As the summer winds down, there are still plenty of opportunities heading into fall for some art-related excursions. Keep your eyes open for autumn studio tours as the fall colours brighten the landscape, but be sure to also cast your gaze over the water for a slightly different outing. Hop on the ferry and head over to Wolfe Island to visit the Wolfe Island Gallery, which is open on weekends now until Oct. 8 (it is open more frequently during the summer).
The WIG is an artist-run collective comprised of creatives who live on, or have some other connection to, the Frontenac Islands — Wolfe, Simcoe and Howe. This is the main criteria of membership for artists in the WIG, another being that works produced for exhibition must be original fine art, sculpture or fine crafts. (A yearly call for artists goes out on the WIG’s web page and socials in early spring.) Given the emphasis on the island connection, it should come as no surprise that much of the artwork on display is closely tied to the islands themselves, whether the work reflects the landscape, community, fauna or lifestyle. The artwork and crafts at the gallery include paintings, photography, stained glass, sculpture, jewelry, drawings, art from found objects and quilts, among other types of work.
While most artwork has the stamp of its creator on it that in some way identifies it, with a gallery such as the WIG, it is also interesting to speculate on whether the artwork within it also reflects a certain specificity of Place. This idea of Place can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It may refer to representation of the actual geography and population of a particular region; it may refer to the character, ambience or “vibe” given by a locale; it may refer to a sense of identity. The possibilities, while not quite endless, are many. Historically speaking, for example, the quality of light in and around Venice was well known by painters, who sought to reproduce it in their landscape and city-scape representations. And this particular quality of light (if successfully captured in paint) served to identify this particular Place even if the subject was not made plain by the title of the work or by distinctive architectural or other features.
So when you’re looking at the artworks on display at the WIG, are there aspects that speak to the work having been produced on one of the Frontenac Islands? You might consider whether Nancy Steel’s figural paintings evoke a sense of community, or if her landscape vignettes offer a sense of a slower pace of island life. Or perhaps the willow bark bowls made by Patricia Howes and enhanced by found objects suggest quietude and long rambling walks of discovery. The black-capped chickadee of Jan Fitch’s carving or the owl in Kathy Schwab’s stained glass may be frequent visitors to their respective gardens or just passing through, with their own stories to tell.
It is the stories, of course, that drive artistic creation, with those stories supported and imbued with the influence of Place. Go and experience some island time and discover the stories being told in art by this very particular place.
Kamille Parkinson earned a PhD in art history from Queen’s University, and is presently a copywriter, writer of fiction and art historian at large. You can find her on LinkedIn, at www.wordpainterprojects.com, and can contact her at wordpainterprojects@gmail.com.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre:
Gallery Raymond:
MAK Gallery
Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre:
O’Connor Gallery
Studio 22 Open Gallery:
Union Gallery:
VAGA Gallery
Window Art Gallery:
Wolfe Island Gallery:
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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate Cracked.com
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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 CBC.ca
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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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