditional forms of Aboriginal identity. Artists create unique cultural hybrids that include graffiti murals with Haida figures, sculptures carved out of skateboard decks, abstract paintings with form-line design, live video remixes with Hollywood films, and hip hop performances in Aboriginal languages, to name a few. While focused on artists working along the West Coast, Beat Nation brings together artists from across the Americas and reveals the shared connections between those working in vastly different places.

As signifiers of Aboriginal identity and culture continue to shift and transform, and older traditions find renewed meaning in new forms of expression, one thing remains constant: a commitment to politics, to storytelling, to Aboriginal languages, to the land and rights, whether it be with drums skins or turntables, natural pigments or spray paint, ceremonial dancing or break dancing.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and based on an initiative of grunt gallery. Co-curated by Kathleen Ritter, associate curator, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Tania Willard, a Secwepemc artist, designer and curator.” – Vancouver Art Gallery

The exhibition The Romance Capital of the Yukon focuses on the idea
of shelter and the romanticism of trying to find a space for yourself in
the context of the north, specifically the town of Dawson City in
Canada’s Yukon Territory. Each of the artists has based their work for
this show on personal experiences from their time spent in the Yukon
Territory in the summer of 2011. The show features work by Northern
Shelter Collective members:

Justin Apperley
Danielle Bessada
Margaret Bowes
Calder Stephen Cheverie
Rebecca Geddes
Adonika Jayne
Louise Reimer
Carley Lovett
Jill Macknee
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Aubyn O’Grady
Jo Peters
Hayden Thomas

Performances by Adonika Jayne and Jeneen Frei Njootli.

The Rubble Gallery is a new community flex space intent on breaking
down the barriers between the arts and increasing circulation and
accessibility in the local arts scene in Vancouver. Bringing together
artists, entertainers, patrons and audiences, our goal is to highlight
high quality projects and bodies of work from local and international
sources. Together with more affordable spaces, fund-raising events,
and upcoming grants and scholarships, our aim is to make an impact in
people’s lives and have a memorable time in the process. In order to
expand ideas of space and function Rubble is using a flex concept to
morph to the will of its inhabitants, incorporating production, exhibition,
retail, entertainment, and other dynamic uses.

rubblegallery@gmail.com
northernshelter@gmail.com
Artists and Exhibitors – Ari 604 724 7849
Parties – Events – Space Leasing – Promotions – Opening Galas – Quinn
604 724 8074

stuffy from 2008

Here is an illustration that my friend Johnny MacRae commissioned to use as a book cover for his soon to be published collection of poems titled The Garbage Bunny. Johnny MacRae is an extreme daydreamer.  The inaugural Underground Individual Poetry Slam Champion of Canada, and a two-time Vancouver Poetry Slam team member, Johnny has been called “the Bob Ross of Canadian Poetry,” “one of the weirdest poets in Canada,” and “a scraggly bear riding a circus bike.”  He has a good pile of fruit, and he enjoys walking in the rain.

I got to do some work for the first Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival this fall and here is the video that Redwire Magazine put together for us.

Mahsi cho!

A few samples of illustrations for a book that I am working on Loves Lost: Portraits of items misplaced while inebriated in 2011.