Tag: Zack Gallery

Interpreting Torah with art

Artists Nancy Current, left, and Robin Atlas at Zack Gallery. (photo by Linda Lando)

Visual Midrash: Plagues and Visions, which opened at Zack Gallery on April 7, features the work of Seattleites Robin Atlas and Nancy Current, the only West Coast artists creating in the genre of visual midrash. The show is the culmination of a four-year collaboration that started in 2012.

“We met through the Jewish Art Salon in New York,” said Current. “Even though we both live in Seattle, we didn’t know each other at that point.”

Atlas elaborated: “The president of the Jewish Art Salon sent us both an introductory email. She said we probably knew each other already, but we didn’t – and we lived only 10 minutes apart.”

“Robin was about to open a new show in L.A. and she brought her works to my studio,” said Current. “I was amazed. There was so much beauty and thought behind it all. That’s what visual midrash is all about. It requires two elements: the clarity of story and the visual beauty of the artist’s interpretation. I looked at Robin’s art and I said to myself, I’m going to work with her forever.”

They started working together, but their chosen genre – interpreting Torah through visual art – is not widely known. “We didn’t have a ready audience in the West,” Current explained, “not like in New York. We needed to build it, so we started teaching adult classes two years ago. The classes include the texts from the Torah, introduced by a Torah instructor, and a visual component, taught by an art instructor.”

“We would do slide shows, video presentations, and the students would have a chance to create their own art,” Atlas said. “Linda Lando, the Zack Gallery director, facilitated the first class we did in Vancouver earlier this year.”

For the current show, the artists explored the theme of the 10 plagues. “We were drawn to the story,” said Current.

Although each artist works with different media – Atlas with textiles and Current with glass and paper – their creative vision is similar. Their symbolic abstracts mesh extremely well, as if the images belong together, buzzing with the same esthetic sense and the same muted elegance, complementing each other to tell the same tale.

While the Vancouver Jewish community was introduced to Atlas when she exhibited at the Zack in mid-2014, Current is a new name for most local art appreciators.

“I always drew and painted as a child but I can’t say that I had the conscious idea to be an artist,” Current recalled. “I grew up in Seattle, in an old house with stained-glass windows. That undoubtedly affected my later fascination with glass. I learned to blow glass when I was about 24, but gave that up in favor of painting on stained-glass.”

She explained, “Glass is different from other mediums because light passes through it (transmitted light) instead of bouncing off [of it], like with paper or canvas (reflected light). Transmitted light, especially through colored glass, connects to a person’s emotional centre more directly than reflected light. It also has a spiritual aspect. Think of all those stained-glass windows in churches and synagogues. That is important to my Jewish work.”

Although she has worked in other visual genres, Jewish themes absorb her artistic passion now.

“Jewish art has gradually replaced my other work, life drawing and landscape, because it is much more meaningful,” she said. “Visual midrash is the most meaningful Jewish art of all. It requires a lot of study and thought, and those are things I highly value about living a Jewish life.”

Current pointed to two particular influences on her development as an artist.

“The first was studying at Pilchuck Glass School,” she said. “The school attracted many artists early in the history of the American studio glass movement. I studied there with the amazing British glass painter Patrick Reyntiens. He is 90 years old now and still a good friend.

“The second was finding the Jewish Art Salon (JAS) in New York. Becoming a fellow in the JAS has led me to friendships with several Jewish artists who have been doing visual midrash for years. They have helped a lot.”

Current doesn’t concentrate on making a living with her art. Her main concern is to share it with as many people as possible. “Of course, eventually I want to sell my work,” she said, “but not until I’ve had a chance to show it in several exhibitions. The purpose of doing my work is to cause people to think about their Jewish heritage.”

Current and Atlas’ show runs until May 8.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Exploring winter landscapes

Ian Penn’s exhibit Winter Paintings: The Figure in and on the Landscape opened March 10 at Zack Gallery. (photo by Olga Livshin)

The theme of Ian Penn’s solo show at Zack Gallery is winter. The artist’s love for winter, for the mountains of British Columbia and for skiing reverberates through the gallery.

“I’m affected by the seasons, by my surroundings,” said Penn in an interview with the Independent. “I only paint current seasons. In summer, I paint summer; in the fall, I paint its rioting colors. In winter, I paint snow and skiing.”

Penn spends lots of his free time in the mountains. “Our whole family likes to ski,” he said. “When we first moved to B.C., we bought our first place in the mountains before we settled in Vancouver.”

Penn has been skiing since his youth in Australia, but it was cross-country skiing until he immigrated to Canada and saw the mountains. At the age of 35, he started alpine skiing – and loved it.

Around 2000, he went a step further. He joined the ski patrol in Whistler, volunteering part-time his professional skills as a doctor. He still does that. “I like the ski patrol community. They are nice people,” he said.

About the same time, he also became seriously interested in painting, which eventually led to a degree from Emily Carr.

Penn has a general fascination with landscapes, especially mountain scenes, as an art form. He has painted dozens of landscapes, in every season, and some of his favorite areas to paint are around Whistler and the Callaghan Valley.

“I was always interested in mapping a territory, but a map and a territory are not the same,” he explained. “The painting of a landscape is not the same as if you stand in that place, experience it with all your senses. Or with devices – photo cameras and cellphones. I wanted to capture that difference in my paintings. That’s why I started a series of diptychs. My diptychs are like a single painting in two parts.”

There are several diptychs on display in the gallery. One is a landscape, a vista with the majestic mountains and forest, with tiny human figures. The second affords a closer look. The human figure is larger, the artist’s focus has narrowed, and the people in these paintings are doing something, engaging with the mountains. They whip down the slopes on their skis. They stop to take photos. They enjoy the invigorating exercise and the beauty around them. They laugh and horse around.

Penn captures their movement in his paintings. His objects are not static. They don’t pose. They are just going about their business, and the artist is going about his.

“Initially, I wanted to paint on location,” he said. “I want to paint everywhere I go, but I couldn’t do that in winter. It’s too cold both for my hands and for the paints. Or it might snow. What I do when I’m in the mountains skiing, I take photos and make quick drawings.”

The drawings provide him with the first impression, the emotional subtext. The photographs he uses for details.

“All the details in my landscapes are accurate. The precision is important to me. I want to be able to navigate by them. I want the ski patrol to be able to use my paintings when they have to rescue someone,” he said, only half-joking.

Many of his paintings have personal stories attached, some of which are more obvious than others. In one painting, there was to have been a person but there isn’t; the close-up view is surprisingly empty of life. “He got erased. I erased him,” Penn said. “He was a vain fellow. He was dancing around, making selfies of himself with his cellphone, turning so he would get every possible angle. He didn’t notice anyone else, almost stepped on my ski. At first, I wanted to show it, as a portrait of self-absorption, but I disliked the fellow so much, I finally erased his figure from my painting. But, mostly, I want my paintings to tell your stories, not mine.”

The dominating color in all of the paintings is white, of course, overset by green forest and dark mountains. Only people provide splashes of color: a red jacket or a yellow parka.

“I use five different whites for the snow,” Penn said. “And then there are color patches reflecting the surroundings. Snow is never simply white. It’s complex and a challenge. It’s always different. And so is the sky: blue but different in each painting. But I never used black in any of these paintings. When I needed the dark, I mixed colors.”

Penn paints landscapes because they are endless. “Wherever I go, there is a new and amazing landscape waiting for me. Painting them, making drawings, photographing slows me down, allows me the time to look, to see the beauty around me.”

Winter Paintings: The Figure in and on the Landscape will be at the Zack until April 3. For more information about Penn and his work, visit ianpenn.com. An interview with Penn about his exhibit last year, called Pole, can be found at jewishindependent.ca/memorials-to-millions.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Leaving some things hidden

Olga Campbell and Larry Green’s shared exhibit at the Zack, Hidden, is on until March 6. (photo by Olga Livshin)

In the new exhibit at Zack Gallery, Hidden, the pieces are united not only by theme but also by media. Both artists featured, Olga Campbell and Larry Green, mostly use photography, which they then play with in Photoshop. The computer-generated effects contribute to the graceful and faintly mystical feel of the images. Hazy silhouettes hide behind the splashes of paint. Eyes peek through the veil of the unknown. Mysterious places and partial faces open the gates of subconscious and let us witness the artists’ creative cores, their emotions.

The images are distinct, echoing each artist’s personality, but the common approach makes their double show almost seem inevitable. And the meshing of their artistic visions spills into life beyond the gallery. Both chose careers in the helping professions, for example. Campbell was a social worker until she retired. Green is a psychotherapist and a professor of psychology. But they didn’t really know each other before the idea of a mutual exhibit took root.

Campbell explained how it happened: “Last year, I participated in Culture Crawl. Linda Lando, the Zack Gallery director, came to see my pieces. She asked me if I wanted to have a show at the Zack Gallery.”

Green added: “I was with Linda that day – we are partners. I remembered Olga’s art from other shows…. I like what she does. Someone suggested we have a show together. That’s how this collaboration started, but, even before that, we were vaguely aware of each other. We saw and admired each other’s art at group shows. We knew many of the same people: friends, neighbors, co-workers.”

After the dates of the exhibit were set, the artists met to decide on the theme. “Larry came up with the Hidden, and I thought it was wonderful,” said Campbell. “There is so much in the world that is hidden. People hide things from others and from themselves, adopting layers of masks and veils. When we put obstacles in the way of seeing the world, we hide not only the shadows, but also the light. When we acknowledge the shadows, then we are able to see the light. Most of the really profound and rewarding things in life are hidden beneath the layers of mystery.”

In Campbell’s pieces, the layers are frequently photographs superimposed upon each other in Photoshop, plus special effects and the occasional addition of multimedia. She admitted that she doesn’t do much pure painting although she studied it.

“I always liked doing art,” she said. “In 1986, I took several art classes and then I thought, what to do with it? So I enrolled in Emily Carr. Afterwards, I worked as a social worker part-time and on my art part-time, until I retired. Art is not a hobby for me. I have to do it.”

Green’s path was a bit different. “I did a lot of art until I was about 25. Then I dropped it for 20 years before starting again, first with pottery and then with other stuff. When I worked with clay, sometimes my hands knew better than my brain what I wanted to say. I made a sculpture and now, years later, I look at it and think: Oh, that’s what I meant. Of course! My brain has caught up with my hands.”

The intuitive application of their skills underlines both artists’ creative courage. They are not afraid to experiment.

“I play around with Photoshop,” said Campbell. “I don’t know it very well. I try different things and I often get something I like by accident. Later, I can’t always reproduce the effect, so I never repeat myself.”

Green concurred. “I like Photoshop,” he said. “I learn it as I go. My ideas pull me through the learning process…. Using Photoshop, I can realize my vision much faster than with paint and canvas, but it is all trial and error. I keep worrying at the piece until something comes along. Or not. If it comes, I go for it. If it doesn’t, I don’t. Some pieces take years to come together. For example, years ago, I saw a single pink running shoe in a park and snapped a photo of it but I didn’t do anything about it. Then, recently, in a different place, I saw a single pink glove, and photographed it. I brought them together in Photoshop, and now they are not lonely.”

Many of Green’s pieces at the Zack are foggy landscapes. “I’ve always been fascinated by fog,” he said. “A foggy landscape has a particular dreamlike quality to it. Shapes are indistinct and, therefore, invite the viewer in, in an attempt to give the scene some definition. Alternately, the viewer can rest in the soft tranquility of the scene rather than be overwhelmed by details…. People who come to me for therapy are often afraid of the fog, especially inside themselves, but they’re also interested in it, in what it might reveal. Everything I do, in both art and psychology, is basically the same: trying to reveal the underlying reality, the hidden connections behind the apparent.”

“The same for me,” Campbell agreed. “Although not everything should be revealed. Some parts of the whole are better hidden, while the essence should be revealed.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Each creation unique

The faces that Larry Cohen creates communicate a range of emotions. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Larry Cohen has been working with pottery, on and off, for about 30 years. “A long time ago, I tried to make money from it, but not anymore,” he told the Independent. “Now, I just make things I want to make, things I love.”

Touch and Fire, Cohen’s solo show at the Zack Gallery, highlights the things he likes: elegant but aloof vases, functional bowls made with salted fire, and expressive faces cut into clay – manifestations of the artist’s pains, hopes and desires. “Clay registers every touch,” he said, “expressing the character of a particular place, time, person or purpose.”

With a few touches of his fingers, a few slashes of a knife across a thin clay slab, Cohen manages to convey a multitude of emotions. Every face he has made is unique but, together, they represent the artist’s inner core.

“Sometimes, you have dreams,” Cohen said about his faces. “Good or bad, with faces you recognize or you don’t. Dreams are part of us, part of the human psyche. My faces are mysteries; they’re my imagination. I started making them in 2015 and I call them ‘manifestations.’”

Every other piece on display in the gallery – vases, teakettles and bowls – the artist calls “pots.” Some of these he creates on his pottery wheel, while others he builds from the slabs of clay like sculptural ceramics.

“When I start working with a piece, I know approximately what I want to make, but there are so many different steps along the way,” he explained. “I have to pay attention to what is already done during each step as much as to what I wanted in the beginning. Every step holds a surprise, although some surprises are better than others. Sometimes, things fail technically – like crack in the kiln – and you can only cry. It’s humbling, when the technical stuff affects the end result as much as your skill or your vision. The more I work with clay, the more I realize that there is still so much I don’t know.”

He is learning new things with every pot he makes and, in three decades of working with clay, he has learned quite a lot, but the unknown always beckons.

“I don’t like doing the same things, like factory production. The machines can repeat the same patterns and colors endlessly and sell them in department stores. The pottery coming from machines is perfect and the same. I’m not interested in doing that. I want to experiment; I try something different all the time. My every pot is unique.”

His craving for the new and surprising has guided him as much in his professional life as it has done in his art. In his life, he has been a criminal lawyer and a University of British Columbia law instructor, he did a stint as a commercial fisherman, worked as a building contractor and managed a Japanese restaurant. “Life is interesting when you try different things,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to be able to do what I wanted.”

Whatever he was doing to earn his living, art always occupied a part of his soul. He has never stopped creating in a variety of forms, from simple teacups to complex sculptures, and clay has been his passion for years.

“It’s nice to work with clay,” he said. “It’s meditative and it engages me completely. It’s good for your health but it’s hard physical work. First, you have to prepare clay, to ‘wedge’ it, like kneading dough. Then you make a pot, but afterwards it has to dry completely before you fire it the first time. Only after that, when it cools, you can apply glaze and fire the second time.”

Cohen has two kilns in his studio on Cortes Island. In one, he fires with salt to create texture on his pottery; the other is for smooth surfaces. “In the summer, I spend months on Cortes Island, working in my studio every day. In other seasons, I do it occasionally, too, every few weeks. When I’m there, I work in the studio, but I’m not as young as I was before. It’s getting harder to work long days.”

His artistic creations run from utilitarian to high art. “A difference between art and craft is hard to pinpoint,” he said. “It’s a continuum. On one end is pure craft, the functionality. A teapot has to hold water to make tea. On the other end is pure art, like my faces. They don’t have to do anything. But, mostly, you’re in the middle. Every pot – a vase, a bowl – has to be both functional and esthetic. Pottery at its best is both useful and beautiful, and skills are necessary to achieve both goals. Most of the time, it’s a mixture. I’m as much an artist as a craftsman.”

Unfortunately, he admits, he is not much of a salesperson. “I don’t sell as much as I wish. I want to sell more to have room for new things,” he said with a smile.

Touch and Fire opened on Jan. 14 and will continue at the Zack until Feb. 7.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Glass exhibit at Zack Gallery

From left to right are artists Larissa Blokhuis, Kirsten Rankel, Maria Keating, Sonya Labrie, Joanne Andrighetti, Hope Forstenzer, Mona Ungar and Scott McDougall. (photo by Denise Relke)

From antiquity, glass has been used for utilitarian and ornamental purposes. The current group show at Zack Gallery, Works in Glass from Terminal City Glass Co-op, demonstrates both functions in the elegant and colorful creations of co-op members. Vases and funky animal sculptures, jewelry and abstract decorative pieces transform the gallery into a celebration of light and flowing forms.

Holly Mira Cruise, one of the co-op founders and its current executive director, told the Independent a little about the group’s history.

“Terminal City Glass Co-op is the first and only nonprofit, cooperative glass arts facility in Canada. It was founded in February of 2012 by Morley Faber, Joanne Andrighetti, Jeff Holmwood and myself. We came together around a mutual desire to see the glass community in Vancouver grow…. We have worked together since then. We started with 30 members, and we now have over 150. It’s a constantly changing community, and we see new members come in every month, and others move on to other opportunities.”

Many co-op members exhibit their glass art often, attracting interest from both customers and professionals. That’s how Linda Lando, director of the Zack, discovered them.

“Linda reached out to me earlier this year,” said Hope Forstenzer, one of the show participants and a member of the local Jewish community. “She had seen some of our co-op’s pieces during Culture Crawl, liked them, and wanted to talk about a show at the Zack.”

Forstenzer herself is in love with glass. “Glass is an amazing medium. It’s elemental,” she said. “There is nothing like it in the whole world. At different stages, it could be liquid and malleable or hard and bullet resistant. It reflects light and allows colors to play inside. It’s created with fire.”

A professional artist, Forstenzer didn’t start her artistic life with glass. “I worked in ceramics and, at one point, I designed several pieces as a combination of glass and ceramics. I couldn’t find the glass I wanted so I started taking classes to make my own glass. I loved it so much, I stopped doing ceramics and concentrated on glass.”

She even moved from New York to Seattle because of her fascination. “Many of the best glass artists in the world live and work in Seattle, and I studied with some of them. There are two glass centres in the world. Venice is one. Seattle is another.”

When her partner took a job in Vancouver a few years ago, Forstenzer moved here. She has been teaching glass-making for about 10 years now. She teaches a class at the co-op, and she also teaches graphic design at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Like Forstenzer, Cruise is also passionate about glass. “I tried almost every medium before glass. I painted and drew, I tried clay and metals, I made jewelry. I was an art school dropout. A friend who had been blowing glass since he was a kid told me, ‘Try glass, you’ll like it!’ He was right. I liked it and I never looked back. I became really attracted to the material, to the way it moves and feels and, of course, all the amazing colors. Glass is enthralling in a way that no other material has been for me. I think a lot of people find it has addictive qualities. There have been times over the past 20 years when I have taken a break from glass, but I always seem to go back. It calls me.”

To answer that call, she not only works as a glass artist but also manages the co-op, organizing all its programs and classes, and bringing in visiting instructors from all over the world. “TCGC offers classes in glassblowing, beadmaking, flameworking and sandblasting,” she said. “We make it easy for people to take the first steps. We also offer advanced learning opportunities for people who have practised for awhile. There is no post-secondary glass program in Vancouver, but there is one at Alberta College of Art and Design and at Sheridan College in Ontario. Hopefully, we will catch up with other provinces soon.”

Widely available education in glass-making is a relatively new development for such an ancient craft. Before the 20th century, glass was mostly worked at factories, and each one guarded its secrets.

“In the 1960s, the Studio Glass Movement started,” Cruise explained. “Glass-making moved from factories to independent artist studios. It became a lot easier for people to approach glass and learn it…. Today, there are books on how to set up your own studio and build your own equipment. People are 3-D printing with glass. This year, Emily Carr ran its first class in 3-D Design with Glass through our studio. It was a great success, and seeing the potential of glass as a material to be enhanced and developed with technology was thrilling.”

According to both Cruise and Forstenzer, the students taking classes at the co-op come in all ages and artistic levels.

“Our students are pretty diverse,” said Cruise. “We get all ages, from 17 to 75. Sometimes, it’s retired people who want to pick up a hobby, or younger people who want to become glass artists, or couples looking for something fun to do. We have something for everyone to try here.”

Works in Glass runs until Jan. 10. For more information about the co-op, visit terminalcityglass.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Creating artistic storm

Shevy Levy’s Storm Brewing is at Zack Gallery until Dec. 6. (photo by Olga Livshin)

This month, Zack Gallery is dedicated to abstract art. The exhibition Storm Brewing introduces gallery patrons to an unusual artist, Shevy Levy. Nobody looking at her daring, color-splashed paintings, throbbing with élan, could guess that Levy is an amateur artist. In her professional life, she is the owner of a software company, Lambda Solutions.

“I don’t have a formal art education,” Levy said in an interview with the Independent. “I always liked art and design, painted at school, and my mother encouraged my interest in art. She urged me to take classes, to study, but I was drawn to science, too. When the time came to choose between art and science as a career, I chose science and got a math degree. Much more practical,” she laughed. “But art was always in my life. You could say it is in my blood. I heard that math and creativity originate in the same part of the brain.”

Levy has taken classes with many famous artists, first in Israel, where she was born, and then here, in Vancouver, after her family immigrated. “I’m still learning, still enrolling in art courses. It’s a lifelong study,” she said, “an ongoing journey to learn new techniques and skills, develop them. The better your skills, the wider their range, the more they allow you to express yourself.”

Levy’s visual language consists mostly of colorful abstract compositions. Colors flow and clash, tinkle and thrum like an orchestra, twirl like dance strains and float like snowflakes. “I like nature and colors, not so much shapes,” she explained. “When I paint, I don’t plan. I just want to express myself. What color would fit here? What color should be there? It’s all intuitive. I want tons of energy on my canvases and I pour it out through colors.”

Light and darkness interlink in her paintings as they do in our lives, and in her own life, which hasn’t been easy or straightforward. “We came to Canada in 1993,” she recalled. “My husband retired from the Israeli air force and I took a sabbatical from teaching math. Our children were 10 and 15 at the time. We decided to travel for a year and came here. I did my master’s degree at SFU [Simon Fraser University]. We stayed.”

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. The life of an immigrant is never simple. It requires much time and energy to build a new home in a new country, to integrate into a new culture. There was no time for art.

“I painted a lot while in Israel, but when we came here, I stopped for awhile,” she said. “I started painting again about 10 years ago, and now I don’t see myself stopping. I’m busy with my work, I love it, but I love painting, too. I paint in the evenings and on the weekends. It’s my way to meditate, to relax, a distraction from real life.”

Levy also started taking classes again, and every new class offered a new discovery. “I always thought I had an intuition for colors, how they fit together. Then I took a class on colors at Emily Carr, and it explained so much. It was very helpful to know what the colors mean, alone or in different combinations. It is like there is a conversation of colors in my paintings.”

The sense of communication, of wordless discussion through the paintings comes from the artist’s original approach. “I always paint several pieces at the same time. I can’t do just one. I need continuity, from one painting to another. Sometimes I paint on top of older paintings. It might be beautiful, esthetic, but if there is no ‘umph,’ I have to fix it. I need to see a story in each painting, a conflict, a tension, where color clusters interact with empty space.”

For the current show, the story is all about storms – both in art and in life. “The idea for this show was not only to investigate the storms in nature but also to reflect on what storms make us feel,” said Levy. “We are facing storms all the time in our lives. There are darker clouds and lighter moments. But storms are not necessarily black. I wanted to know how a storm would look in pink. Could it be white? It was an exploration of the theme, and every painting has a title that came from music, from songs. I couldn’t live my life without music. I always put on music when I paint. I love classical music, jazz, rock.”

Like notes that build into melodies, the paintings of the exhibit create a concert of colors on the gallery walls. Some pieces are like symphonies, deep and powerful, while others look like doodles coming alive, buzzing with current and bursting with the artist’s emotions.

Levy seems to be drawn towards the darker spectrum of the palette, where happiness is tempered with concern. “Sometimes I force myself into a ‘cheerful mood’ but generally I think life is darker,” she said. “My sister is going through a serious illness now. Maybe the darkness in my paintings comes from it.”

Storm Brewing opened on Nov. 12 and will continue until Dec. 6.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Forest can transform

Beyond the Edge by Lori Goldberg , part of the exhibit Urban Forest, which opens at the Zack Gallery on Oct. 15. (photo from Lori Goldberg)

“Urban Forest is a body of work exploring the relationship between urban dwellers and the natural world of the B.C. forest, and tying it into Jewish thought,” artist Lori Goldberg told the Independent about her new exhibit at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, which opens Oct. 15.

photo - Reconstructing Nature, acrylic on canvas, by Lori Goldberg
Reconstructing Nature, acrylic on canvas, by Lori Goldberg. (photo from Lori Goldberg)

The forest affords multiple experiences, which are often dichotomous, she explained, “freedom and fear spotlight fragments of light and cavernous darks, convoluted winds and soft silences. Trees collide with the sky, providing a protective umbrella that obscures the skyline of the cityscape. Those entering the forest shed layers of urban living as the drone of the city dims, senses awaken to the natural world, the forest breathes and comes to life.

“The paintings are narrative in style and explore the arena of the personal and the collective. Ordinary views and everyday objects come together in discordant co-existence and question the multiple, often contradictory, issues we face as members of a fragmented society disconnected from nature and from self.” In this way, the exhibit evokes the notion of tikkun olam (repairing the world), “which suggests humanity’s shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world.”

Goldberg will be in attendance at the Oct. 15 opening, which starts at 7:30 p.m. The exhibit is at the gallery until Nov. 8. To see more of her work, visit lorigoldberg.ca.

Memorials to millions

Ian Penn’s exhibit at the Zack Gallery, Pole, “isn’t happy but it’s genuine.” (photo by Olga Livshin)

The poignant tale behind Pole, Ian Penn’s new multimedia exhibit at the Zack Gallery, is a bleak travelogue detailing his recent journey to Poland.

Although Penn’s family came from Poland – his parents were lucky to have escaped the Holocaust and settled in Australia – he never wanted to visit the country of his ancestors. “My mother said she would never set a toe in Poland,” he told the Independent.

Growing up in Australia, Penn moved to Vancouver, where he worked as a cardiologist for many years. He is mainly retired now but still teaches at the University of British Columbia and works as a medic with the emergency-response ski patrol in Whistler.

“When I retired, I enrolled in Emily Carr,” he said. “I graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s in fine arts but I’ve always kept a visual diary, since university. I have hundreds of little albums at home. Wherever I am, wherever I go, I draw and write in them. It’s how I explore the world.”

He paints regularly, landscapes and figurative images. “For me, painting is a way of telling a story, one of many. There are other ways, too: words, sculpture, video, photography. I used the multimedia approach for this show because I wanted to bring all those ways together, see how they fit. The show is a story of Jewish soul.”

Penn found his subject in Poland. He had resisted making the trip for a long time, until a couple years ago. “My daughter said to me then, ‘It’s time to visit your history,’ so I made the decision to go,” Penn explained. “I have a friend in Australia. We have known each other for a long time. He is a Pole, he speaks Polish, and he wanted to take me. He said we should both read a few books first to prepare ourselves, books about the plight of Jews in Poland during the war, but written by Poles, not Jews. We didn’t want to go as tourists. We wanted to understand.”

Nonetheless, Poland shocked him. “There are almost no Jews left there, and the ones who remain don’t know anything about Jewish culture. I went to a synagogue and I had to say Kiddush because nobody there could speak Hebrew. But the Poles – they exploit Jewish history. They charge 23 euros for a trip to Auschwitz. They have those happy golf carts all around Krakow and they take you to the Schindler’s factory and to the ghetto. They sell Jewish souvenirs, but who made them? Not Jews. This is not how you engage in history. They made a commodity out of our tragedy, of the Jews killed by the millions. It’s like Horror Disneyland. I couldn’t stay there more than one week.”

Penn found most of the Jews of Poland in the cemetery. “There, every stone has a name written on the tombstones, remembered, while those who died in Auschwitz are just dust. I learned that Nazis burnt 1,000 people an hour in the ovens in Auschwitz. I tried to wrap my head about the number. That’s why I did this show. It’s about those thousands of souls.”

All of the works displayed in the show bear the same name, “1000 Marks.” By creating the paintings, Penn wanted to visualize his non-memories, remember something he had never witnessed. Five paintings are similar: dead trees, brown and dreary, wooden poles striving to reach the sky, one pole for every Jewish soul that didn’t have their name written somewhere. Together, they form a memorial.

A couple other paintings have a subtitle: “From the Village to the Ramp.” They are painful to view, powerfully evoking the horrors of the Holocaust. So does the entrance to the gallery, decorated with two real wooden poles, with bark still on in some places, unpolished and branchless. The “Welcome Back” mat underneath them doesn’t look particularly welcoming either. There was a sign at the entrance to Auschwitz, too, and the correlations reverberate in the air.

“This show isn’t happy but it’s genuine,” said Penn. “It’s my response to the entertainment industry they made of the catastrophe. Their tourist trips have nothing to do with our dead families.”

The show also includes a few short videos, two of them filmed at the Jewish cemetery. The screens are mounted to the walls like paintings, continually running loops of footage. “I shot them myself,” said Penn. “There is serenity at the cemetery. And lots of greenery, living trees. I saw a man restoring the text on one of the tombstones and filmed him. I didn’t talk to him, didn’t ask him anything. He was doing a holy job. That was enough.”

A few more wooden poles, also part of the exhibition, are placed outside of the Zack Gallery. They are suspended above the atrium, where the stairs lead down to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

“They are uprooted, like all of us whose parents left Europe,” said Penn. “The poles come from the UBC Endowment Lands and from the Whistler area. They remind me of the trees in the Jewish cemetery but they are also my connection to this place, to Canada.”

The show Pole opened on Sept. 10 and continues until Oct. 11.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Handmade by artists

Left to right are artists Robin Adams, Jan Smith and Julie Kemble. (photo by Olga Livshin)

In common perception, the word “manufacture” is associated with industrial production and machinery, but it wasn’t always so. The word’s origins are found in manu factus, Latin for “made by hand,” and the new show at the Zack Gallery, Manufacture: From the Hand, takes visitors back to these roots.

The show presents beautiful handmade jewelry and wall hangings by 33 artists and craftspeople, members of the Vancouver Metal Arts Association (VMAA). Crafts are not a regular sight at the Zack, but gallery director Linda Lando explained, “The Vancouver Metal Arts Association has been welcomed to the Zack Gallery, as they … approach metal in a unique way. They use metal as one would use paint and canvas, so their creations bridge the gap between art and craft.”

The exhibition is eclectic in both imagery and materials, with each piece reflecting its creator’s personality. The entire show emphasizes the participants’ diversity in cultural backgrounds and artistic interests. The only common factor is metal – gold, silver, copper, brass and others – as the basis for their art.

The Independent talked to several of the featured artists. One of them, Julie Kemble, is a recently retired communications teacher from a local university, although she always enjoyed various artistic hobbies. “I started working with metal around year 2000,” she said. “I used to work with fibres. I guess I love body adornment, so it was a natural transition for me from fabrics to jewelry. They both adorn the body.” A Kemble sculpture could be used as a desk decoration or worn as a pendant. In both incarnations, they are charming.

Robin Adams has been a jeweler for more than 20 years. “I owned a jewelry shop before,” said the professional craftsman. “I sold my own jewelry there, but for a shop, you produce several copies of the same pieces. Now, everything I make is one of a kind. I’m an artist.”

Another jeweler in the show, Jana Kucera, currently manages a pub. “Art, making jewelry, is a hobby for me, but I hope it could become more,” she said. “I’ve always been an artist at heart. I graduated from the VCC [Vancouver Community College] Jewelry Art and Design program in 2005 and I enjoy making jewelry. I sell through shows like this one.” Her original copper necklaces are delightfully graceful.

photo - One gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks, which combine copper etching, enamel and photography
One gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks, which combine copper etching, enamel and photography. (photo by Olga Livshin)

The exhibition showcases not only jewelry but other metal art, as well. One full gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks. Each about the size of a hand, the disks combine copper etching, enamel and photography.

Reed has been working with metal for a few years. “My day job is in administration and tech support,” she said, but “I’ve always made stuff; my whole family made beautiful things.” Her brother is a metalworker, too, and although Reed doesn’t have a formal artistic education, she has been taking classes in different artistic media. “I find metal to be pleasing to work with. It stays in place,” she joked before turning serious. “I can achieve precision with metal, while enamel allows more of a free-fashion imagery.”

Among the other wall pieces in the show is a selection of life-sized garden tools, made of Damascene by Karin Jones – a decidedly unexpected item – and a small but picturesque installation called “Changing Values,” made of pennies by Peggy Logan.

Logan has been a professional artist for 30 years. Currently, she is teaching jewelry art at Langara. “I started collecting old pennies when they went out of circulation,” she said. “Before 1993, all pennies were made of copper, and I used them for this piece.” The pennies, strung together and covered with multicolored enamel, glint on the wall, defying the government’s decision to stop producing them.

Another professional artist in the show is Jan Smith, VMAA founder and past president. Her elegant enamel and silver jewelry is represented by galleries in Montreal, San Francisco and Seattle.

“I’ve been an artist for over 20 years,” she said. “It’s not easy to make a living as an artist, especially not here in B.C. I’ve often had to supplement my income by teaching art or working as an art therapist. I’m a member of the International Enamel Association. It’s a small world and we all know and talk to each other. I must tell you that other countries support their artists much better than Canada. Britain, even America, offers better conditions to artists. Their art donations are larger. I’d love to have my art better known here but, so far, collectors in the U.S. know my art better. Even the East Coast is better for artists; I have representation in Montreal but not here. Maybe it is because Vancouver is such a young city.”

Three years ago, Smith founded VMAA to improve the situation. Current VMAA president Louise Perrone told the Independent a little more about the association. “The VMAA was founded by Jan Smith in 2012. Before moving to Salt Spring Island, she lived in Seattle, where there is a thriving metal arts guild. Jan felt Vancouver needed something similar. Unlike Seattle, there are no specific jewelry galleries and no jewelry and metal BFA programs. There is no community of artistic jewelry collectors in Vancouver supporting us either. That is why we started VMAA – to give art jewelry a platform and educate the public, to build a community of jewelry and metal artists.”

Manufacture: From the Hand opened on June 25 and will continue until July 26. To see a selection of the jewelry on display, visit jccgv.com/content/metalart.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Iron, fire meet cool waters

Gregorio Scalamogna (photo by Olga Livshin)

The current double show at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery has its origins in the two artists’ friendship. “I met with Greg Scalamogna through a mutual friend,” said Miran Elbakyan, an artist-blacksmith and one of the two participants in the show. “I liked his technique – his lines are plastic-like metal.”

“We have similar philosophy in our works,” Scalamogna elaborated. “Miran’s lines flow like paint. We don’t restrict ourselves, [we] let our materials speak.”

photo - Miran Elbakyan
Miran Elbakyan (photo from Miran Elbakyan)

The flowing lines and dynamic energy in both Scalamogna’s paintings and Elbakyan’s sculptures gave birth to the show’s title, Flow, but, aside from that, the two artists are very different, almost opposite in their approaches and subject matter.

While Elbakyan deals with fire and iron, creating tangible objects – sculptures, balconies, staircase rails, wrought-iron gates and other usable items – Scalamogna, a painter, concentrates on water in all its guises. Tame or wild, abstract or real, his waves and waterfalls inhabit the cool bluish-grey palette. His paintings reflect the artist’s fluid personality and his love for water. “I love boating and fishing,” he said with a smile.

Like his beloved water, Scalamogna traveled around the world, flowing in and out of adventures, before settling in British Columbia. He took his first trip when he was 19, a student of the Ontario College of Art and Design.

“I wanted to go to some place sunny,” he recalled. “I bought an air ticket to the Dominican Republic and exchanged my Canadian money at the airport before boarding the plane, but they made a mistake and gave me Mexican money instead of Dominican. Nobody in the Dominican Republic wanted to touch that money.”

As a result, he found himself alone in a foreign country without a cent. Young and proud as only a 19-year-old can be, he didn’t call home and ask his mother for help. “I wanted to do it myself,” he said. To earn some money, so he at least wouldn’t starve, he started painting tourists’ portraits on the beach. He also sold all his spare clothes for the price of a meal or two, and made friends with local people.

“They were poor but they helped me, took care of me,” said Scalamogna. “They were very generous. I couldn’t pay for a hotel, so one guy offered me to spend nights in his home.”

The trip was a success in the end. He made it, paying for his first independent vacation with his art, victoriously returning home a week later. He even brought back souvenirs for his family; he bartered for them with his portraits. “Since then, I wasn’t afraid. I knew I could make it anywhere. I could take on the world.”

Scalamogna spent his last year of college studying in Florence, Italy, and afterwards backpacked across Europe with his artistic portfolio, visiting museums and art galleries, finding work wherever he could. He had a few exhibitions abroad before returning home.

However, like water, which never stands still, he soon felt the urge to move again. This time, he took a bus across Canada. For several years, he lived and worked in Banff, but eventually settled here – the ocean enchanted him.

“I’m an expressionist,” he said. “Nature inspires me. I take photos when I’m on the water, fishing, but my photos are only starting points for my paintings. The photos bring back memories and feelings; they reference a certain time and emotion. There is no visual similarity.”

His paintings also reflect his daily existence. “They are commentaries on my life, my job, my relationships, people around me,” he said. A few years ago, when he was living in Tofino, his paintings were filled with vibrant colors and exploratory energy, with frantic tides and glittering sunsets. Some of them are part of the Zack Gallery show, instantly recognizable, but most of the pieces on display are from his latter Vancouver period. The paintings became calmer and quieter, as if seen through the veil of Vancouver’s rain. “I’m older now, more subtle,” he said.

Like his friend, Elbakyan traveled. He moved from Armenia to Israel and, from there, to Canada, prompted as much by political climate as by other considerations. Like Scalamogna, he, too, found a welcome home here, in British Columbia, and this exhibition is his third appearance at the Zack. “It is always nice to show my art here and get some feedback,” he said, although he admitted that he doesn’t like selling his sculptures.

“I’d rather sell home décor,” he said. “I’m always sorry to see my sculptures go. They are all unique. Even if I try to make a second copy, it has no inspiration in it. The first is always the best.”

The only artist-blacksmith on the B.C. mainland and one of the very few in Canada, Elbakyan is in high demand for those who are not satisfied with mass production, who want an original fence around their house or a one-of-a-kind balcony or some funky furnishing.

Recently, he branched out into the movie industry. His latest movie, Seventh Son, released in December 2014, is a medieval fantasy. “I made swords and shields for it,” he said, “and everything else of metal that their lab couldn’t produce. I also played a smith at a fair. It was fun.”

Elbakyan’s website is bcblacksmith.com; Scalamogna’s is artisticpainting.org. Flow opened on May 21 and runs until June 21.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.