What arises when Yukon Artists @ Work members explore their concepts of emergence
For Yukoners wondering if we’ll ever emerge from the seemingly endless winter, Yukon Artists @ Work (YAAW) is offering a group show that might bring us some solace and hope. Aptly titled Emergence, the show features work from over a dozen YAAW members. The day I dropped by, it was still a few weeks before the show opened but I was still able to view a few pieces that illustrate the theme and how it’s been interpreted.
The exhibition title was decided upon through “a collective group think,” says Pat Bragg, a YAAW member who is curating the show. Emergence can be interpreted in many ways and encourages artists to explore new ideas in their preferred media.
“It reflects a really interesting place in life or nature where one thing is transforming into another,” Bragg says.
Artist Nicole Bauberger describes the theme as “spacious.” She applauds Bragg for taking a curatorial approach that gives artists lots of freedom. “There’s so many different places you can take [the theme],” Bauberger says. “I find that Pat often makes these fairly wide-open spaces that she can invite people into and they can decide what it is they want to do.”
Bauberger has chosen to use graphite and metal foil as her medium. On the day I visited, she had a work-in-process that she worked on as we chatted.
She’s already completed the graphite drawing and painted it with an oil-based medium. She’s also brushed an oil-based adhesive size, or glue, to the background, and applied copper leaf. By the time our interview was done, she had removed the excess metal leaf with a brush. She’ll finish it with varnish, matte for the drawing, glossy for the gold leaf.
For people who know Bauberger, the subject of the piece is familiar—a monster dress with claw-like feet emerging from a rich metallic background. The title of the piece is Direction.
While Bauberger’s subject matter is a creature of fantasy that she says “emerges from her imagination,” Bragg’s work is more grounded in the natural world.
Bragg uses photographs she’s taken and had printed onto canvas, then incorporates seed beads to embellish the work. Her placement of the beads is sparse and strategic, and the effect might not be immediate. But once discovered, the beads highlight places where one might imagine the natural light in the photograph would fall.
Bragg interprets the exhibition theme in reference to how certain elements of the photographed landscapes are illuminated so that they appear to emerge from their surroundings. In one piece called Sunrise at -45, the morning sun appears from behind Grey Mountain, lighting the winter sky. Beads sparkle from a tree in the foreground and on top of a ridge of snow, as if they’ve caught the light.
In a second piece called Enchanted Meadow, the sun once again is the star of the show as it highlights a stand of deciduous trees so that they emerge from a storm that casts the rest of the landscape into darkness. A line of beads—in hues of yellow, pink and gold—outline the meadow’s edge.
Janet Patterson’s take on Emergence is, in terms of subject matter, similar to Bauberger’s, in that they both feature monsters. But where Bauberger’s monster-dress emerges from a luminous copper background, Patterson’s piece, The Birth of Puff, features a baby dragon that has just been born from its egg and is entering the world for the first time.
The dragon is made from felted wool, a medium from which Patterson seems capable of rendering any creature, from mice to dragons. The egg, Bragg tells me, is an actual ostrich egg.
In addition to Bragg, Bauberger and Patterson, as many as 15 artists may be submitting works to the show, each with their own interpretation of the theme. And, for art lovers who want to learn how they can learn some of the processes involved, there will be two workshops held during the show’s run. The first will introduce participants to the application of metal foil in graphite works, led by Bauberger. She promises to have a variety of foil colours on hand, including copper and gold, which she says is actually brass.
Bragg will lead the second workshop, which will provide insight on how to compose a photograph. Both artists say they’ve found that workshops can give the show a greater impact by engaging people more directly with the artists’ processes. Workshops are easy to tie into existing promotions around the shows. They also encourage workshop leaders to delve more deeply into their practice, says Bauberger.
“The best way to learn is [by] preparing how to teach something.”
