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PENELOPE STEWART: PROJECTS
Curated by Natalie Olanick
Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery Dawson College
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PENELOPE STEWART: PROJECTS
Cleave..... a path in the wilderness, Warren G. Flowers Gallery Murmur, site-specific installation, Peace Garden Labyrinth, Collaboration with 2nd year Fine Arts students
All projects completed at Dawson College, Montreal, Quebec, 2015-16
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Nature and Social Relationships Time, space, art and architecture are vast conceptual fields, open to new materials and aesthetic sensibilities, yet these possibilities are daunting. Penelope Stewart’s enthusiasm and sheer will to explore what her art and ideas can bring to these realms over comes any challenges. Her large room sized wax installation composed of thousands of wax multiples, black and white prints, as well as time based loop, an in situ- outdoor sculpture and a thematically related print portfolio embraced the histories of art, space and time, while laying down paths for community involvement. Ideas of how we express our comprehension of life, death, memory, loss and remembrance connect representational strategies, to the materials used and finally the concentration of her work invested in creating the various projects. The life cycles of the natural world deciphered in the imagination and consciousness.
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Cleave…a path in the wilderness Penelope Stewart was moved to create a simulation of a particular moment in the garden, that would be recognizable in the gallery. She worked with a fleeting sense of the peace and freedom one can feel as they walk through the leaves that have fallen in the autumn. Cleave…a path in the wilderness, created an immersive environment through smell and scale. Leaves, branches and vines fabricated out of beeswax dominated the gallery installation. The wax is a tool, a material, a conduit, as well as an inspiration. The history and knowledge of bees creating the wax adds to the depth of how human impressions are linked to the natural world yet at the same time are an imposition on natural orders. Thousands of wax leaves were hung from a grid structure, until a room size tapestry of leaves was created. The process to make the leaves is a mundane one. Molds are made, wax is heated to just the right temperature and then poured into these silicone impressions. The number of leaves that were made was an astounding 12,000. The mundane, repetitive labor to create the work is not new to contemporary sculpture. In 1980, Liz Magor made 2,500 newspaper bricks for her work Production. She assembled a wall of these once newsworthy pieces of paper to create a monumental scale object of illegible pulp. Magor’s work broke down the stories of the day to forgotten meaningless material, yet, her work put forward how the information is conveyed. The metal press to create each brick, is placed beside the wall, and the public involved in the act of learning and sharing information, is brought to the front line of Production. Strength in numbers is a strong political force for protest as well as production. How collective working and bargaining creates a deeper, rich community. Stewart echoes this sentiment of what working togetherness can create both through metaphor of the leaves, vines and stones, the beeswax, her personal labor in creating the objects and by sharing the experience of mounting the work with the community. In Cleave…a path into the wilderness, the placement of the leaves became a community activity. The gallery acted as an allegorical bee hive. Student and/or faculty would drop by for an hour or more to tie together groupings of leaves. The leaves were instruments for the students and Stewart to create a memory of the natural world. People had their favorites; different groupings of leaf forms took place. A cluster of Oaks, or a section of Elms, Gingko pairs here and there, the leaf groupings became personal collections to all who put them up. The activity was an opportunity to share what expression could be, like the soft sweet honey that comes from the thousands of bees as they self-engineer the honeycombs. gardens of forking paths, a small black and white projected time-based loop, ran continuously on one wall through the exhibition. The images resembled old film footage and included still moments in the orchard, walks on the forest floor, branches swaying as the image moves through an overgrown garden setting, beehives, garden detritus and ivy covered walls. The source of the image looked like a camera from the beginning of the 20th century. A timeless frame for light, housing the contemporary video technology. Opposite to the flickering images, lay a grouping, a small installation entitled Indices comprising cast beeswax stones, branches, large pieces of bark and vines hanging. The vine shadows echoed the light play of the video projection.
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Folly A full wall sized black and white print of a garden memorial portal was placed on the opposite wall to the falling wax leaves. The print, while continuing the dialogue of nature and social relationships, touches on the social customs of making a monument to remember the dead. Their physical presence may be absent, but it is through the memories they leave behind that they continue to have an impact on the living. Rituals are the embodiment of the relationship between past and the present. Like the garden, the gallery is also a space where rituals and their possible meanings are brought to the attention of those that come. The scale of the print makes the stone sculpture larger that it would be if seen in physical reality, the image is repeated once as a positive and one as a negative. We are left with a question of how we make or create a heroic gesture to remember for ourselves, our families, our ideas of what is forever.
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Tending Outside of the gallery in a display case, 10 feet long, four feet above the ground, three feet in height, two feet in depth, Stewart loaded the case with hundreds of various sizes wax branches, stacked randomly one on top of the other. This mass collection fills half of the case, hung above is a three-foot-long black and white photograph of the branches lit from within, like the print of Folly, the photo is the negative of the image, the reverse of how the light would recreate the image of the branches.
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Labyrinth The theme of Labyrinth is meant to be regarded as a walk or pilgrimage where mediation and discovery can occur. It can evoke a personal discovery of awareness and peace. The term suggests finding via process. Labyrinth was developed by five visual arts students and five members of the fine art faculty working with Stewart to create a print portfolio. Each participant made a print that describe their own interpretation of the theme. This project allowed for another iteration of life with the garden. It is both a record of Stewart’s art at Dawson College and a work of art by itself. The print is a binding force of the individual and the collective. The technique of print making, the labor and hand-made aspects of the process to create a limited number of images, has become a lost practice in terms of relaying information to many, however, the touch and the handmade quality of an edition incites a dialogue of sharing to create impression and expression between a group.
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LABYRINTH: ARTISTS
(clockwise, from bottom left)
Natalie Olanick,
Forward Flow Chart, photo etching and aquatint 2016
Naomi London,
After Shyrl, photo etching, 2016
Claude Arseneault,
Malleable Pathway, photo etching, etching and aquatint, 2016
Julianna Joos,
Maze, photo etching, etching and aquatint, 2016
Penelope Stewart,
Andromeda, from the Celestial Atlas, photo etching, 2016
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LABYRINTH: STUDENTS
(clockwise, from bottom left)
Morgane Bernard,
Upside Down, etching and aquatint, 2015
Anaelle Bohbot,
Berlin, etching and aquatint, 2015
Ian Clelland,
Which Box, etching and aquatint, 2015
David Durham,
City of Athens, etching and aquatint, 2015
Alexia McKindsey,
Bird’s Nest, etching and aquatint, 2015
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In classical mythology the labyrinth was a vast maze of challenges, of paths and dead ends designed to make you lose your way. Over the centuries the labyrinth maze has been transformed into a continuous unicursal patterned single path inscribed on building floors or in gardens. Walking the labyrinth became a form of meditation and encouraged contemplation. The “Peace Garden” at Dawson College, though not a labyrinth per se is a beautiful green space with elliptical paths that circle the inner garden while embracing both the local wildlife and offering a site of serenity. This garden in the middle of a large city, like the labyrinth, promotes the quieting of the mind and the listening to one’s innermost thoughts while reflecting on life, peace and renewal. Inspired by the “Peace Garden”, Labyrinth seemed a fitting theme for this collaborative print project. My apprehensions vanished the day Penelope Stewart, visiting artist, came to my class to propose Labyrinth, a collaborative print project, between 5 professional artists and the 2015-2016 Visual Arts students at Dawson College. From then on, student motivation and intent around and about Labyrinth grew, filling the printmaking studio with an unforeseen creative energy. The students’ etchings and aquatints represent a technical feat, the first to be realized using the newly installed environmentally safe practices in the printmaking studio at Dawson College and the first large edition to be printed by students. Labyrinth imparted confidence, insight and knowledge on printmaking as a collective practice, capable of uniting students and artists on a common theme towards a print portfolio. As a teacher and artist, the fathom of added work vanished into the pleasure of making and sharing this magnificent portfolio of original prints. Claude Arsenault _________________ The project was open to all print students and through a jurying process five prints were selected for inclusion. In addition, two prints were given honourable mentions. Labyrinth, 2015-2016 comprises 10 handmade prints in an edition of 15 and housed in a solander box. 5? a/p’s with 2 reserved for each of the honourable mentions. Each print is 25.4 x 25.4 cm (10” x 10”) and is printed on 250 BFK Rives archival paper. Printmaking techniques include etching, aqua tint, and chine collé Each student printed their editions with the support of the print faculty, Claude Aresenault, Julianna Joos, and Natalie Olanik, curator of this project.
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The Peace Garden In creating her work, Penelope Stewart starts by asking questions and developing research. How is a space or location hinting at the need to have certain aspects of its nature, brought to light? The project that Stewart created while working at Dawson College, began with her visiting the college and discovering the Peace Garden. “ Conceptualized in 2007, the Peace Garden was the collaborative response to a tragic event in the college’s history, the shooting of 2006, where we lost one of our own. The ensuing grief affected us all, but together we found a way to honor Anastasia’s life all while creating a safe space.” Stewart observed, took pictures and imagined how the characteristics of the garden spoke of its history and how it offered insights into natural endings. The changes of the seasons on the plants and grounds becomes a receptor or guide for how to prepare and cope with the changes that occur as time shifts and effects who we are and what the world is. The garden, a cultural icon – is a place made for the activities of meditation and reflection. It is a symbol of how humanity tries to tame and consider the birth, life and rebirth cycle of sentient beings, a timeless or suspended seeking mode for a utopian condition. How are we comforted by the garden? Why do we create gardens, and what do we see in nature about ourselves? How do we find our own course to peace? These elusive questions are addressed by Stewart in the creation of her work. 1
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Peace Garden, www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
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Murmur Penelope Stewart extended her sculptural objects to the systems of growth and decomposition in their habitual state. The forms and shapes of the garden that had been presented indoors, in a controlled and modified space, were treated as active participants with the artist’ touch, outdoors. For this intersection of art and nature, Penelope Stewart placed a sculptural object, in the environment where the inspiration of work stems. A series and variety of mirrored dormant beehive boxes, the actual size of active apian, but varying heights was placed in the garden beds. The mirrored surfaces created the phenomena of simultaneously expanding and multiplying the garden while the actual bee boxes disappear into the reflection of the surroundings. The boxes become sculptural containers, screens in which life in the garden is animated, rearranged in memory and where new breath, new meaning and connections can be made or revised. A state of reflexive vision - “seeing yourself seeing” has been beautifully explored by artist James Turrell. His creations of indoor and outdoor spaces where large light fields envelope our sense of space and being, illuminates a direction to apply his sensibility to the world we share. Rather that honing constructed spaces to focus on an aspect of how we exist, Murmur set up a puzzle or a situation where our perception and the impact of our acknowledgment of this, is an affect on the environment. 2
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James Turrell, Guggenheim.org
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Corollary phrases The size and materials of the installation, becomes an immersive rumination of how a recognition passion, reverie and remorse is revealed. The work of Penelope Stewart is meant to be read, questions or ideas are suggested for the audience to decide how this conversation of bees, leaves, and black and white images of the garden is continued. The longevity of a piece of art, is one of the unknowns that is a constant axis in the creation of a work. Stewart balances this by a sharing of ideas and including her audience as producers. The work goes beyond the walls of the gallery in many ways. Labyrinth is an art work that a group contributed their expression of visual insights to a theme Stewart put forward. Murmur places an art object with no functional purpose other than to question cultural practice in a garden setting. The cycles of the natural world are not being controlled by the work, rather human response to entropy. The beeswax which Stewart uses to create her large installations, can be melted down and recycled, left in a dormant state until a time where it will again become a creative wonder. Natalie Olanick
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Natalie Olanick is an artist and writer. She has curated a number of exhibitions and she teaches at Dawson College in Montreal. Recent past projects have been in curation, 2011 “Sortons les archives” SKOL, Mtl. Exhibition of work , ISEA 2014, Dubai, UAE. “La Vitrine”, 166 rue Rachel, Mtl. 2014, “Fields” 2013, Warren G. Flowers Gallery, Dawson College, “Stock Markets and Hemlines” Womens’ Art Resource Center, Toronto, 2013. Her writing has been published in Ciel Variable, ETC., Espace, and Lola. She has been a board member of Articule, Womens’ Art Resource Center and Mercer Union.
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Penelope Stewart is a Toronto based artist working across the varied media of sculpture, installation, photography, works on paper and architectural interventions. Re-current themes address notions of cultural memory, of time and space and a considered approach to the relationship between objects, architecture and the places between these two- places to intervene, inhabit and above all activate. Whether it is her large scale beeswax architectures or her trompe l’oeil prints and photographs she hopes to bring a sensory intensification, a haptic quality to the encounter. Stewart was born in Montréal, Québec. She received a BFA from York University, Toronto and an MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Stewart has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council and in 2010 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts (RCA). She has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in both national and international venues including such notable institutions as The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo New York; Musée d’Art de Joliette, Québec; Lotusland, Montecito, California; Musée Barthétè, Boussan, France; Koffler Gallery, Toronto; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Ontario; The Military Museums, Alberta; ACT Design Museum Canberra, Australia; Poimena Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Her work has been reviewed in major critical journals, books and catalogues and featured in anthologies such as Utopic Impulses, Amy Gogarty (2007); Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making, Jenn Law (2015); and Encaustic Works, Michele Stuart (2015) and Printolopolis, Jenn law, Shannon Gerrard (2016). In the spring of 2016 Stewart completed a private commission for Maison Alexandre Stern in Paris, France and in 2017 Stewart will be Artist in Residence at the Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
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Penelope Stewart wishes to thank the following: Natalie Olanick Jean-Guy Haché Carolyn Anderson Olivier Forgues Don Corman Naomi London Claude Arsenault Julianna Joos Reg Beatty Mindy Yan Angela Silver Deborah Carruthers Carolyn Wren Nicholas Stirling Meggan Winsley Anna Gaby-Trotz Open Studio Melanie Chikofsky Nicholas Crombach Al Green Sculpture Centre Libby Hague Yael Brotman Diana Rice The Peace Centre, Dawson College Student Success Action Plan. Tina Romeo Joe DiLeo Andrea Cole
ISBN 978-1-5501650-4-3
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Photo credits: Cover-Installation, Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, Don Corman Inside Cover-garden of forking paths still from video loop, beeskep (manmade beehive) 2016 photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 2- Indices, beeswax egg vine, detail 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 4- Cleave… a path in the wilderness, beeswax leaves detail, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 6-7 Cleave… a path in the wilderness, 11,000 beeswax cast leaves, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 9- student attaching beeswax leaves photo credit: Natalie Olanick Page 10-11- students installing, photo credit: Natalie Olanick Page 12-13 –- gallery view, Cleave…a path in the wilderness, Indices and gardens of forking paths -photo credit: Don Corman Page 15 – detail Indices- beeswax stones, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 16-17 - gallery view, Cleave…a path in the wilderness, Indices and gardens of forking paths -photo credit: Don Corman Page 19- Folly, 2016, photo credit: Don Corman Page20 – detail Tending, beeswax branches, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 21- beeswax and bees on the roof at Dawson College, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 22-23 -Tending, (black and white photograph, beeswax branches)2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page23-24 – Tending, (blk + wh photograph, beeswax branches), 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 24-25 – students helping to install Tending, (blk + wh photograph, beeswax branches)2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 25-26 -Tending, (blk + wh photograph, beeswax branches)2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 27- students proofing Labyrinth prints photo credit: Natalie Olanick Page 28-29 – portfolio box made by Reg Beatty, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 30-31- Labyrinth prints series, 2016 photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 33 – images of students working on their prints: photo credit Natalie Olanick Page 34-35 still images from video loop gardens of forking paths, 2016, photo credit: Penelope Stewart Pages 36-37 Murmur, mirrored bee boxes in the Peace Garden at Dawson College, Montreal, 2016 Photo credit: Don Corman Page 38 Murmur, mirrored bee boxes in the Peace Garden at Dawson College, Montreal, 2016 Photo credit: Don Corman Page 40 Murmur, mirrored bee boxes in the Peace Garden at Dawson College, Montreal, 2016 Photo credit: Don Corman Page 42 Murmur, mirrored bee boxes in the Peace Garden at Dawson College, Montreal, 2016 Photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 46 garden of forking paths still from video loop 2016 photo credit: Penelope Stewart Page 47 garden of forking paths, projector video loop, vintage tripod
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