Casa goes big with home inspired new exhibits

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Casa is going big  and going home this weekend. In addition to Christmas at Casa returning to a live event with six new art exhibits opening Saturday, Nov. 20.

 

“Thematically they’re big and they explore big, meaty subjects,” said Allied Arts Council Communications co-ordinator Kelaine Devine.

Don Ahnahnsisi McIntyre’s (re)Read is one of several new art exhibits at Casa. Photo by Richard Amery

 

Lethbridge based artist and print-maker Kellen Spencer‘s “Between the Sidewalk and the Horizon” is in the main gallery. It explores the concept of home.

 The project began  as a documentative series of photographs of his home in Mount Pleasant in Calgary.

 The exhibit displays drawings and etching alongside  surreal elements of his photographic work exploring  the concept of home as an investment versus  places that hold family and  personal history.

 

“It’s a beautiful exploration of through photos and print making,” Devine said.

Czech Republic born, Lethbridge based Petra Malá Miller also explores the concept of home in her exhibit “ Living in the Zone.”

 

“It’s about the effects of radioactive fallout, but it’s actually uplifting rather than depressing,” Devine said.

 

 Cardston based artist Craig Talbot’s “Sky Palace” in the Passage Gallery looks at the concept of home in the terms of a futuristic Utopia.

 

“Many years ago, in the year 2021, the sacred trees were emancipated from humankind. The people of the Sky Palace re-planted the trees to create a new, healthy planet where the people of Earth Could have a chance to redeem themselves for poisoning the sacred trees,” Talbot summarizes in his artists statement.

 

“The world in the future has evolved into the Sky Palace,” Devine observed.

Recent U of L graduate Leah  Koutroumanos’ exhibit of watercolours “ Diary of Earthly Things” in the Casa  project space.

 

“Beauty and ambiguity are explored in my watercolours through contemplation of the ‘stumbled upon’ and an objects value, determined by its evanescence. I am describing the passing of time using static informal subject matter,” she writes in her artist statement.

Don Ahnahnsisi McIntyre, an Ojibway artist from Timiskaming First Nations explore the concert of home and community from  the perspective of First Nations oral history in his exhibit “(re)Read.”

 

“He’s questioning a lot of things that don’t make a lot of sense. It’s  a combination of collage and painting,”she said. Devine said, adding his works incorporates legal words and phrases and jargon that most people don’t understand that is used to describe Indigenous states of being .

 

“I have  written the stories of  Aboriginal people and matched those with Western treatise. The result is an artistic and social bricolage that we must work to comprehend,” he writes in his artist statement.

Petra Malá Miller’s “ Living in the Zone” is at Casa until Jan. 15. Photo by Richard Amery

 

U of L Librarian Sandra Cowan literally incorporated the dirt from her travels around north America and Europe into her sculpture  exhibit “Data and Dirt” exhibit.

 

“She took soil form  the places she visited and mixed it into clay,” Devine observed.

 

“Each sculpture is about a particular place in North America or Europe that I have visited in recent years and felt some connection with. I investigate sites by walking, sensing with all my senses, and being-with a place. I collect soil from these sites, with the assumption that soil, as actual residue of the site, retains some of the numinosity, as well as the chemistry and biology, of course. Each piece also incorporates human-mediated data about the place – this could be census or demographic data, geo-spatial data, climate data, data about the flora & fauna, historical data, or any variety of other kinds of numeric data that humans collect in order to understand, define and identify a place. The work is in clay, and each piece has some of the soil from the place it refers to mixed in with the clay, so it carries some residue of the place. Somewhere in between these two natural and cultural media – dirt and data – I attempt to work with the spirit of a specific place in each sculpture,” Cowan wrote in her artist statement.

 

 The exhibits are open today for Christmas at Casa patrons, but the official  reception is at 7 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 20.

They will be running at casa until Jan. 15.

 

“We usually don’t have anything  during the Holiday season. But we had a lot of people calling who were interested in coming to Casa  over the Holidays, so the exhibit has been extended,” Devine said.

 Proof of double vaccination and masks are required at Casa.

— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor


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