Archive for October, 2009

Shari-Anne Gib­son smiles and delights. Pho­to­graph by Bran­don Gaukel.

Shari-Anne Gib­son is a newly wed. Buzzing around her new apart­ment she talks about love, mak­ing art, and the sim­ple life. The fall is the sea­son that marks new begin­nings: a new hus­band and her first solo show in Van­cou­ver. Now The Trees Have Grown Up is Gibson’s col­lec­tion of new paint­ings and draw­ings that rep­re­sent inno­cence, our rela­tion­ship with nature and an insight into the artist’s imag­i­na­tion. The work is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Gibson’s aes­thetic, which is the­mat­i­cally con­nected by a sense of inter­rupted innocence.

Shari-Anne Gibson’s online portfolio

Now The Trees Have Grown Up shows at Lit­tle Moun­tain Gallery

from Octo­ber 29th to Novem­ber 18th.

Open­ing recep­tion Thurs­day, Octo­ber 29, 7-10pm.

www.littlemountainstudios.ca

195 EAST 26th Avenue VANCOUVER B.C. V5V 2G8

RSVP for the opening.

Update [26 Octo­ber 2009]: Drip­py­town was can­celled last week. In place of the exhibit, the AMS Art Gallery has expertly put together VANIMAUX, which opens today:

VANIMAUX explores the Van­cou­ver ani­mal in its native envi­ron­ment draw­ing other sto­ries from six per­spec­tives. The con­tem­po­rary land­scape is unpacked by six [local emerg­ing] artists.

The show fea­tures Sad Mag con­trib­u­tors and fam­ily mem­bers Daniel Elstone, Kristina Fiedrich, Bran­don Gaukel, Tina Krueger, Judit Navratil, and Katie Stew­art. VANIMAUX fur­ther unpacks the idea of urban Van­cou­ver, wip­ing the Olympics sanc­tioned hype away and show­ing the beast for what it is.

VANIMAUX. AMS Art Gallery. 6000 Stu­dent Union Boule­vard. Exhibit open­ing Octo­ber 26, 2009, from 5–8 pm.

RVSP

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — -

Jeremy Jaud is nearly chok­ing on his words. His excited phrases are gun­ning through the empty gallery and splat­ter­ings upon impact. Jaud is the art com­mis­sioner of the Stu­dent Union Build­ing (SUB) Art Gallery at UBC.

Until recently, most UBC stu­dents knew the the SUB Art Gallery as the site of the annual poster sale. Today, the gallery is a fix­ture for art afi­ciona­dos in Vancouver’s scene, in major part because of Jaud. After meet­ing the gallery’s pre­vi­ous art com­mis­sioner in an Art His­tory sem­i­nar last spring, Jaud took over the posi­tion and over­saw dra­matic ren­o­va­tions over eight months. Jaud is all pas­sion and smiles as he shares what led him to this posi­tion. “I saw it as an oppor­tu­nity to bear all my skill sets on one direc­tion, hav­ing a back­ground in art his­tory, visual arts, bud­get­ing, man­age­ment, and vol­un­teer work.”

Last month, the new space was inau­gu­rated with the show “Vanci­tyscapes,” fea­tur­ing Mor­gan Dun­net, a local artist whose impres­sion­is­tic paint­ings reveal the city of Van­cou­ver in its sim­plest moments of glory—images you might recall from late night stum­bles through the rainy streets of Gas­town. The open­ing night of “Vanci­tyscapes” saw over two hun­dred vis­i­tors, many of them stu­dents, like myself, who had been on UBC’s cam­pus for years, never set foot in the space, but gushed at its rein­ven­tion. This was just the start of the gallery’s con­tin­u­ing cel­e­bra­tion of Van­cou­ver. Jaud, orig­i­nally from Yel­lowknife, is drawn to Vancouver’s new devel­op­ments and the sense of com­mu­nity it pro­vides. “Van­cou­ver is con­stantly chang­ing, it’s always in the moment, it’s infectious.”

Jaud envi­sions the the SUB Art Gallery as a win­dow on the land­scape of art to the Belkin Gallery, Museum of Anthro­pol­ogy, Koerner Library, and beyond cam­pus to the rest of Van­cou­ver. He dis­cusses the unique­ness of the gallery in its daily access to thou­sands of students—the future pow­er­houses of Vancouver—and its oppor­tu­nity to ini­ti­ate or fos­ter artis­tic inter­est within them.

At the end of this month, the gallery is host­ing an exten­sion of an exhi­bi­tion called “Drip­py­town: Van­cou­ver Life Through the Eyes of its Inde­pen­dent Artists” at the Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Library (RBSC) at UBC. The exhi­bi­tion show­cases the RBSC’s col­lec­tion of print comics cre­ated by Van­cou­ver artists, includ­ing Colin Upton and James Lawrence, whose work together on a cover for the comic “Drip­py­town” gave the exhi­bi­tion both its name and nar­ra­tive. “Drip­py­town” presents Van­cou­ver and its char­ac­ter­is­tic rain, gray skies, and sil­ver lin­ings, as seen through the eyes of six local artists using the comic medium. Like Van­cou­ver, the col­lec­tion seems dreary at first but is ulti­mately inspiring.

The exhi­bi­tion is made pos­si­ble by the coor­di­na­tion of sev­eral forces: stu­dents of UBC’s School of Library, Archival, and Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies pro­gram, RBSC staff, Francesca Marini — a pro­fes­sor within the depart­ment, the artists, and Jaud.

Says Jaud, “UBC has such a broad range of art pro­duc­ers and peo­ple already inter­ested in the arts; con­duits and reflec­tors. More bridges need to be built between these var­i­ous groups so that our ideas can be shared, our mes­sages can strengthen and access can blossom.”

The SUB Art Gallery is cur­rently show­ing “Trag­i­cally Res­cu­ing His Fam­ily From the Wreck­age of a Destroyed Sink­ing Bat­tle­ship”, works by Kevin Day, from Oct. 13th — Oct. 23rd.

“Drip­py­town” shows at the SUB Art Gallery from Oct. 26th -  Nov. 3rd and at Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions from    Oct. 23 — Jan. 31st.

–Rebecca Slaven for Sad Mag

Sad Mag is look­ing for a Web Edi­tor to join our team! If you have an inter­est in online pub­lish­ing and a desire to gain expe­ri­ence with an excit­ing new project, con­sider apply­ing for this vol­un­teer position.

Job Require­ments

• + Direct and main­tain Sad Mag’s pres­ence on the web, online at sadmag.ca and on social net­work­ing websites
• + Cre­ate and direct the cre­ation of online con­tent (writ­ten, visual, audio, and video) for the web­site in col­lab­o­ra­tion with vol­un­teer writ­ers and artists
• + Set pub­lish­ing sched­ules and edi­to­r­ial deadlines
• + Edit and care­fully proof­read all online content
• + Grow the posi­tion and Sad Mag’s online pres­ence to reflect the growth and mat­u­ra­tion of the magazine
• + Meet with Sad Mag’s edi­to­r­ial staff on a monthly basis

Qual­i­fi­ca­tions

• + Pro­fes­sional or hobby expe­ri­ence cre­at­ing and mod­er­at­ing websites
• + Work­ing knowl­edge of HTML, CSS, and Word­Press or a desire to learn
• + Work­ing knowl­edge of social net­work­ing plat­forms, par­tic­u­larly Face­book and Twit­ter, or a desire to learn
• + Work­ing knowl­edge or expe­ri­ence pro­duc­ing pod­casts and online video or a desire to learn
• + Pro­fes­sional or vol­un­teer expe­ri­ence work­ing in an edi­to­r­ial posi­tion or in a pub­lish­ing environment
• + A demon­strated inter­est in writ­ing, edit­ing, and publishing
• + A demon­strated inter­est in art and cul­ture in Vancouver

If you would like to be con­sid­ered for this posi­tion, please email us with an intro­duc­tory let­ter and resume to info [at] sad­mag [dot] ca before Octo­ber 31, 2009.