13 September @ 7:00 pm ADT This is a free event and open to the public Live automatic captions will be available
Featuring artists Excel Garay, Daze Jefferies, B.G-Osborne, Racquel Rowe, Kelsey Street, Faune Ybarra and exhibition curator Emily Critch, this online panel discussion will explore issues and themes raised in the exhibition falling through our fingers, which considers the complexities of preservation and the possibilities of archives. Each of the artists included will discuss new work that mediates institutional, personal, and familial collections to engage with intergenerational dialogues, undocumented labour, diasporic histories, historical erasure, grief, and joy. In locating and weaving threads between archival interstices, the exhibition acknowledges the interconnectedness of past, present, and future.
Join us as we host our second annual Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon! We’ll be turning our lobby into Wikipedia central, complete with computer workstations and a comfy zine zone where you can read zines about Wikipedia and encounter subjects and voices outside the mainstream.
This event is part of a global initiative to close information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts. The focus of our work will be on women, LGBTQIA+, and racialized artists who have exhibited at the Owens or whose work is in our permanent collection.
Edits to Wikipedia make meaningful and immediate change, helping to shape the world’s largest reference and one of the most-visited sites on the Internet. Anyone can write and edit articles in Wikipedia and there are many ways to participate in the Edit-a-thon, from smaller actions like building bibliographies and adding category tags to help make articles more findable, to bigger tasks, such as expanding an article or even starting your own!
We will provide training and support for new Wikipedians. We’ll also have a list of suggested articles to work on and reference materials to get you started. You can bring your own laptop or use one of ours.
The Sweetest Little Thing: Fundraising Art Auction Valentine’s Day Tuesday 14 February @ 7:00 PM Owens Art Gallery
(Bidding opens February 7th, 9am)
We are thrilled to announce the return of the Sweetest Little Thing live and in-person! We can’t wait to welcome you back to the Owens this Valentine’s Day to celebrate art and community. At the heart of this event is a silent auction featuring artworks donated by local, regional, and national artists. For the first time in two years, artworks will be on view in the Owens’ second-floor gallery.
This year’s event will be a little different than before the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is sure to feel as warm and fuzzy as always. You can expect a chance to gather in your fanciest dress, to snap a photo at the Instant Lovin’ Photo Booth, and partake in some dancing. We’ll have outdoor refreshments of hot chocolate and apple cider served by Mount Allison’s Flame snack cart.
While there won’t be a cakewalk this year, there will be a raffle for an epic cake donated by Cranewood on Main Bakery and Café and other fabulous prize packs.
Masks continue to be mandatory at the Owens and Struts and in all buildings at Mount Allison University. We will have extra special pink, magenta, and red KN95 masks to keep us looking festive. Available for free in both child and adult sizes.
Admission to the event is by donation. Capacity is limited.
This year, bidding will take place entirely online, so remember to bring your device of choice. Bidding opens on 7 February @ 9:00 AM AST at www.sweetestlittlething.ca. Artworks will be available to preview in-person beginning 7 February at the Owens.
Online Exhibition 27 January to 23 April 2023 Game Night: 10 March @ 7:00 pm
Works by David Clark, Ronnie Clarke, Elizabeth LaPensée, the Oshkii Giizhik Singers and Sharon M. Day, Amanda Low, Emily Short, Kara Stone
Life is not a continuous line from the cradle to the grave. Rather, it is many short lines, each ending in a choice, and branching right and left to other choices. —Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins, Consider the Consequences!, 1930
Bringing together online works of interactive, non-linear storytelling, this exhibition explores how embodied experiences are created through sensory interactions. With each click, keystroke, swipe, or choice, you are taken deeper into webs of poetic hypertext, interactive narratives, and games. There is no winning or losing, and numerous endings are possible. Serving as a means to re-examine and expand our understanding of both the digital and physical world, these works create personal, intimate interactions where we interact, touch, and converse with code.
John Murchie’s art explores the relationship between order and accident. By focusing on simple actions, such as drawing a line, applying paint, or selecting colours, he seeks chaos in constraint and humour in seriousness. Straight lines end up crooked, evenly applied layers of paint become strange formations, crossword puzzles reveal modernist abstractions. À rebours (Against the Grain) spans fifty years of Murchie’s artistic practice, which found its direction in the 1970s, when he was Director of the Library at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Murchie is also widely known for his generous mentorship and support of artists and cultural producers at all stages of their careers, his tireless work building artists’ networks, and his significant contributions to artist-run culture in Canada. These contributions have led many artists to express their respect and admiration for him through their work. This exhibition is accompanied by a small selection of these homages done by artists Erin Brubacher, John Haney, Micah Lexier, Deborah Margo, Graeme Patterson, Felicity Tayler, and Tara K. Wells.
Originally from New Jersey, John Murchie immigrated to Canada in 1967 and has lived in Sackville, New Brunswick, for the past thirty-two years, earning a living as a gallery director, curator, writer, teacher, farmer, and cook. From 1972 to 1990 he worked as Director of the Library at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His art practice spans more than fifty years during which time he published several artist books including A Quiet Evening (1978), Lines (1979), and One Way Ticket (1983). He has had several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions at venues including AC Institute (New York), Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax), Articule (Montreal), Mercer Union (Toronto), The Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary), and Open Space (Victoria). He participated in Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival in 2003 and 2008. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions for Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (Halifax), the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton), and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown). He received awards and grants including two Canada Council for the Arts “Curator and Critics” awards, and, in 1995-1996, he was a Research Fellow at the National Gallery of Canada. From 2003 to 2013, he worked as the Coordinator of Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre (Sackville, NB).
Magic Shrink Plastic with Vanessa Blackier Wednesday 18 January 7-9 PM
After three years on pause, we are thrilled to relaunch our MAKER MAKER workshop series! Join us as we kick off our 2023 program with Sackville artist, Vanessa Blackier, and discover the magic of shrink plastic.
At this workshop, you will learn tips and tricks for working with shrink plastic. We’ll have everything you’ll need to get started;shrink film, Sharpies, and scissors. Draw and cut out your designs and pop them into one of our portable toaster ovens, then watch in amazement as they shrink to half their original size. Turn your small-scale creations into charms, pendants, pins and more!
Vanessa Blackier is a crafter and connoisseur of cute tiny things, so naturally shrink plastic is her medium of choice. Finding inspiration anywhere from the garden to the thrift store, she designs colourful jewellery pieces for quirky and kitschy souls. You can find her handcrafted accessories at @veebeeshoppee on Instagram.
MAKER MAKER is a monthly program of seriously small after-hours art workshops. Led by diverse Maker Mentors, each workshop introduces a pocket-sized art project that can be made in two hours or less. Designed for accomplished and aspiring makers alike, MAKER MAKER is for anyone interested in making small things by hand with friends and fellow makers. This informal workshop series explores how working small can be practical, portable, and playful, economical, sharable, and even wearable.
While the hot chocolate and cookies are still on hiatus, we are so looking forward to gathering with you again! Masks are required at the Owens and in all buildings at Mount Allison University.
MAKER MAKER is free and all materials are provided; no registration required.
Make Something Sunday: A Program for Families at the Owens Art Gallery
Make Something Sundays return with a new series of family workshops for winter and spring. This monthly program introduces new materials and ways of working through informal hands-on workshops for kids 12 and under and their adults. Drop-in for half an hour or stay for two. No booking required. This program is offered free of charge.
15 January, 2:00-4:00 pm Pasta Maker Printmaking Discover how a hand-cranked pasta maker can become a printing press. Make your own printing plate, ink it up, and run it through our pasta maker press.
12 February, 2:00-4:00 pm Patchwork Valentines For this special Winterfest Make Something Sunday, we’re hosting a Valentine’s card making extravaganza. Let our fabric stash be your inspiration as you cut and collage fabric shapes onto cards for family and friends.
19 March, 2:00-4:00 pm Button Press Studio Transform your miniature artworks into buttons that you can wear home or one-of-a-kind magnets for your fridge.
23 April, 2:00-4:00 pm Hand-Stamped Mini Banners Play with pattern, stamp out a message, and create your own canvas banner to hang at home.
28 May, 2:00-4:00 pm DIY Sketchbook Design your own sketchbook and bind it with a few simple stitches or our stapler. Decorate the cover with washi tape and collage, then head outside to draw the first signs of spring
Also featuring a rug hooking demo extravaganza with artist Libbie Farrell.
Libbie Farrell will be spending the day working on a new rug and folks will have the opportunity to stop by, learn a bit of rug hooking, and contribute some stitches to a rug. Experience the highs and lows of rug hooking… in real time!
Libbie Farrell (She/They) is a white settler and interdisciplinary artist from rural Treaty 6 Territory (Alberta), Canada. An interdisciplinary artist, they create fiber, textile, print, and performance art, that uses appropriation of materials and imagery as a major tool. Their work uses comedy to explore their relationship to, and alienation from gender and womanhood.
Undone 8 October to 11 December 2022 Curator: Emily Falvey
Erika DeFreitas, Ursula Johnson, Adriana Kuiper + Ryan Suter, Andrea Mortson, Roula Partheniou, Tara K. Wells
This group exhibition features seven artists whose work both centres and expands our understanding of the handmade and its relevance to contemporary art. It is also a meditation on our shared and personal circumstances during a period of multiple crises, as well as our capacity to imagine a better future. Building on the various meanings of “undone,” the exhibition makes connections between artistic process, grief, impermanence, transition, undoing, not doing, and doing differently.
Shaheer Zazai: Are We Even 15 October to 11 December 2022 Curator: Emily Falvey
Afghan-Canadian artist Shaheer Zazai is known for incredible digital works that use thousands of individual, manual key strokes in Microsoft Word to mimic traditional Afghan carpet-making techniques. More recently, he has expanded his practice to include textiles, translating his digital works into jacquard weavings. The works in Are We Even continue his ongoing exploration of cultural identity in the context of diaspora and contemporary geopolitics, while also engaging with concepts of mirroring, transformation, splitting, and merging into new forms.
All are welcome to attend. CART transcription will be available.
Shaheer Zazai, 1114.1 (detail), 2018, digital print on watercolour paper produced in Microsoft Word, edition of 10, 28 x 35.6 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Patel Brown.
12 October @ 4:00 pm Owens Art Gallery
Shaheer Zazai received a BFA from OCAD University in 2011 and was artist in residence at OCAD University as part of the Digital Painting Atelier in 2015. He is a recipient of Ontario Arts Council grants, and he was a finalist for EQ Bank’s Emerging Digital Artist Award in 2018. Since graduating, Zazai has had several solo and group exhibitions such as those at the Capacity 3 Gallery, CAFKA Biennial 2019, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, Double Happiness Projects and Patel Brown Gallery. His digital works have been covered by CBC Arts in 2018, Ajam Media Collective in 2019, and the Globe and Mail in 2020. In addition to his solo exhibition at the Owens, his upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at the Agha Khan Museum (Toronto), the group exhibition Shifting Ground at Digital Arts Resource Centre (Ottawa), Every Answer is Correct, an off-site group exhibition curated by the Power Plant (Toronto), and Porous Identities, the inaugural group exhibition for Patel Brown Gallery’s Montreal location.
