Arteast Digest: Grow with Art, Field Trip

1. Arteast Grow with Art / Grandir avec l'art

Presents Alex Wyse, Tuesday May 28

7:00-  meet and greet, 7:30 announcements with presentation to follow. Room 340, 255 Centrum Blvd.


Alexander John Wyse was born in the United Kingdom in 1938. He recalls being consumed by  drawing  and  painting  as a child. After moving to Canada, he met his wife and collaborator Anne, a teacher from Saskatchewan. Perhaps owing to Alex’s British origin or perhaps to other factors, the couple has settled in the nation’s capital of Ottawa, Ontario.

As the home of the country’s government, Ottawa is a city filled with people involved in politics; if not directly, then by association. The city’s overwhelming tone of governance and social consequence has found its way into the work of Alex Wyse as he interrogates, subverts, and celebrates the political  context  of his own art practice.

Wyse often comments on such politically charged themes as the environment, governmental responsibility, and regionalism itself. His 1970 work Super Shows Proudly Presents Ease Into the Countryside plays with the perceived divisions between country- and city-life, while adopting the rhetoric of commercialism by promoting itself as a way to “ease into the countryside for the city type - deluxe model” and containing drawers of garbage and urban noisemakers.

The work of Alex Wyse often adopts a rustic style, not unlike that of his contemporaries Joe Fafard and Vic Cicansky, even if Wyse uses different materials. But through the  appropriation of other traditions of communication, Wyse has managed in his practice to create lighthearted works that deal with serious issues; Parliamentary Desk Thumper, Wyse’s work presented on the ARTSask website, is no exception.

If Alex Wyse is  unable to attend, Mary Ann Varley will  present "A Sticky Business- a journey into collage"

2. Annual Field Trip

The Annual field trip to Montreal is Thursday, June 13
Hannah Claus at the McCord Museum
Deadline to sign up: Cheques must be received by 5 pm on Friday, May 31, 2019.
Échéance pour l’inscription: Réception de chèques avant 17 h le vendredi 31 mai, 2019.

Treasures at the McCord Museum- (Weaving our Identity, Haida Supernatural Stories, & Hannah Claus https://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/hannah-claus/)
Afternoon at the Botanical Gardens
Contact: Mary Ann Varley, varleymaryann1@bell.net
Le musée McCord à Montréal

Porter son identité, Haida histoires surnaturaelles, & Hannah Claus
L’après-midi au jardin botanique de Montréal
Contact: Mary Ann Varley, varleymaryann1@bell.net.

**Itinerary - Thursday, June 13, 2019
8:15 a.m. Leave the Shenkman Art Centre
by air-conditioned bus
10:30 a.m. Arrival at McCord Museum
11:00 a.m. Self guided tour
12:00 p.m., Lunch or brown bag at the gallery
(your cost)
Free time to roam the galleries
2 p.m. Depart museum
2:30 p.m. Arrival at Botanical Gardens for plein air,
(painting, sketching, photography, etc)
Optional supper or brown bag at local
venues (your cost)
6:00 p.m. Departure for Ottawa
8:00 - 9:00 p.m. Arrival at the Shenkman Centre, depending on traffic and stop for a break.
Price: $60/member $70/non-member
Included in the price is bus transportation, entrance fees. We need at least 25 people for the trip to be viable.

Le musée McCord à Montréal

Porter son identité, Haida histoires surnaturaelles, & Hannah Claus
L’après- midi aux jardines botaniques
Contact: Mary Ann Varley, varleymaryann1@bell.net.