BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery - ECPv6.16.5.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://mccainartgallery.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Halifax BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0300 TZNAME:ADT DTSTART:20200308T060000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0300 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:AST DTSTART:20201101T050000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0300 TZNAME:ADT DTSTART:20210314T060000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0300 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:AST DTSTART:20211107T050000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0300 TZNAME:ADT DTSTART:20220313T060000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0300 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:AST DTSTART:20221106T050000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:UTC BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:UTC DTSTART:20200101T000000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210123 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210314 DTSTAMP:20211105T214720Z CREATED:20201203T213113Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211105T214720Z UID:3761-1611360000-1615679999@mccainartgallery.com SUMMARY:Sarah Jones: Idyll DESCRIPTION:Artist StatementMy art practice explores interactions with manufactured and industrial landscapes through painting and installation. I am particularly interested in how Maritime cities and the local industrial heritage of Saint John contribute to notions of regional identity. \nStephen Parrish\, Coast of New Brunswick\, 1882\, Etching \nYears ago\, I encountered this etching in the New Brunswick Museum by American artist Stephen Parrish (1846-1938) and learned that he and a fellow artist passed through Saint John\, NB in the summer of 1881on an etching and painting tour of the Maritime provinces. Coast of New Brunswick\, 1882\, features small sailing vessels\, rustic wharves\, fisher folk and the quiet harbour of Saint John. The rusticity in the depiction did not correspond with what my understanding was of Saint John in the late nineteenth-century. I was a history student at the time\, and I knew enough to recognize a disconnect. Saint John of 1881 would hardly have been described as quaint. The city\, then as now\, was an industrial centre with shipping and construction activity and port-side factories. This disconnect – depicting the quaintly idyllic and rustic where there should be industrialization – is not an isolated phenomenon. Parrish was part of a wider tradition in British and American landscape painting of the nineteenth century of romanticizing the rural and the maritime. This quest for the picturesque meant avoiding or creatively re-framing evidence of modernity and industrialization and in doing so\, reaffirming a pervasive idea that the pre-industrial embodies something that is somehow purer and more authentic.\nIdyll\, 2019 responds to Parrish’s etching\, by restaging in the painting\, the same 360-degree landscape surveyed from the same vantage point as the historical work. Moveable screens allow only some portions of the painting to be seen\, which I hope signal the artist’s role in directing the gaze and deciding what is left in or out of the frame. I would like this artwork to remind us of the agency of both artist and viewer and prompt the questions: what are we seeing? What and who is included or excluded and why? What is beyond our gaze?\nMore recently I have been looking at historical representations of Maritime landscape in art and questioning the role of these landscapes in constructing a narrative about the ideal Maritime landscape. I am currently working on projects\, including the storm paintings\, that explore the role of historical representations in crafting current social attitudes towards manufactured/industrialized landscape\, how nostalgia for an imagined or idealized historical landscape impacts current regional identity\, and how notions of the historical ‘Folk’ manifest in myself and my own identity. \nBiographySarah Jones (BA\, MA Art History) is a visual artist\, art historian and curator. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and abroad\, and her work is held in the public collections of the University of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Art Bank. Jones is a recipient of numerous grants and awards\, including funding from ArtsNB and Canada Council for the Arts. \nJones is based in Saint John\, New Brunswick. In addition to her own practice\, she is the curator at Jones Gallery and teaches art history occasionally at University of New Brunswick. \nThe artist would like to acknowledge support from ArtsNB and Canada Council for the Arts. \nVideo Interview with Sarah Jones URL:https://mccainartgallery.com/exhibitions/sarah-jones-idyll/ LOCATION:New Brunswick CATEGORIES:Exhibitions,Past Exhibitions ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://mccainartgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/02SJIdyll_2-crop-213x166-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210123T080000 DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210313T170000 DTSTAMP:20210908T233518Z CREATED:20201203T231404Z LAST-MODIFIED:20210908T233518Z UID:3764-1611388800-1615654800@mccainartgallery.com SUMMARY:Colin Smith: One Kilometre of Florenceville DESCRIPTION:Colin Smith taught high school art\, theatre\, and English for 20 years.  His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout NB and is included in public and private collections.  For 11 years\, his drawings and cartoons were featured weekly in the Salon section of the Telegraph Journal.  He works out of his studio in the River Art Centre in downtown Florenceville-Bristol. He is represented by the Spicer Merrifield Gallery in Saint John\, NB. \nColin Smith a enseigné les arts\, le théâtre et l’anglais au lycée pendant 20 ans.  Ses œuvres ont été exposées dans des galeries d’art dans tout le Nouveau-Brunswick et font partie de collections publiques et privées.  Pendant 11 ans\, ses dessins et ses caricatures ont été présentés chaque semaine dans la section “Salon” du Telegraph Journal.  Il travaille dans son atelier au River Art Centre\, dans le centre-ville de Florenceville-Bristol. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Artist Statement“Life inspires me.  Right now I spend a lot of time drawing birds: sometimes in imagined situations\, sometimes in an eighteenth century engraving kind of way – sometimes they are Nature\, sometimes they the Wings of Time or the Broken Heart of a Poet\, but usually they are just birds.  The landscape around here is slowly driving me crazy\, because every time I look at it\, after looking at it for thirty years\, I see it moving like a live thing\, just a series of slow undulations\, studded with trees and potato fields. \nFor years I drew people interacting\, in supermarkets and streets.  I drew high school kids\, simultaneously terrified and deeply self-assured.  And I drew thousands of cartoons\, and published some of them in the Salon Section of the Telegraph Journal for a decade – historical\, topical\, linguistic – really anything but overtly political.  I don’t hate enough to be a political cartoonist. \nI draw constantly.  I doodle on paper\, in books\, over shopping lists\, throughout my teacher planning book.  I have done it since grade one.  I have been a nanny\, a bookbinder\, a used bookseller\, a warehouseman\, a handyman\, and now I am a teacher\, but it’s all to support my doodling habit.  If I wasn’t selling anything\, I would still be drawing. \nWhen I was eight\, I found a copy of Syd Hoff’s “How to be a Cartoonist” in the Saint John Public Library.  That\, along with Jim Corbett’s “Maneaters of Kumaon” and the Freddy the Pig Detective books\, was my Bible. Syd Hoff claimed you could make a living as a cartoonist\, so I started in third grade.  I filled notebooks with comic strips\, and mailed some cartoons off to Playboy\, which they politely returned. My rejection notice collection is still growing. \nI have a sketchbook with me always\, which I fill with phrases or doodles or ideas of what I see around me\, and what I am thinking about.  If I don’t set them down\, they are lost.  I roughly block out a drawing in pencil\, usually working from these sketches\, and then have at it with pen and ink. I like the finality of ink – once you put the mark on the paper\, it is there. It encourages a mix of fluidity and improvisation.  I tried technical pens\, but I prefer the dip pens.  The ink is usually richer\, and the line of a dip pen modulates – it gets thinner and thicker as you go.  The drawing is crosshatched and toned in with pen lines\, then sometimes coloured ink washes or watercolour are added.  A lot of my tonal squiggles have come from old engravings\, where shading and tone were built up with marks\, then a flat wash would be added to finish it off\, and the ink and the wash would work together to create a strange volume. \nI draw everything.  It is\, after all\, a way of seeing.” URL:https://mccainartgallery.com/exhibitions/colin-smith-one-kilometre-of-florenceville/ LOCATION:New Brunswick CATEGORIES:Exhibitions,Past Exhibitions ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://mccainartgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/drawing-header.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210327 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210509 DTSTAMP:20210906T220253Z CREATED:20210306T193932Z LAST-MODIFIED:20210906T220253Z UID:3918-1616803200-1620518399@mccainartgallery.com SUMMARY:Gordon Dunphy Vessels DESCRIPTION:“What’s important to try to catch [is] the spirit that trees have\, especially big old hardwood trees\, and if I can catch that and make it look simple … the best forms are those that look as if they just happened.” Gordon Dunphy. \nGordon Dunphy lived on the banks of the Nashwaak River\, near Taymouth\, NB where he had a dairy farm until he turned from farming to embrace the art of wood turning\, making a distinct and significant contribution to New Brunswick’s cultural landscape. The New Brunswick poet Michael Pacey has attributed an “innate sense of mischief as key to Dunphy’s explorations and subversions of time-honoured artistic binaries such as art and nature\, art and craft\, form and content\, inside and outside.” Working with wood all his life\, he turned stumps and gnarly burls into classic vessel forms\, with paper-thin walls and highly polished surfaces\, that maintain the distinctive characteristics of the original material and transcend the craft. \nSome of his most distinctive pieces were created from burls\, “when the cells start to grow faster than the tree itself\, [they produce] a protruding growth on the tree. And often\, not always\, but often\, it’s a beautiful grain in colour\,” Dunphy said. The artist’s ability to find great beauty in a common\, classic piece of New Brunswick nature\, the hardwood tree\, meant that very quickly his art was collected the world over\, and he won every significant craft award in New Brunswick. “He just saw things in wood that nobody else could\,” said Kate Rogers\, previous director of the New Brunswick Crafts Council. \nWhile co-curating this exhibition in 2019\, Jennifer Pazienza observed that “Gordon is a poet whose verse is written upon and within his vessels. The object that stands before you\, the spaces they create carry the poetic imagination of Gordon Dunphy. The poetics that constitute them resonate and reverberate with imagination that comes from the depths and reverie of his daydreams; a place where\, as Gaston Bachelard said\, time ceases to exist\, and space is everything. These vessels ask us to consider ways they influence the space they occupy within the place we find them. They ask us to reflect upon them and our relationship to them\, to engage with and beyond their surfaces and read between their lines and shape”. \nConsidered one of the finest wood turners in North America\, nearly 30 works were donated to the Beaverbrook’s collection in 2009 after the artist died. Many of them are on view here. The collection was assembled by the artist as a legacy documenting his career. “In a sense\, Dunphy curated this exhibition himself\,” says John Leroux\, the Gallery’s Manager of Collections and Exhibitions. \nExhibition co-curated by Jennifer Pazienza and John Leroux and organised by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. URL:https://mccainartgallery.com/exhibitions/gordon-dunphy-vessels/ LOCATION:New Brunswick CATEGORIES:Exhibitions,Past Exhibitions ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://mccainartgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Dunphy-install-at-ALMAG-4-213x160-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210327 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210509 DTSTAMP:20211106T211917Z CREATED:20210326T202538Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211106T211917Z UID:3936-1616803200-1620518399@mccainartgallery.com SUMMARY:Out of the Woods:James Buxton\,Francine Simard Levesque\, Colin Smith DESCRIPTION:Out of the Woods brings together three carvers from northern New Brunswick who are inspired by nature and share a love of working with wood on a small scale. Their divergent intentions for their work reinforced by their stylistic choices confirm their individual voices despite their common materials and tools. \nJames Buxton\nBorn and raised in Riverbank\, James has been sculpting all his life and has been carving for over 30 years. A self-taught carver James also works in steel\, stone\, and assemblage. Working out of the River Art Centre Studios\, James also regularly teaches a variety of classes.\n“I can’t stop making art – always have – and carving\, working in 3 dimensions has always interested me. I am also a keen observer of nature and the habits and characteristics of birds. Carving the birds starts with selecting the right shaped block of wood\, and carefully forming the body by paying very close attention to the unique characteristics of each species. Looking closely at the shapes inside the animal’s form\, like the swell of the beak\, tilt of the head\, the pattern\, shape and layers of feathers and all the other distinguishing characteristics that each bird has\, I try to capture the natural stance of the bird. In the final colour\, I strive for as great a verisimilitude as possible. Flock\, 2020\, on loan from the Public Art Collection of the Town of Florenceville-Bristol\, is a collection of birds that are common to the Upper Saint John River Valley”. James Buxton \nArtist James Buxton making Ash Baskets \n“I love to work with my hands – can’t keep them still or stay in one place unless I am working on an art piece. I like to think that I am plagiarizing nature with my birds. Making them real”. \nFrancine Simard Levesque\nFrancine Simard Levesque is a self taught artist\, born and raised in the northwestern part of New Brunswick. At a young age she was surrounded by artistic people who encouraged her to explore in every artistic discipline presented to her. Francine started to create with wood in 1985 and now concentrates on sculpture only. \n“It is creating with the beauty of wood that makes me want to be an artist. When I find a piece of wood\, I have no control over what I see. It is the spirit of the forest\, of the trees that speak to me and that show me the human faces and animals I make. I try to keep that spirit alive in the sculpture.  Every piece I make shares the forest spirit and carries the message “Keep the trees alive”\, for the animals and for us.” \n“The forest is a visualization of my feelings when in the solitude of the trees. It is the softness of the air and the smell of the leaves. It is the coarseness of the bark and the sounds of the animals. I feel it all. I am part of the forest and it is part of me.”  Francine Simard Levesque \nFrancine at work in her studio \n“En réalité\, c’était la sculpture qui m’attirait. J’ai grandi à Edmundston et lorsque je me rendais à la cathédrale de l’Immaculée-Conception\, j’étais fascinée par les sculptures et les détails. Je trouvais ça impressionnant.  Lorsque j’ai appris qu’il y avait un groupe de sculpture à Grand-Sault\, je me disais que j’irais rencontrer ces gens pour avoir des outils et je me suis mise à sculpter avec eux.” \nColin Smith\nColin Smith taught high school art\, theatre\, and English for 20 years.  His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout NB and is included in public and private collections.  For 11 years\, his drawings and cartoons were featured weekly in the Salon section of the Telegraph Journal.  He works out of his studio in the River Art Centre in downtown Florenceville-Bristol. \n“I have always drawn.  Several years ago\, I decided my drawings did not look solid enough on the paper.  So\, I started carving\, to figure out how to give my drawings a sense of weight.  And it worked.  It showed me some stuff about drawing\, by making me look at it differently\, and I grew to really enjoy carving.” \nI work small.  The shape of the wood generally determines what’s carved.  Some of my whittlings look like residue from my distant ancestors.  Some of them look a bit more modern.  They are worked with knives\, chisels\, and axes\, in a very unsophisticated way.  I have found that every cut changes my idea of the project.  I may start out with an idea\, but the wood itself\, by breaking and revealing its shapes and curls \, keeps editing and suggesting.  I never know how the little carvings will turn out\, and that’s why I do them. \nThe Boat sculpture is the result of Jamie Buxton’s misbegotten attempt to pull me into the twentieth century.  He showed me how to use rotary carvers\, and The Boat is the result.  It is a tribute to schools and to Carleton North High School\, the building I spent the last twenty years in.  It is an affectionate good bye to what I still think is the greatest\, and most important\, job in the world.” Colin Smith \nColin Smith \n“Life inspires me. For years I drew people interacting\, in supermarkets and streets.  I drew high school kids\, simultaneously terrified and deeply self-assured.  And I drew thousands of cartoons\, and published some of them in the Salon Section of the Telegraph Journal for a decade – historical\, topical\, linguistic – really anything but overtly political. I have a sketchbook with me always and I draw everything.  It is\, after all\, a way of seeing.” URL:https://mccainartgallery.com/exhibitions/out-of-the-woods/ LOCATION:New Brunswick CATEGORIES:Exhibitions,Past Exhibitions ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://mccainartgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IMG_0735-e1616778324103-213x104-1.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR