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 Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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.
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.
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 Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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.
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 [email protected].
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.”
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.”
The Feb. 5, 1931, editorial, “A cultural program,” in the Jewish Western Bulletin laid out some of the hopes, dreams and challenges to the beginnings of organized arts and cultural programming in the Jewish community of Vancouver. In many ways, today’s challenges echo the challenges of 84 years ago: arts and culture requires participation and support. They also require belief; belief that they form the bedrock of any healthy, sustainable community and are a way to celebrate and connect to the past while envisioning a brighter future.
The JI spoke with the directors of five mainstays of the local Jewish arts and culture scene in 2015 – the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, Chutzpah!, the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, the Vancouver Film Centre and the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir – and asked them the same five questions. Their responses follow.
CHERIE SMITH JCC JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL Nicole Nozick, director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The JCC Jewish Book Festival (JBF) was founded in 1984 by a small group of book club friends led by Vancouver writer and publisher Cherie Smith. The group decided to create a forum to showcase Jewish writers to Vancouver audiences. After Cherie passed away, the Smith and Rothstein families established an endowment fund in her honor to support the festival in perpetuity and placed it under the stewardship of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
The first book festival, Jewish Western Bulletin, May 1984.
The JBF – which celebrates its 31st year this November – has grown into a literary event of some magnitude, featuring award-winning international authors, showcasing Canadian writers, supporting local authors and publishers, and encouraging a love of reading across all generations. Despite its exponential growth, the JBF has not lost sight of its original core values and mission. The mostly volunteer-led operation echoes the passion of its original founders, many of whom continue to attend and support festival events to this day.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
I have always been an avid reader and, at a very young age, I recall making a solemn declaration to my classmates that “books are my best friends.” To this day, you’ll never find me without a book in my bag to keep me company wherever I may be. When the position of festival director presented itself in 2008, it was the perfect opportunity to marry my professional experience in management and production with my passion for reading and writing. Equally important, the part-time hours of the position allowed me to have the time I wanted to be with my young children.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
As bearers of the auspicious moniker “The People of the Book,” it is hardly surprising that literature plays such a significant role in the Jewish community, and our Vancouver Jewish community has shown itself to be more erudite than many in North America. The Vancouver JBF is on an equal footing in terms of participating authors, events, duration and audience as festivals from much larger Jewish communities, including Atlanta, Houston and San Diego. Further, the Vancouver JBF far exceeds other Jewish book festivals in Canada such as Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary in its scope, outreach and operations. This is testimony to our community’s passion for literature and learning, and the arts.
It has been a pleasure to introduce our already well-read audiences to new writers – and to welcome old favorites. The festival’s focus on Israeli writers has had an important impact not only on our Jewish community but has had far-reaching impact on the community at large – both in Vancouver and across Canada. Etgar Keret, one of Israel’s foremost “new generation” writers credits his appearance at the JBF and subsequent interview broadcast on CBC’s Writers & Co. with his increasing success in Canada and sold-out speaking engagements in Toronto and Ottawa. (Keret will appear at the 2015 Vancouver Writers Festival.)
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The book publishing world has gone though unprecedented change and upheaval in recent years. Increasingly, sophisticated technologies that introduced us to tablets, smartphones and e-readers have taken a heavy toll on the simple pleasure of reading a book. In this new age of shortened attention spans and 140-character communication, fewer and fewer people are making the time and applying the focus required to read a book. This is evident not least in the closure of countless bookstores and the bankruptcy of many publishing houses. One of our most important challenges at the JBF is to keep books and reading relevant not only to our current society but to generations to come.
The JBF has adapted to these changing circumstances in order to remain current and vital. Examples include collaborating with Chapters/Indigo to introduce e-readers to our bookstore, changing the scope of the bookstore’s inventory, creating new programs that incorporate digital technology. The JBF also incorporated emerging technologies to showcase international authors: for example, Etgar Keret, whose opening night gala interview was presented via international video-conferencing.
Of course, other important issues such as budget constraints have a detrimental effect not only on the JBF but on many arts and culture organizations. In times of economic uncertainty, arts organizations often bear the brunt of decreased funding, as both government and private sector funding is impacted. At the JBF, we are very blessed to be supported by a loyal and strong donor support base who recognize the crucial role literacy and literature plays in our society. This generous base has helped to keep the JBF sustainable.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
Without the magic of art and culture in our lives, the world would be a drab and dreary place, indeed. Though misquoted, the great bard, William Shakespeare, declared that “music is the spice of life,” and he was right – though certainly his reference was to all of the arts. Reading a good book opens our minds to new worlds, feeds our souls, impacts us in the way that little else can.
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CHUTZPAH! FESTIVAL AND THE NORMAN AND ANNETTE ROTHSTEIN THEATRE Mary-Louise Albert, artistic managing director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre (NRT), housed in the Jewish Community Centre, is a professionally equipped 318-seat performing arts proscenium theatre. It was established to enhance the cultural life of both the Jewish and general communities and is one of the Lower Mainland’s few mid-size proscenium theatres. The annual Chutzpah! Festival, Chutzpah!’s Creation Residencies, workshops for urban and rural youth and young adults program and Chutzpah!PLUS are our main professional programming activities.
Part of an ad in the JWB, February 2001. Current Chutzpah! Festival director Mary-Louise Albert is the dancer featured.
The Chutzpah! Festival, established in 2001 and named in honor of the late Lisa Nemetz, is one of the most respected international festivals in B.C. and Canada. Chutzpah! is known for presenting world and Canadian premières; supporting the creation of new work by way of multi-week dance residencies in the NRT with confirmed presentation of the residency work; and 2015 brought satellite dance festival residencies, youth workshops and performances to the North Island region of B.C., an exciting area of program growth and outreach.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
My first involvement in the Chutzpah! Festival was performing in the very first Chutzpah! in 2001. The founding artistic director of the festival, Brenda Leadlay, also put me on the poster. I was a professional dancer for over 17 years, and, after my second child was born, I left company life and freelanced as an independent dancer doing project and solo work, mainly. My company years had been with Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, Karen Jamieson Dance Company, Judith Marcuse Dance Company and apprenticing with Les Grands Ballet Canadian. My show in the inaugural Chutzpah! Festival was a shared evening with Toronto’s Kaeja d’Dance.
Shortly after this performance, I transitioned out of dance and studied arts management and business administration at Capilano University and BCIT. About a year after graduating from BCIT with a post-diploma of technology in business administration, the JCC hired me as the artistic managing director. My first Chutzpah! Festival as the AMD was the 2005 one, and I will never forget the fun photo shoot with Boris Sichon as the photographer snapped (I’m revealing my age) away for that year’s perfect poster image.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
For the past 10 years, Chutzpah! has been programming Israeli artists to the point where they make up the most numbers of our international artists. The importance of connecting Israeli artists to B.C. (and in most cases to Canada for the first time) helps develop an understanding of Israeli culture and the amazing complexities of its arts.
The exciting and entertaining multifaceted ways the performing arts accomplishes this understanding of Israel is a mainstay of the festival. No other festival in Canada programs the range or number of artists from Israel as we do. We have brought known artists and large groups such as Batsheva Dance Company, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Balkan Beat Box and the Idan Raichel Project, which we have presented in progressively larger productions. Many of our Israeli artists have been unknown to Canadian audiences, but we have still given these eclectic talented performers the opportunity to tour internationally, such as with Idan Sharabi and Dancers, Zvuloon Dub System, giving Yemen Blues and Maria Kong their first North American shows, Ish Theatre, Dudu Tassa, Itamar Boracov, Uri Gurvich and many more.
These artists perform in our home, the JCC, in the Rothstein Theatre, as well as off site and out into the general community. It is a sharing of Jewish arts and culture with the Jewish and general communities. The Lower Mainland Jewish community is integral in helping us with this and the loyalty of the Jewish community and its willingness to take a chance with artists they don’t know is so appreciated and keeps us going. When I looked out into the audience of our Chutzpah!PLUS concert with Ester Rada at the Imperial this year, my heart melted as I saw so many familiar faces. We can’t do what we do without this support.
Another area we are proud of is our commitment to programming world premières by B.C. artists, as well as our multi-week Creation Residencies. Supporting artists this way is paramount to artistic growth. This past year alone saw three world premières by B.C. artists and the year before we had three, as well.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
One of the biggest challenges is that with a festival the size of Chutzpah!, most artists (and, in particular, international artists) have to be programmed and committed to before most granting and donation revenue is secured, often one or two years in advance. Maintaining and increasing corporate and donor sponsorship is important to the sustainability of the festival. We have yearly support for our programming from government funders, such as Canada Council for the Arts and Canadian Heritage. A challenge is that we are a Canadian festival that programs many artists from another country, Israel. We are very grateful for annual support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Israel Consulate, for instance, who help us with expenses relating specifically to our Israeli programming, as they know how important our Israeli programming is to the community. And … the community helps us so much by attending shows!
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
The arts engage on multiple levels, such as opening up new dimensions and developing creative expression as a stimulus for spiritual and ethical understanding. Exposure to the performing arts allows for the nurturing of inventiveness as a tool to develop self-discipline, self-motivation and self-esteem. Participating in artistic activities helps to gain the tools necessary for understanding the human experience, adapting to and respecting others’ ways of working and thinking, developing creative problem-solving skills, and communicating thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways.
The strength of Jewish arts and culture embraces and promotes the blossoming of divergent forms and points of view, and shares it with audiences from diverse communities. Many Jewish artists connect us to the differing aspects of the Jewish Diaspora. Exploring beautiful tensions and contradictions in these juxtaposed, but parallel, experiences helps feed a rich and engaging life.
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SIDNEY AND GERTRUDE ZACK GALLERY Linda Lando, art gallery director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The gallery began as the Shalom Gallery in the Jewish Community Centre; the then size of the gallery was 19’ by 40’ (760 square feet). The current size is 22’ by 40’, with excellent lighting and a high ceiling with skylights.
The Zack Gallery started life as the Shalom Gallery, JWB, May 1982.
In 1988, the gallery received a donation from the Sid and Gertie Zack family, and the gallery was renamed the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. At that time, the gallery was designed as part of the overall Phase II renovation project of the JCC.
The gallery has as goals: to create and promote a gallery of stature in which only high-calibre artwork (in all media) is shown, featuring artists of local, national and international reputation; to encourage the serious Jewish artist; to promote understanding of contemporary artistic concerns; and to participate in multi-cultural events.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
I have been an art dealer with a gallery presence in Vancouver for 30 years. It was time for me to make a change in my life, to have less responsibility and to become more a part of the community. At one time, I was a board member of the JCC and I was on the Zack Gallery committee for many years, as well, so I have always been drawn to the JCC and the gallery. As you can well imagine, I am very comfortable running the gallery, dealing with artists, having openings, etc.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
The Zack Gallery opened with a group show, JWB, June 1988.
The Zack Gallery has supported Jewish artists for many years. There have been shows that relate specifically to Jewish and or Israeli themes, as well as shows by Israeli artists. The gallery is a venue for Jewish artists who are not necessarily mainstream to show their work. It is unique in the city. It is important to support the gallery, as arts and culture are a huge part of the glue that holds the community together.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
Artists are always underfunded/underpaid. Part of the cost of having a show falls upon the artist. Funding is always a challenge.
Community support would be wonderful. I would be happy if more people supported the gallery by coming to the many openings, talks, poetry readings, etc. That would be very satisfying.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
As I stated, arts and culture are community glue. They bring together artist and patron, student and teacher, ideas and realization. Creativity is what is left when there is nothing else.
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VANCOUVER JEWISH FILM CENTRE Robert Albanese, executive and artistic director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
Jewish films were first brought to Vancouver [by what is now known as the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre] under the umbrella of the Jewish Festival of the Arts, a community organization that was founded in May 1984. Films were sought out that showcased the diversity of Jewish culture, heritage and identity. In 1988, the Festival of the Arts morphed into the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival and, as demand from community organizations for Jewish film grew beyond an annual festival, the name was changed in 2013 to the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre to better reflect the breadth of offerings presented year round.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
In 2009, I was approached by the CEO of Jewish Federation and asked to take a meeting with the executive committee of the board of directors of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival. The board was conducting a search for a new executive director.
The Jewish Film Centre developed out of the Jewish Festival of the Arts Society, JWB, February 1989.
At the time, I had held the position of director of exhibitions for the Vancouver International Film Festival for the previous 10 years. I had also been a general manager for Cineplex Entertainment. I was a successful photographer with a background in film-set photography and had previously been the managing director of Montreal’s premier repertory cinema.
The offer from the board of the Jewish Film Festival would allow me to bring to the organization 30 years of professional experience in all aspects of the film industry. In addition to the executive director position, I would also be their artistic director. The opportunity to make a difference, to contribute to the arts in our community was the “icing” on a long career in the film business. The added opportunity to grow the organization was a challenge I was eager to undertake.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years?
The film centre has held an annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival for 27 years; it is the longest-running Jewish film festival in Canada. We have engaged our community by bringing the best quality films that inspire, entertain, educate and connect us to the diversity of Jewish culture. The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre was founded to preserve and showcase our Jewish culture, heritage, identity, and we reach all members of the community. Our annual film festival is presented in a mainstream cinema, a secular environment, and is open to all who want to attend. It is a major social event that brings the community together. Film is the most reasonably priced form of cultural entertainment available today.
Film accesses and engages the broadest community. We are deeply committed to outreach and we work tirelessly with community organizations to bring films to their stakeholders. Generally speaking, the film centre is an organization with the potential to reach the whole Jewish community.
It’s Jewish continuity through storytelling in today’s visually oriented world.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The film exhibition industry has changed dramatically in just a few short years. Everything is now digital, and the technology required for state-of-the-art presentation is very expensive. Film costs and venue rentals have risen through the roof; movie theatres with the proper screening equipment are in short supply. In spite of all of this, we have responded to the increased demand for more film presentations from our greater Jewish community. We travel to community organizations with projector and screen in hand to bring the films directly to them. We are co-presenting Victoria’s first Jewish film festival this November. We are facilitating film with the Okanagan Jewish community. We’ve facilitated numerous fundraising film events throughout the community for Jewish organizations of all kinds. All of the above means increased costs for us at the same time that our community in general is faced with aging infrastructures with large capital campaigns in place. That often means cultural entities are left struggling to attract funding from the community, funding required to keep us vibrant and relevant.
Our attendance has been growing year over year and is a direct result of the quality of both the films and the presentations. However, since relocating the annual film festival to the Fifth Avenue multiplex cinema we’ve seen a number of community members walk by our screenings to attend a “Hollywood” film in the next auditorium. The most obvious way to help is to attend the films we present; the old mindset of what constitutes a Jewish film no longer applies. The films we present are world class and just as good, if not better, than any other film showing in that multiplex today.
We always welcome more help from volunteers. Assisting us to bring our offerings to the community is a real way a community member can help.
Finally, we are soon launching our first-ever endowment campaign with matching funds from dedicated donors. We hope and trust the rest of our community will support this effort.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
There is a mountain of documentation from researchers all over the world about the benefits of having art and culture in one’s life. In my opinion, in the case of the Jewish Film Centre, we bring people together. Film opens a dialogue where none may have existed before. It can fill us with pride, self-esteem; it can literally break down barriers by allowing us to experience the life of the other. Film can help foster a sense of belonging and pride within a community. Film can preserve a collective memory and foster a continuing dialogue about the past.
The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre exists for this, we convene an inclusive community that celebrates, educates, entertains and inspires through thought-provoking films. We present the stories about the many diverse aspects of Jewish life. We aspire to be a cultural organ of the Jewish community in Vancouver, in British Columbia, and to act as a repository of culture for future generations.
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VANCOUVER JEWISH FOLK CHOIR Donna Modlin Becker, program coordinator, Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir of the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture was founded in 1980 by conductor/arranger/ composer Searle Friedman with the aim of keeping Jewish music alive and educating both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences to a world cultural treasure. The choir has about 25 members, both adults and seniors, and at present performs between eight and 10 times per year, both at the Peretz Centre and at venues within and outside of the Jewish community.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir third season ad in the JWB.
In the late 1990s, I was looking for a choir to join, and found the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir. I was excited to be singing in Yiddish, which I grew up surrounded by, and pretty quickly felt very at ease with the other choir members. The older people reminded me of the grandparents I lived with growing up in a Jewish community in Brooklyn; politically, and in many other ways, I was very culturally comfortable in the choir. And it gives me great pleasure to be singing in the language of my ancestors – I feel I am honoring them with my music. And I love the beautiful minor mode of so much of the repertoire.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
Some of the ways in which the choir has contributed to the community, in no particular order:
• Thanks to founder Searle Friedman and current director David Millard, the choir is keeping the Yiddish repertoire alive. (Not only to entertain the old people, but also for the sake of future generations, I think keeping our Yiddish roots alive and visible as long as possible is hugely important.)
Both Friedman and Millard have arranged traditional and contemporary Yiddish music (and other Jewish music) for choir. Over the years, the choir has focused more and more on Yiddish, and exposed audiences to a wide variety of songs in that language, as well as major works by Srul Irving Glick, Mordecai Gebirtig, Max Helfman and others.
• In addition to regular performances at the Peretz Centre, which include holiday celebrations and an annual major concert, the choir also performs a Chanukah concert annually at two seniors homes – the Louis Brier and South Granville Park Lodge. In the last few years, the choir has also performed its Pesach repertoire at the Louis Brier. We hear from the people who work with the residents at both venues that many people who are very cognitively impaired in other areas can still relate to music, and people who can no longer speak are still able to sing. The joy we feel in the audience at the Louis Brier as we offer them songs both familiar and new is palpable.
• The choir gives people who like to sing a chance to sing in some of the languages of our people – Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino and English – and an opportunity to socialize with other people who also enjoy singing this music. Many of the people in the choir have no other connection to the Peretz Centre.
• The choir has also performed at other venues, such as the Jewish Community Centre, the Richmond Seniors Centre, CityFest, VanDusen Festival of Lights, and the Federation of Russian Canadians. In this, we provide an outreach to the broader community, and expose wider audiences to Jewish music beyond modern Israeli or religious music or klezmer.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The main challenge is cost. At present, the conductor, accompanist and three section leaders are paid on a weekly basis. We often have to hire additional voices for major concerts, as well.
Two major ways that community members could help with those challenges: join the choir, and come to the concerts! Another way: write support letters that the choir can use in grant applications.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
I touched on some of this previously in regards to stroke victims and other cognitively impaired people responding to music long after they are no longer able to respond to other forms of communication. But, in more general terms, what would life be without arts? The question is so huge; all I can think of to say is: “Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses, too.”
The current exhibit at the Zack Gallery, Tales of Light and Dark, features two artists from opposite sides of the continent. Alina Smolyansky is a local artist; Judith Joseph lives and works in Chicago. Their paintings hang side by side on the gallery walls as if they belong together. Their similar small size, bright color and propensity to tell stories balance the differences in technique and visual effects, as well as the two artists’ distinct creative auras.
Both artists explore Judaic themes. In the case of Joseph, her paintings relate her family’s history through the medium of Jewish symbolism. Almost every piece of hers includes birds as their most important element. Peacocks, firebirds and owls populate Joseph’s work.
“I love birds because they can fly. I wish I could fly,” Joseph said in an interview with the Independent. “A bird stands in for a person but it doesn’t have age or gender, it isn’t poor or rich. It represents everyone.”
In a way, in her art, she does fly, free of the restrictions of reality. Using the bird metaphor and the mysticism of the Torah, she spins tales of courage and suffering. Several of her paintings are dedicated to her grandmother who came to America from Ukraine after the First World War. In one image, a girl travels across the ocean on a menorah. Her vessel is wobbly, but she hangs stubbornly for her life, and the menorah glows with triumphant light, illuminating pain and sorrow but also victories and achievements.
Many pieces incorporate metal-foil embossing into the paintings. The process used for the embellishment is called repoussé. “I learned repoussé in high school,” Joseph recalled. “I like working with metal.” Her owls’ feathers and floral borders of her paintings glint with intricate copper patterns, infusing the pictures with a sophisticated and funky ambience.
Her paintings always start with an emotion and an idea, she said. “I always have a sketch book with me and, whenever an idea appears, I make a sketch. Most paintings in this show come from my sketches practically unchanged. I know that if the emotion that inspired it is genuine, unfiltered, then people respond to it.”
Like any art show, this one only highlights a small segment of the artist’s output. The majority of her art is beyond the scope of the show. “I paint ketubahs,” she said. “Most of my commissions are ketubahs. I started making them in high school and still love them. By now, I have done hundreds of them. Recently, I also do digital ketubahs. I would paint by hand, then have the image photographed professionally, and then play with it on the computer: add calligraphy, change colors, customize. I had to learn new software to do that, and my skills are still limited, but I’m learning.”
The courage to combine old materials, ancient art form and new computer skills is what makes Joseph a 21st-century artist. The same modern streak also made her collaborate with an online seller of ketubahs, the Canadian company ketubah.com. “Three of their bestsellers are mine,” she said with a smile.
Alina Smolyansky (photo by Olga Livshin)
She works predominantly in egg tempera, the type of paint that was exclusively used until about 1500, when it was largely replaced by oil paints. Few artists still use egg tempera, but its brightness attracted not only Joseph but also her partner in this show, Smolyansky.
The credit for bringing them together belongs to the gallery director, Linda Lando. “I put them together because I thought that their work has a similar sensibility,” Lando said. The artists didn’t know each other before the show.
Unlike Joseph with her art degree, Smolyansky arrived at this point in her life by a vastly different route. She started her professional life as an engineer in Kiev. Like many Jews during the Perestroika era, she immigrated to Israel and, after four years there, she came to Canada in 1995. She kept working as an engineer, but wasn’t satisfied with her professional life. She felt the need for a change.
“I was searching for myself,” she explained. “I’ve been a dreamer all my life. I liked making up and writing stories and painting watercolors. When I was a child, I attended an art school. I always liked learning, always was an A student. If I could, I would be a permanent student,” she admitted.
To satisfy her craving for knowledge, she studied writing at Douglas College, and then enrolled in the professional communications program at Royal Roads University. She was thinking of a technical writing career, but felt she couldn’t settle.
At about the same time, around 2006, she began studying yoga, and discovered a spiritual path. “I’m not religious,” she said, “but I need to form my own connection to the Creator. I need to understand where we are coming from and where we are going.”
She quit her engineering position and spent some time in Thailand at a yoga school, but an unknown force was still pushing her towards a different goal.
“I was on Granville Island,” she recalled. “It was 2008, and I was looking for some classes to take when I saw this ad for an icon painting class. It was absolutely unexpected. I didn’t know anything about icons, but it seemed I was driven to this class. I took it and I was good from the beginning.”
The class introduced her to egg tempera and to icon paintings, both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. “I was fascinated by egg tempera. I haven’t painted watercolors since.”
She stayed with her icon teacher for three years, until he moved out of the city. She still paints icons on commission and she teaches icon painting, occupying a small but exclusive artistic niche in Vancouver. But she didn’t abandon her quest for knowledge. In search of more spiritual learning, she began her studies with Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Research and Education Institute, based in Israel.
The mysticism of kabbalah appeals to her. “My art in this show is influenced by my kabbalah studies, especially the … Zohar,” she said. Her Tree of Life gladdens the eyes, her old scholar contemplates the Jewish destiny and her menorah shines for all.
Local artist Lauren Morris loves every aspect of her art form. “I even like the smell of paints,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “When I come to my studio, the smell jolts me into work. It’s like a kick-start to my imagination.” She added, “I didn’t start painting until I immigrated to Canada. I’m a graphic designer by education.”
Upon graduating as a graphic designer in her native Cape Town, she worked in her chosen field for awhile and then decided to see the world. She backpacked through Europe. “In Israel, I met an American girl in ulpan. We became friends, and she invited me to come to America. I thought I would only travel there for a few months but I stayed for five years. I found a job there as a magazine graphic designer. I also took some part-time art classes in Washington, D.C.”
Afterwards, she returned home and worked as a graphic designer for the book and magazine industry. She also started a family. Unfortunately, the political situation in South Africa was becoming increasingly unstable. Concerned about their growing children, the family decided to emigrate. They arrived in Vancouver in 2000.
“When we came,” Morris remembered, “I couldn’t find work as a graphic designer, so I started painting at home.”
Like any artist, she wanted to display her work, wanted people to see it and perhaps even buy it, but she was new in town, didn’t know anyone and had no connections in the local art community.
“I started hanging my paintings in coffee shops,” she recalled. “Some shops in Vancouver want to display and sell art, so they advertise on Craigslist. I looked for such ads, applied and my paintings sold very well in many of them. I wasn’t a snob. I would accept any offer. Most of my paintings sold not even through a coffee shop but through a fish and chips place in Kerrisdale.”
The sales were encouraging, so she rented a studio. “I wanted to be more professional,” she said with a smile. “But a studio cost money. To pay the rent, I started teaching.”
She still offers art workshops and she teaches mostly adults. “I love showing people what they can do. Some say: ‘Oh, I don’t know how to paint.’ They are wrong. Everyone can paint. They just need someone to guide them. Afterwards, they are amazed and awed by their own works. This is the most satisfying part of teaching – when my students discover things about themselves. It makes them happy and it makes me happy.”
Making people happy seems to be a requirement in her artistic approach: in her workshops, in the classes she taught at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital, and in her own personal art. That’s why flowers play such an important role in her creative output.
“Flowers make people happy,” she said. “When a painting of flowers hangs on a wall, it changes the feel and mood of a room, brightens it.”
Her flowers are not photographic. In fact, some of her paintings bear only a remote resemblance to real-life blooms. Her images lean towards the abstract, like symphonies of colors and shapes. Light and reflections, movements and shadows weave into interlacing harmony in her pictures, while flowers provide an inspiration.
“I don’t like to be too literal in my art,” she said. “Art is my imagination. It always springs from somewhere, from a point of reference, a photo I took or found online, or an idea I see in another artist’s work. Then I take my paintbrush and start building colors. Most of my paintings are color compositions. When I paint, I let my paintbrush take over. It’s like putting together a colorful puzzle, but I’m guided by my unconsciousness.”
Not only the colors but also the shapes of flowers attract Morris because they are so versatile.
“People see different shapes in my flowers,” she said. “Sometimes they see something I didn’t even know was there.”
Because of the expressionistic ideas of her paintings, she rarely works outside. “I tried,” she explained with a chuckle. “But I paint on the floor, on my knees, with the canvasses against the wall. It’s not convenient outside.”
Often, her process resembles a gym exercise, very physically taxing, so she doesn’t work for more than a couple of hours at a time. But she loves every minute of it. “When I see a painting unfolding, going in a certain direction, when my imagination flows, it’s the best moment for me.”
She enjoys listening to classical music while she paints, and the melodies seem to transfer to her canvasses. The different paints and hues splash and chase each other, like notes of a melody. The combined arrangement is invariably richer than its component parts, and the same is true for Morris’ paintings. Since her first coffee shop exhibit in 2001, her recognition in Vancouver has grown considerably. In the last few years, she has participated in Artists in Our Midst and the Eastside Culture Crawl. She has displayed her paintings in several group shows. And now her art is featured at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery. Her solo show, A Tapestry of Flowers, opened on March 18 and is on until April 12. For more on Morris’ work, visit lmdesignsstudio.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Derek Gillingham at the opening of New Work from the Road. (photo from Derek Gillingham)
Derek Gillingham’s solo show New Work from the Road at the Zack Gallery looks like a travelogue, where the artist’s moments and memories have been captured by a paint brush. The show consists of his abstract paintings of the last few years. “Abstract painting is much more challenging than figurative,” Gillingham said recently in an interview with the Independent. “Such a painting is its own world. I can’t refer to an object, an image when I paint. But shapes and colors fascinate me.”
He explained that his latest artistic trend emerged with the drawings he made in California a few years ago. “Because of my job for the movie industry, I was constantly on the move, never staying in one place for long. I couldn’t paint as I did before – like landscapes of British Columbia. I couldn’t get familiar with any area. No recognizable landmarks. So I went with what I heard and saw: not objects, but colors and music, the sounds of cars and subway tickets, candy wrappers and moss-covered walls. I’d walk from work along a street and see posters, hear songs teenagers play on their phones.
I’d come home and sketch. I made piles of sketches, just scribbles, swirls and smudges, shapes and colors.”
His California sketches gave birth to paintings that reflected the green and gold and warmth of the Pacific coast. There is always the ocean and profusion of greenery. Colors interact and morph into each other, nurturing the whole. Although there is no sense of location, the artist’s inner meditations manifest through the looking glass of his perception.
When he then moved to London, England, his creative tune changed, echoing his surroundings.
“London was cooler and harder. It’s a very energetic, brash, intense city. California is a much softer place. London is also much more urban. Even music is different.”
His sketches changed, too, and the paintings from London don’t have the flowing quality of his California pictures. No bubbles or waves. The canvases sport sharper angles and longer bands. The shapes are leaner, less lush, and the lines dart across the images at full speed, like the rhythms of hard rock.
“I would pass a restaurant on a street, see its red sign and think: I should remember this color. Then I would come home and slash such a red on the painting. My paintings are not chaos. There is balance and order there.”
One of his London paintings resembles a bunch of seaweed. “We were in a Japanese restaurant,” he recalled. “I looked at seaweed, its vivid color. It was so beautiful. I kept the colors and shapes in my head for this painting.”
Another London painting has an unusual name: “Two Women at the St. Paul Colony.” Gillingham explained its etymology. “We were in London during the Occupy movement. There was a camp of those people beside St. Paul’s Cathedral. One day, my wife went there to take some photos, just as I was finishing this painting. Then I checked the internet and learned that one of our friends, another woman, went there at the same time. The painting is not political, but the title seemed appropriate.”
Gillingham said he doesn’t consider his art to be political. “I don’t want to push any agenda. I have opinions, like everyone else, but I don’t transfer them into my paintings. Art shouldn’t be divisive. When I paint, I don’t set up to make someone believe or tell him what to think. It’s more about esthetics. If a piece of my art is going to hang in someone’s home, it’s going to affect people, and I’d rather it inspired something positive.”
His London period produced several large and beautiful paintings, upbeat and positive; as soon as he moved back to Canada, to Montreal, his art changed again.
“I never look back at a location, never revisit. A new place inspires a new theme, a new atmosphere. It always reflects the place.”
In Montreal, he and his wife lived in a small, furnished apartment, with no extra space and, unlike the London paintings (he had a studio in London), the Montreal series consists of very small multimedia pieces.
“Montreal is frenetic, everything is going on,” he said. “The city really has strong street art. There are posters everywhere, posters on top of posters, going back for years. Sometimes someone would try to remove them, and the slice would be a couple fingers deep, revealing layers of letters and colors and zig-zaggy forms. I fell in love with these accidental images. I wanted to incorporate them into my art. I started cutting off the slabs of posters and painted on top.”
His Montreal collages are angular and aggressive, despite their small size. The colors and shapes vibrate and overlap, fighting with each other for space domination.
Only two paintings of the show belong to Vancouver, but Gillingham has only been back in this city for a few months. A Vancouver series is still in development.
New Work from the Road opened on Jan. 8 and will continue until Feb. 8. To learn more, visit derekgillingham.net.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
On Dec. 4, Avie Estrin’s solo show Blessed People opened at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery. Many of Estrin’s photos are taken in far-away places. There are Tibetan lamas gardening and a Yemenite bride in her fantastic headgear. An old man in a turban looks as if his perceptive eyes can see straight into your heart. A group of yeshivah students dance in the street. A young girl peeks out from behind a large heavy door. The door is ajar, and only fragments of the girl’s face are visible, but there is joy in her curious eyes. She has escaped her handlers, if only for awhile, and relishes her fleeting moments of freedom. Each picture tells a story.
In an interview with the Independent, Estrin talked about his life with photography, its challenges and rewards.
JI: What prompted you to mount an exhibit of travel photos? Do you shoot photos locally?
AE: Interesting question. I never understood this exhibit as a travel theme per se. While there are images from everywhere, a good number are taken right here, in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. On the other hand, if “travel” is what others see, I’m OK with that. I can’t dictate what the show is about, since in the end it’s about what you see, not what I think I saw. I would only say that for me, it’s about real people, it’s about real life. It’s about all of us.
JI: Tell me about this show.
AE: The photos span from the early ’90s to as recently as six months ago. Photos were taken with an array of different cameras, from an old-fashioned SLR to early digitals, but nothing more modern than 2004. While I was always very particular about quality, my equipment is modest and minimal.
Photos range from hiking the Himalayas to horse trekking the Andes and Amazon basin, to more domestic venues right here in Vancouver. I could go on about harrowing experiences forging flooded rivers on horseback in Ecuador or negotiating at gunpoint with Colombian guerilla in the outback. While it makes for great storytelling, the real point is that, by and large, my experiences were joy-filled encounters with gracious peoples from across cultures, people who embraced me, brought me into their homes and shared with me the little they had. I hope the exhibit illuminates this sentiment in some small way.
JI: What do you look for in a frame?
AE: Whatever the subject, I am looking for what is essential to it. I don’t for a moment deceive myself that whatever I am experiencing in a given moment can be accurately represented or reproduced in a static concrete format … with any degree of authenticity. But if I can capture just a fragment of whatever the catalyst in that ephemeral moment, that indefinable but quintessential essence of a thing, then maybe I have done it some justice.
JI: Is there a connection between photography and your profession?
AE: It’s been said before, “all things are connected.” When we attempt to compartmentalize our lives, we are merely hanging veils between our bedrooms. The common thread is not so much what we do but how we do it.
JI: You write poetry, too. Are your poems and your photos linked?
AE: To answer this question I would simply recommend going to the exhibit, seeing the work, reading the poems, and then you decide.
JI: Do you ever use Photoshop?
AE: Photoshop? What’s that? Seriously, without getting too technical or mundane, there is no such thing as “untouched” digital photography. The moment you take a jpeg image with your point and shoot, your camera’s firmware is instantly doing a circus act to compress that eight mega-pixel shot you took down to a one or three megabyte image. Aside from losing at least 60 percent of the original image data, you are also letting your camera indiscriminately dictate what 60 percent to throw away. Even in raw format, there is no getting away from post-processing. For better or worse, the days of “untouched” photography are gone forever.
JI: Do you give copies of your photos to your subjects and, if so, do you offer them free of charge?
AE: Various images in Blessed People were taken in the pre-digital era, so showing people immediate results was in many cases not an option. I had a strict practice of sending people hard copies of their images, but often practicalities. such as remoteness, non-existent postal services, etc., didn’t allow for this either. As to charging people for the privilege of capturing their image … isn’t there something in halachah against that? There should be.
JI: What are the biggest challenges and rewards of your work?
AE: I have no idea what a real travel photographer does. For me though, doing is reward in and of itself. Doing without intentionality isn’t “doing” at all. It’s merely a happening. And intentionality implies challenge; otherwise, it would be a redundant endeavor. I love challenge. I love to do.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
