Q&A: Vancouver Artist Laurie Papou Makes Her Solo Debut in New York
Vancouver gallery Cascadia Fine Art is presenting Canadian artist Laurie Papou’s New York solo debut this spring and will launch the show, entitled New, on Thursday, June 4, with a celebratory opening reception from 6 to 9 pm. “New is a body of mixed media work that redefines my creative strategies,” according to Ms. Papou. “Realistic, figurative-based paintings on wood panel have been layered and sometimes eclipsed with sound/video projection. Rather than traditional light sources, groups of paintings are bathed in the flickering glow of projected video images, and thematic tone is affirmed using sound.”
The artist’s work is represented in many public collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery of Canada. She was an honors graduate of Canada’s prestigious Emily Carr College of Art and Design (now known as Emily Carr University of Art & Design).
New opens in New York on Thursday, June 4, at Cascadia Fine Art Studio on 80 Nassau Street, Suite 204. Ms. Papou spoke with Canada Watch about the upcoming exhibition, her abiding interest in New York City, and her accomplished career to date.
Canada Watch (CW): Congratulations on your first solo exhibition inNew York.
Laurie Papou (LP): Thank you. I first visited New York as an art student in the ’80s and have been returning several times a year ever since. I have favorite pieces that I visit at public Galleries and Museums, and I visit my favorite commercial Galleries, mainly in Chelsea, to stay current with their direction.
CW: What does it mean for an artist to be making that first solo foray into the Big Apple?
LP: New York is the art capital of the world: nothing else matters.
CW: I’ve heard other artists say that they love showing in New York because there’s so much happening here and such a healthy gallery scene, but then they like to get away and outside of the city to do their work. Would you ever consider moving and working here? Or is that Vancouver setting somehow essential to your process?
LP: Vancouver has been formative to my creative process in that its landscape, climate, and west coast culture is at the core of my psyche and therefore informs my creative process. I would love to work and live in New York. I've spent a lot of time here, and the energy is infectious.
CW: How has the impact of growing up, studying, and living in Vancouver been felt in your work?
LP: Growing up in the suburbs of Vancouver was a culture-less experience, but moving to Vancouver and attending the Emily Carr College of Art and Design at age 18 was an eye-opening, mind-blowing event. I grew up there.
CW: Your paintings have evolved in recent years. Especially in that you've begun projecting images onto your paintings. What has adding this additional visual layer done to your process? How has it changed the work?
LP: It has forced me to broaden my technical skills, to understand the impact of sound, visual motion, and time. I have also, in most work, replaced the traditional source of light with the illumination of the projection. This both softens the visuals for the viewer and creates a dynamic environment. Including the elements of sound and projection in this work has changed it from a static experience to one of motion and change, the stuff of life.
A video still image from the video installation Burning Bush.
CW: Will the work in New reflect this evolution?
LP: Absolutely. New is the second body of work that uses these techniques to alter the experience of viewing a painting, and it will also include a video piece titled Madonna.
CW: With the additional visual breadth that comes from the almost collage-like effect of projecting other images onto your paintings, there has been an accompanying expanding of your artistic vision. Is it fair to say that you’ve broadened that vision, from examining the nature of human relationships (mostly between men and women) to taking on the big issues relating to life, death, spirituality – what it means to be human – with this new work?
LP: Yes, but rather than considering it broadening, I see it as a more specific examination of the human experience. Life, death, love, hatred, spirituality, forgiveness are fundamental components in our struggle to relate and develop intimate relationships with each other.
CW: Tell me about studying at Emily Carr College of Art and Design. It must have been terrific having access to that renowned place of learning, in your own backyard!
LP: I attended ECCAD in the eighties during its non-academic heyday. The energy there was palpable. It was an era that produced many important artists.
Detail of video installation Slow.
CW: Your work is housed in a number of wonderful Canadian galleries. You must feel like you're building a legacy of sorts.
LP: I hope I am. The thought of working in a vacuum is not an option. The creative process is a lonely affair of hours spent in isolation and of hard work. It is neither romantic nor glamorous. The reward is public contact on all levels.
CW: Which of your work is at the National Portrait Gallery?
LP: The portrait I did of [author] Douglas Coupland. He is also a graduate of ECCAD. After getting to know Doug and our mutual gardening interest, I asked him to be one of my portrait subjects. I depicted him with a halo of cow parsnip around his head – a mutually admired native plant.
CW: You came of age in the ’70s. How has that era influenced your work, do you think?
LP: I'm not sure if it did. I grew in a working class family in a working class suburb. Knowledge of the "world" was limited to television and radio. It was a bit of a time-warp bubble and very boring. That my terminal boredom was severed by my ECCAD experience profoundly affected my work because it was in that shift I developed courage and vision. My creative ideas were acknowledged and therefore, I developed responsibility for them.
CW: Cascadia Fine Art is presenting your work in New York. Does that venerable Vancouver gallery have designs on a potential permanent stateside home, do you think, or is this a one-off?
LP: I really don't know, but if it is a one-off for Cascadia, it certainly won't be for me. I'm always working towards bigger and better things.
CW: We are looking forward to New. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with Canada Watch.
LP: My pleasure.
BACK TO TOP
Guy Laliberté.
Cirque du Soleil Juggles Venues and Lands a Year-Round Presence in New York
Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil juggernaut, a circus empire that for 25 years has redefined traditional circus fare and pushed the limits of what’s possible in live performance, will establish a year-round presence in New York City next year.
With performances in 271 cities and 32 countries for over 11 million customers last year, Cirque is not content to rest on its considerable laurels. Having failed (so far) to negotiate a permanent venue in New York (most recently at Manhattan’s Pier 40), the company – led by its billionaire founder and majority owner Guy Laliberté – will cover the waterfront in 2010 with multiple Big-Apple performances in multiple venues.
For starters, in February, the company will mark its 25th anniversary with a new show at the recently refurbished Beacon Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The show, which Cirque hopes to present annually, will run for months (not weeks), and in 2011, the company will open at Radio City Music Hall with a four-month, annual summer extravaganza – a kind of seasonal answer to its winter holiday show, Wintuk, itself returning in November 2009 for its annual stint at Madison Square Garden. Finally, Cirque’s trademark touring tent productions, which have moved in and out of New York since 1988, will continue to visit the city periodically.
As for its year-round designs on what is after all a very crowded marketplace – even for circuses – Mr. Laliberté does not fear a glut. He told the New York Times last month: “We want something solid and permanent in the entertainment capital of the world.”
Cirque du Soleil’s KOOZA continues its run under the big top at New York City’s Randall’s Island until May 24.
BACK TO TOP
|
For timely news on upcoming Canadian cultural events in the
Tri-State area, please visit The Upper North Side. |
Diana Krall’s Quiet Nights
Canadian jazz pianist and vocalist Diana Krall dims the lights and whispers an album full of string-drenched, bossa-inspired standards on her accomplished return to form, Quiet Nights. The recording’s highlight, a silky-smooth take on the Burt Bacharach-Hal David gem, “Walk on By,” floats on by on a subtle bed of Claus Ogerman-arranged strings and the hypnotic pulse of Ms. Krall’s long-time rhythm section (bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton). As she did with “The Look of Love,” another Bacharach-David classic, Ms. Krall has taken a song indelibly associated with other artists – in this case, Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin – and made it over in her image.
And that’s pretty much the strategy here. Throughout, the bossa feel illuminates and re-invigorates non-bossa standards like “Where or When,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to His Face” (reverently rendered here) while “Quiet Nights” and “The Boy from Ipanema” – right at home in this context – sound so naturally suited to Ms. Krall’s musical gifts that it’s hard to believe they haven’t been part of her recorded songbook until now. She is content to unfurl her spacious and nuanced piano playing in fluid, subtle, one-note lines: even when she’s soloing, it’s as supporting player. Nothing moves to the forefront of these lush arrangements: Mr. Ogerman’s shimmering strings are the real star here, and Ms. Krall and her long-time producer Tommy LiPuma seem content to fall under their stardust spell. Quiet Nights is an album for, well, quiet nights.
BACK TO TOP |
Legendary Canadian Film Director Norman Jewison Honored at New York’s National Arts Club
Filmmaker, mentor, and Hollywood legend Norman Jewison became the first-ever Canadian to be presented with the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Film in a May 4 dinner ceremony that included tributes from a number of Mr. Jewison’s former colleagues, including Whoopi Goldberg, actress Olympia Dukakis, Cher (in a pre-recorded message), and the Consul General of Canada to New York Daniel Sullivan. A montage of clips from 10 of Mr. Jewison’s best-known films punctuated the tributes and brought the full house to its feet.
Mr. Jewison, whose impressive filmography includes In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof, Moonstruck, The Cincinnati Kid, and Jesus Christ Superstar (among many others) accepted the award with his usual mix of humility and humor, combining anecdotes of his early days in New York television and heartfelt thanks to his family and former colleagues. And as he has so often done in the past, he placed his filmmaking in the context of “storytelling,” stressing that film’s significance as a medium comes from its unique ability to weave a powerful tale.
During his address, Canada’s Consul General reminded the National Arts Club audience that, in 1988, Mr. Jewison had established Toronto’s Canadian Film Centre, an institution with a mandate to support emerging “voices” in film, television, and new media. “This is an incredible institution,” Consul General Sullivan said, “and a further reflection of Norman’s commitment to the art of film.”
Mr. Jewison has directed 25 movies, and his films have received a remarkable 46 Academy Award nominations. He has been nominated for three Best Director Oscars, and, in 1999, the Academy awarded him the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement. In his homeland (he currently lives in Toronto), Mr. Jewison was named to the Order of Canada in 1982 and received the country’s highest civilian honor – the Companion to the Order of Canada – ten years later.
“Never mind the gross,” Mr. Jewison advised when accepting his Thalberg Award at the 1999 Oscar ceremony. “Top 10 or bottom 10, just tell stories that move us to laughter and tears.”
More than practising what he preached that evening 10 years ago, Mr. Jewison – director, mentor, artist – continues to live it. And despite the many honors and tributes he’s received over the years, it appears that to Mr. Jewison a good story is its own – and best – reward.
BACK TO TOP |
Canadian Sculptor Gord Peteran at the Museum of Arts & Design
One of the most innovative artists working in North America today, Canadian Gord Peteran has launched a boundary-crossing career, opening up the category of furniture to an unprecedented range of psychological and conceptual content. The first large exhibition of his work in the US, Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets its Maker (at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle from May 26 – July 26), explores issues key to Mr. Peteran’s work including the use of the found object, the role of narrative in furniture, and the relationship between serial and one-off production. The exhibition includes approximately 20 works in a variety of media.
Mr. Peteran's work does not easily fit into the conventional categories of contemporary art, design, decorative art, or craft. He calls his pieces "furnitural," a made-up term that suggests his unique relationship with sculpture. His furniture incorporates both found objects and examples of his own technical mastery. His pieces are conceptual, frequently non-functional, often witty, and meant to challenge pre-conceived notions of the boundaries between furniture and sculpture.
The artist’s means as a designer are sometimes disarmingly simple: his work A Table Made of Wood (pictured here) is cobbled together, seemingly at random, from scraps lying on his workshop floor. At other times, he employs craftsmanship of the highest order, as in 100, a precisely machined occasional table that disassembles into a carrying case like that used for a rifle. Other works suggest specimen cabinets, seesaws and game tables, all twisted into new relevance through subtle manipulation.
Mr. Peteran often starts with a found object: a rickety ladder-back chair, scrap wood from a dumpster, a pencil, or a heap of twigs. He takes one of these objects and operates on it, creating an artwork while leaving the object itself more or less intact. In this way, the artist has taken the category of furniture as a found object in its own right, an object to be operated upon conceptually.
Similarly, Musical Box, a piece commissioned from Mr. Peteran in 1996 by the Glenn Gould Foundation for its Glenn Gould Prize (named for the Canadian classical pianist), is a machine for testing sounds. Its mechanisms are each operated by a brass and ebony knob. One internal device is a globe containing smooth rocks from the bottom of a fish tank, which swish together when the globe is turned. There is a crude xylophone, an even cruder geared music box, a contraption consisting of different lengths of metal rod that strike a piece of plastic when they are rotated, and a reed sounded by a homemade bellows. Turn another knob, and a single string is plucked by a Fender guitar pick. The box does for music what Mr. Peteran’s work normally does for furniture—isolating the medium’s basic premises and freezing them in a state of arrested development.
Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker is the second installation at the Museum of Arts and Design's new Design and Innovation Gallery, an initiative for temporary exhibitions that reflect the Museum's focus on innovation in design, emerging trends, and distinguished voices within the field.
BACK TO TOP |
|
