My work has been accepted into a
TREX exhibition! I feel very honoured to have my paintings shown along with the work of several other artists in "Eye And The City", which will travel throughout southwestern Alberta for two years, beginning in mid-2014.
Shane Golby, a visual artist himself and the travelling exhibitions manager/curator, made a studio visit two weeks ago and we had a great conversation about life, art, the urban phenomenon, the universe and everything. As a result of our conversation, I have been thinking more deeply about my work and about connections.
A comment about the history of stitching on one of my
recent blog posts underlined an idea about where my work comes from and how it connects to my life and my family's history. I've spent the last two weeks writing and thinking a lot, and tonight have finished the final draft of a new artist statement. Read on...
WHY
DO WE BUILD WHAT WE BUILD?
My
childhood was spent on a farm in southwestern Ontario, but I have
lived almost all my adult life in the downtown core of one city or
another across Canada. Having roots in a rural environment has shaped
the way I view urban life.
It
can be exciting and sometimes overwhelming to be in an environment
with so much sensory stimulation, especially if you are not used to
that type of environment. My first impression of city life was that
there is a lot of information coming in very fast! Lots of lights at
night. Sirens near and far. So many layers of buildings. So many
people. Everything moving all the time. That first impression has not
changed much, even after many years of city living. The energy of
urban places still feels exciting and irresistible to me, and this
feeling continues to inspire my work.
A
city is a place of concentrated human energy, full of human-made
things. Even the green spaces in an urban environment are made by
people, or at least they are managed, cultivated, and made accessible
for almost everyone in a way that the countryside is not. The most
deliberately designed urban green spaces may feature highly
manicured, symmetrical rows of trees and evenly spaced flower beds.
Urban grey spaces, though equally deliberately designed, do not
adhere to the perfection of their architectural elevation drawings:
you can find meandering footprints on straight sidewalks, random
patterns of discarded chewing gum on neat squares of concrete, and
other signs of resistance to the order of human design.
This
type of environment, where almost everything is human-made but not
entirely under human control, is quite fascinating. Why do we build
cities? Why do we build them the way we do?
There
is some personal history in my stitching of the canvas, too. My
parents immigrated to Canada after they got married; my father is
from Brasil and my mother from Holland. My father learned to farm
from his father, and my mother learned to sew from her mother.
During
my childhood, my father built barns and designed machinery, and my
mother sewed for people. She worked at the kitchen table in the
evenings, and used wonderful fabrics - silk and satin and organza,
intricate laces and beads, shiny embroidery thread - to make wedding
dresses. Those beautiful dresses were a big contrast to the world of
livestock and crops that is a farm.
When
I grew up I moved far away from my family, too. I became an artist.
Sewing is part of my work, but instead of using beautiful fabrics to
make wedding dresses in the midst of farm life, I use common
materials - canvas, burlap, a torn sweater, bits and pieces found on
the street – to make beautifully designed paintings in the midst of
the an urban environment.
Although
in many ways my city life is very different from my parents' farm
lives, which in turn were different from their parents' lives in
Holland and Brasil, you could say that our histories are stitched
together.
I
didn't think about it too much at first, but gradually I saw that
cities are mostly built by men, and sewing is mostly done by women –
and here I am, in effect, building cities with my sewing machine.
Verna
Vogel, 2013
Here is the work which will go into the exhibition:
 |
Fire Escape
mixed media on stitched canvas
22w x 25h inches |
 |
One Hundred and Eighty Degrees
mixed media on stitched canvas
32w x 21h inches |
 |
Stars
mixed media on stitched canvas
27w x 23h inches |
 |
Just Turn Your Head a Little
mixed media on stitched canvas
24w x 30h inches |
