Art collection of late entrepreneur and philanthropist Jim Houston brought home to B.C.
Art
A Northwest Coast art collection comes home, along with a jade Buddha – Vancouver Sun
Jim Houston left Vancouver to retire in Palm Springs in 2003. But he took his Northwest Coast native art collection with him.
Houston owned several pieces by Bill Reid, including a Dogfish woman bronze that was originally designed for his famed Spirit of Haida Gwaii sculpture at the airport.
He owned an elegant Robert Davidson bronze inspired by the human faces carved on 19th century argillite pipes, and a handsome wooden sculpture of a killer whale by Davidson’s brother Reg.
Historic art included an argillite plate with geometric forms dating to the middle of the 19th century, a handwoven Haida spruce hat circa 1880 and a handwoven Tlingit “rattle top basket” from the same era.
Naturally he had several totems by artists like Don Yeomans, Tim Boyko and Doug Zilkie. The collection also includes works by well-known First Nations artists like Ellen Neel, Susan Point and Jay Simeon.
Houston passed away in 2018 and his family put his 11,000 sq. ft. home up for sale. Part of his estate was sold in Palm Springs, but Vancouver antique dealer Uno Langmann convinced his family to bring a lot of his art back to Vancouver.
It’s now on sale at Langmann’s store at 2117 Granville. Walking into the store Friday was like entering a private museum. A museum you can take home, if you have the funds — Reid’s Dogfish Woman is for sale for $425,000.
One of the most impressive pieces isn’t Northwest Coast — it’s a five foot tall jade Buddha on a bronze lotus throne.
Langmann said Houston commissioned sculptor Lyle Sopel to carve the Buddha out of a 2,000 pound B.C. jade boulder. The sculpture took three years to complete, and the finished product is 780 pounds.
“It’s one of the largest jade sculptures in the world, as far as I know,” said Langmann.
The inspiration for Houston’s Buddha was the seven foot tall jade Buddha at the Wat Dhammamongkol temple in Thailand. Houston had it blessed by Buddhist monks when he unveiled it at his Palm Springs home in 2003.
The cost of the sculpture is $950,000.
“A piece of jade (that size) today would be a quarter of a million, just for a rough piece of jade,” said Langmann.
Houston was born in Walla Walla, Washington and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Washington. After two years in the U.S. air force he relocated to Vancouver, where he lived for four decades.
“He was a big entrepreneur and philanthropist in Vancouver,” said Langmann.
Houston was successful in real estate, was an owner of the Rocky Mountaineer train and once owned the Red Robin restaurant chain. He was very involved in charities in both Vancouver and Palm Springs, where he had a second home for years before moving there full time.
Langmann said Houston designed his Palm Springs home around the art collection he had assembled in Vancouver. Some pieces were big — the red cedar totem designed by Yeomans is eight and a half feet tall — others small, including a stunning Jay Simeon 22 karat gold pendant inset with abalone inlay.
But they were all exquisite, and expensive. The Yeomans Raven and Frog totem is $45,000, and the Simeon pendant is $22,000. The Haida spruce hat is $28,000, the argillite plate is $15,000 and the Tlingit rattle top basket is $8,500.
Art
Unique art collection on display – CTV News Vancouver
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Unique art collection on display CTV News Vancouver
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Art
This N.B. artist joined an online movement. Now her art is being shown across the world. – CBC.ca
Since joining a community that dreams of an internet free from giant corporations that can exploit users’ time and data, Victoria West’s digital artwork has been exhibited across the globe.
West, a photographer and digital artist based in Burton, 30 kilometres southeast of Fredericton, has had her work shown in Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Townsville in northeastern Australia, Miami, New York City, and even a museum in Albuquerque, N.M., — all through connections she’s made in Web3.
West warned it was a “rabbit hole,” but what she found in wonderland she doesn’t believe she’d find anywhere else.
Web3 is a future version of the internet.
Web1, West said, was the first version of the internet, in which users passively consumed information.
As the 2000s dawned, Web2 emerged, and users could now post their own content — think Twitter, blogs, YouTube. People are now creating more and more in digital spaces, but the downside of Web2 is that corporations are technically still the owners of all that creation, and they could take your data and potentially do with it as they please.
Enter Web3, which still exists more in theory: nobody and everybody owns the internet. This version aims to be decentralized. It doesn’t eradicate the distrust some people have in mega companies like Google and Meta — it just removes the need for it, because no one person or organization can own the blockchain Web3 operates on.
West said within Web3 there’s an art movement, with artists working together and taking control of their work. Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci had an internet connection, as well as Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello. It’s the renaissance all over again, West said, except it’s happening with digital art.
“And it’s happening online on a much bigger scale.”
Before learning about W3 in 2021, West said she was in a photography bubble.
Photography isn’t the art form West imagined herself pursuing when she was younger. But when she bought a camera after the first commercial digital models arrived on the market in the mid-2000s, she was hooked.
“I was bothering everybody around me to take their portrait,” she said.
She built up her portraiture business, becoming involved with the Professional Photographers of Canada and competing in photography contests. Still, West didn’t want to just capture moments — she wanted to make them.
That’s when artificial intelligence came on the scene.
West was using Midjourney, a generative AI program, when it was still in beta testing. Around the same time she became involved with Web3, she experimented with blending AI-produced textures into her photography. In her business, AI quickened her workflow and allowed her to change backdrops and furniture.
While creating a piece in 2023 called When I Die, West wanted to design a man underground with roots blossoming into a tree. Well, there aren’t any blossoming trees in Canada in February, West joked — so she made the tree using AI.
“I feel like someone took handcuffs off me, and I’m free,” she said.
Lauren Cruikshank, an associate professor in culture and media studies at the University of New Brunswick, has spoken about the use of AI in universities, but she also thinks about it through an artistic lens.
From the camera to spell check, Cruikshank said the same discussion happens with each new medium: how much of the artistry belongs to the artist, how much to the tools they’re using?
“For some people where it gets uncomfortable is where the role of the human is minimal compared to how much the AI tool is creating or having creative influence,” she said.
With AI, Cruikshank agreed there are degrees — there’s a difference between prompting an AI to generate an image of a beautiful sunset and claiming it as your artwork and what West is doing, combining AI with her own artistry.
“That sounds really compelling to me,” Cruikshank said.
When West first saw Lume Studios on Broadway in lower Manhattan, the place she’d eventually display Eden’s Dye, her immersive art exhibit, she knew she wanted it immediately.
She collaborated on the exhibit with some of her Web3 friends. Los Angeles actors and poets Laurence Fuller and Vincent D’Onofrio wrote poetry to accompany each piece of art, which West created using both photography and AI. A coder friend joined the crew, and the result was a floor-to-ceiling immersive exhibit. West’s collaborators also choreographed performances to complement the art, using music produced by AI.
“Why wouldn’t I do that if I can?” West asked. “It’s freeing, I think, and lets you push the boundaries of photography and what you can do with it.”
While the exhibit leaned heavily on romantic, classical themes and Baroque aesthetics, Eden’s Dye is almost a premonition: minted, digital artwork taking up entire walls in people’s homes, flowers growing from code, experiencing art in virtual realms.
Demand will only grow, West said. Technology will progress and the internet will change. But what she really wanted was for people to walk into Eden’s Dye and be amazed by the art they were experiencing.
“They came because of the art, and they were there enjoying the art. You don’t really need to understand anything beyond that.”
Art
Niagara quilt expo to explore history of modern art form – Welland Tribune
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These aren’t your grandma’s quilts.
Being a grandmother herself, Lorna Costantini said she’s not a huge fan of the above phrase, but she can’t help but use it to describe modern quilting.
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