PERCEPTION, PATTERN, AND ARTISTIC PRAXIS by Gary Pearson Perception is a pattern seeking process reliant on repetition and analogous shapes, sounds, or other external stimuli or sensations. It’s an organizational process whereby elements in a visual field for example, will be collated towards some kind of organizing principle, so the information or environment may be more readily interpreted and understood. Interestingly, when we are confronted with an overabundance of pattern type repetition we are inclined to seek breaks in the pattern formation, thus interrupting or forestalling a perceptual overload. This correlation of interdependence between pattern formation and formation breaks, in the perceptual process, also underlies compositional development in the fine arts. In visual arts, music, dance, theatre, we’re often made aware of the deployment of theme and variation in compositional structure, and usually combined with a counter-theme or counter-subject to promote the role of harmony and discord in the pursuit of compositional complexity. In this latter case artistic license also allows individual personalities, subjectivity, and aesthetics, to affect the role sensory information plays, and the desired outcomes, in influencing the construction of work designed around pattern formation and thematic compositional structures. The exhibition Ramble On is curated by Dr. Stacey Koosel, curator of the UBC Okanagan Campus Gallery, from art work holdings in the University Public Art Collection. Dr. Koosel has stated that her selection, drawn from over 750 art works in the collection, was guided by the concept of finding meaning through patterns, repetitions, and grids. The collection, originally founded by Okanagan College in 1963, is an eclectic body of art work of various disciplines, media, and styles, many acquired by donation, others, and this has perhaps been the most consistent mechanism of acquisition policy, by annual internal purchase awards determined by a faculty jury, for outstanding work from graduating students; diploma graduates during Okanagan College’s mandate, followed by BFA graduates from Okanagan University College, and later UBC Okanagan Campus BFA and MFA graduates. There is a lot of exceptional work in the university collection, including that by prominent artists such as Alan Wood, Jack Shadbolt, David Blackwood, Carl Beam and, to my surprise; there are three William Hogarth (1897 – 1764) prints, two prints by the renowned Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920), prints by Inuit artists, and an astonishing number of Alistair Bell prints, mostly woodcuts and engravings depicting birds, animals, boat and marina scenes, all generously gifted to the university by the artist’s son Alan Bell. Within such a diverse, wide-ranging collection Dr. Koosel identified a thematic paradigm to anchor a conceptually cohesive curatorial thesis and presentation. Even within the parameters of patterns, repetitions, and grids, the audience of Ramble On, hosted by the Vernon Public Art Gallery, will find distinctly different yet equally inventive approaches to the artistic application of repetition and pattern formation among the artists presented.
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