Images below are from the current Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition: Sandra Brewster Blur, and Brewster's web page.
Black is Blurry
It's extraordinary that a black woman would depict herself in this manner.
Images below are from the current Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition: Sandra Brewster Blur, and Brewster's web page.
Images below are from the current Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition: Sandra Brewster Blur, and Brewster's web page.
Pride with Decals
These "decals" which are actualy directly painted on the yellow bricks on the side of the Mississauga Central Library's boundary wall, came up YESTERDAY (TUesday, July 30th), the very day that I took the detour around the library to see "what was up"!
Well, here it is.
But the fishy thing about it was that they were HIDDEN. People going through the main entrance would never SEE these "decals."
That is the whole point, isn't it. Subversion and secrecy, and slow erosion into "mainstream" cultural life.
The other "flag" is for inclusion: "LGTBQ" etc.
Below is the official report at the city website:
Mississauga Shows its Pride with Flag Decal Unveiling at Celebration SquareMayor Crombie dedicating "the wall" with the 2SLGBTQ+ community in front of Mississauga City Centre " wall":
Jul 24, 2019
Next Tuesday, the City of Mississauga will unveil new Pride and Transgender Flag decals on Celebration Square.
The decal unveiling recognizes Peel Pride Month and celebrates diversity in Mississauga.
A descriptive sign will be placed in the garden adjacent to the decals, which will include a message reinforcing the City’s commitment to diversity.
Media Photo Opportunity
What: Unveiling of new Pride and Transgender Flag decals on Mississauga Celebration Square
When: Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 1 p.m.
Where:
Mississauga Celebration Square – adjacent to the community flag pole on the west end of City Centre Dr.
300 City Centre Drive
Mississauga, ON
Who:
Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Members of Council and special guests
BACKGROUND:
At its meeting on July 11, Regional Council approved an allocation of funding for municipalities in Peel towards Pride and Transgender Flag decals in recognition of Peel Pride Month. The Region of Peel allocated funds up to $25,000 (or an appropriate amount) on an annual basis between the Cities of Brampton and Mississauga and the Town of Caledon for the creation of a decal Pride Flag (updated in Philadelphia in 2017) and Transgender Flag decal, in consultation with the 2SLGBTQ+ Communities.
One background information rarely mentioned about the Mayor is that one of her sons is 2SLGBTQ+, i.e. a homosexual.
“I’m so proud” of Jonathan, she says. “He’s a great human rights advocate, an advocate for gay rights, and just an all-round civil rights advocate for anyone maligned in any way,” Crombie says of her middle child...
[Source: The Toronto Star: ..."It's Bonnie Crombie's Mississauga," Dec. 18, 2016, By Donovan Vincent]
Come View Some Art and Read a Book (or two)!
Come see view some art and read a book!
The literary list is regularly updated at the book display in front of the exhibition wall.
Or just stay on in the library and enlarge your intellectual horizon. And get a library card, if you don't have one already. It's free!
Exhibit and book display end on July 31.
Book Display Alongside the Exhibition:
1. Canadian Art from its Beginning to 2000, Anne Newlands
2. A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter, Wayne Larsen
3. The Group of Seven in Western Canada, Ed. Cathernine M. Mastin
4. Ted Harris Collected, Intro by Robert Budd
5. Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris, James King
6. The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, Curated at the Art Galley of Ontario by Steve Martin
7. Canada's World Wonders, Ron Brown
8. The Good Lands: Canada through the Eyes of Artists
9. Kim Dorlan, Katrina Alanassova
10. The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson: An Introduction, Anne Newlands
11. Alex Colville: Return, Tom Smart
12. The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, Ed. Anne Whitelaw
13. Love Letters to Art, Robert Genn
14. A Concise History Canadian Painting, Ed. Dennis Reid
15. Sunday Morning with Cass: Conversations with A.J. Casson, Ted Herriott
16. Canadian Art: The Tom Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario
The literary list is regularly updated at the book display in front of the exhibition wall.
Or just stay on in the library and enlarge your intellectual horizon. And get a library card, if you don't have one already. It's free!
Exhibit and book display end on July 31.
Book Display Alongside the Exhibition:
1. Canadian Art from its Beginning to 2000, Anne Newlands
2. A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter, Wayne Larsen
3. The Group of Seven in Western Canada, Ed. Cathernine M. Mastin
4. Ted Harris Collected, Intro by Robert Budd
5. Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris, James King
6. The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, Curated at the Art Galley of Ontario by Steve Martin
7. Canada's World Wonders, Ron Brown
8. The Good Lands: Canada through the Eyes of Artists
9. Kim Dorlan, Katrina Alanassova
10. The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson: An Introduction, Anne Newlands
11. Alex Colville: Return, Tom Smart
12. The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, Ed. Anne Whitelaw
13. Love Letters to Art, Robert Genn
14. A Concise History Canadian Painting, Ed. Dennis Reid
15. Sunday Morning with Cass: Conversations with A.J. Casson, Ted Herriott
16. Canadian Art: The Tom Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Ontario doesn't have the dramatic mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, the endlessly shimmering prairie fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, nor the clear blue coast lines of the Atlantic provinces. But we do have lakes. Lakes in every corner. Small lakes and big lakes. Lakes that should be oceans. Hidden lakes for idyllic summer days. Lakes by gentle hills. Lakes surrounded by trees. Lakes that transport cargo ships to towns and cities.
I first traveled across southern Ontario about twenty five years ago, driving through from New York to Toronto to claim my "Landed Immigrant" papers after I was accepted by Canada as an "Economic Immigrant." My post-graduate degree in the clinical sciences, and my proficiency in three languages (English, French and my native country's Amharic, and reasonable proficiency in Spanish from my doctoral research work which took me to rural Mexico for two years), as well as my world travel (residency in France, England, the United States, Mexico, and as a young girl in Ethiopia), had made me into a valued "immigrant." And it helped that I was from a "multicultural" (i.e. Third World, non-White) background, the strategy for accepting immigrants that the post-Pierre Trudeau Canada was following.
Ever since those first days of my introduction to Canada through my fortuitous route, traveling through the beautiful farmland and small towns of Ontario, driving alongside the great Lake Ontario, almost all the way from Niagara Falls to Toronto, I was left with a deep-seated desire to become Canadian, and to belong to this landscape that impressed upon me these images of this new, and exotic land.
I got a job as an immigrant counsellor, not through my own efforts, but through a friend of a friend of a friend who happened to know of the position, sure that I would be ideal in assisting "new comers" to integrate into their new country. But I failed. I failed to implement my own programs of my own standards. Non-Canadians, more precisely, non-Western non-Canadians do not want to become Canadian. In fact to be Canadian was a pejorative condition. They preferred to remain the honorable "other," which Canadians themselves encouraged, and innocently cherished. Who wanted to be a bland, white bread Canadian when one could be an Indian, or an Ethiopian, or a Mexican?
This sustained brainwashing became apparent as I pursued photography and textile design, and the arts in general, for which I had shown some aptitude when young. But the visual arts were taken over by postmodernists and multiculturalists, a dangerous combination, which stifle and destroy creativity. Artists weren't required to study the basics of the basics, but to immerse themselves in ideology and propaganda. My textile design teacher couldn't draw! I found that extraordinary. Eventually, I left these programs without any degree. I had accumulated enough anyway over the years. And I wasn't easily stunned anymore into academic submission to secure an insecure meal ticket.
I resumed a job back with immigrants, this time teaching English. It was during these years that I decided to go to night school to study painting, drawing and illustration. The teachers at these "night schools" were skilled and talented. They knew the rudimentaries. But they had been discarded by the art world, which sought dramatic impostors rather than accomplished artists. They kept the vigil in their secondary-school art classrooms, or the backroom workshop of museums. I learned landscape, figure and portrait drawing, and the most challenging: botanical drawing, where precision is paramount. Botanical drawings were the traditional methods for scientific journals and books to illustrate plants and flowers, before the advent of photography. I wish I had known this during my undergraduate botany classes. What a lot of time, energy, money and anguish I would have saved!
It was during these classes that the teachers, who understood the importance of representation, naturally guided us to represent our surroundings. And I found once again those Ontario landscapes that I had first seen during my journey to my new home.
Ontario doesn't have the dramatic mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, the endlessly shimmering prairie fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, nor the clear blue coast lines of the Atlantic provinces. But we do have lakes. Lakes in every corner. Small lakes and big lakes. Lakes that should be oceans. Hidden lakes for idyllic summer days. Lakes by gentle hills. Lakes surrounded by trees. Lakes that ship cargo vessels to towns and cities.
And in these paintings, I modestly try to revive and give life to these lakes. I think I have succeed.
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I first traveled across southern Ontario about twenty five years ago, driving through from New York to Toronto to claim my "Landed Immigrant" papers after I was accepted by Canada as an "Economic Immigrant." My post-graduate degree in the clinical sciences, and my proficiency in three languages (English, French and my native country's Amharic, and reasonable proficiency in Spanish from my doctoral research work which took me to rural Mexico for two years), as well as my world travel (residency in France, England, the United States, Mexico, and as a young girl in Ethiopia), had made me into a valued "immigrant." And it helped that I was from a "multicultural" (i.e. Third World, non-White) background, the strategy for accepting immigrants that the post-Pierre Trudeau Canada was following.
Ever since those first days of my introduction to Canada through my fortuitous route, traveling through the beautiful farmland and small towns of Ontario, driving alongside the great Lake Ontario, almost all the way from Niagara Falls to Toronto, I was left with a deep-seated desire to become Canadian, and to belong to this landscape that impressed upon me these images of this new, and exotic land.
I got a job as an immigrant counsellor, not through my own efforts, but through a friend of a friend of a friend who happened to know of the position, sure that I would be ideal in assisting "new comers" to integrate into their new country. But I failed. I failed to implement my own programs of my own standards. Non-Canadians, more precisely, non-Western non-Canadians do not want to become Canadian. In fact to be Canadian was a pejorative condition. They preferred to remain the honorable "other," which Canadians themselves encouraged, and innocently cherished. Who wanted to be a bland, white bread Canadian when one could be an Indian, or an Ethiopian, or a Mexican?
This sustained brainwashing became apparent as I pursued photography and textile design, and the arts in general, for which I had shown some aptitude when young. But the visual arts were taken over by postmodernists and multiculturalists, a dangerous combination, which stifle and destroy creativity. Artists weren't required to study the basics of the basics, but to immerse themselves in ideology and propaganda. My textile design teacher couldn't draw! I found that extraordinary. Eventually, I left these programs without any degree. I had accumulated enough anyway over the years. And I wasn't easily stunned anymore into academic submission to secure an insecure meal ticket.
I resumed a job back with immigrants, this time teaching English. It was during these years that I decided to go to night school to study painting, drawing and illustration. The teachers at these "night schools" were skilled and talented. They knew the rudimentaries. But they had been discarded by the art world, which sought dramatic impostors rather than accomplished artists. They kept the vigil in their secondary-school art classrooms, or the backroom workshop of museums. I learned landscape, figure and portrait drawing, and the most challenging: botanical drawing, where precision is paramount. Botanical drawings were the traditional methods for scientific journals and books to illustrate plants and flowers, before the advent of photography. I wish I had known this during my undergraduate botany classes. What a lot of time, energy, money and anguish I would have saved!
It was during these classes that the teachers, who understood the importance of representation, naturally guided us to represent our surroundings. And I found once again those Ontario landscapes that I had first seen during my journey to my new home.
Ontario doesn't have the dramatic mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, the endlessly shimmering prairie fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, nor the clear blue coast lines of the Atlantic provinces. But we do have lakes. Lakes in every corner. Small lakes and big lakes. Lakes that should be oceans. Hidden lakes for idyllic summer days. Lakes by gentle hills. Lakes surrounded by trees. Lakes that ship cargo vessels to towns and cities.
And in these paintings, I modestly try to revive and give life to these lakes. I think I have succeed.
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