OCAD University

AWENDA INSPIRED EXHIBITION  Opening : Thursday October 27, 5 - 7PM

A group exhibition by DRPT + INVC students, of works made on-site or subsequently created based on experiences at Awenda Provincial Park located on Georgian Bay northwest of Penetanguishene.

Elora Borges, Rocio Tupac Yupanqui Cardoso, Declan David, Kinzi Dempsey, Megan Feheley, Melissa Fice, Hope Flynn, Matthew Morgan Garby, Amanda Robertson-Hebert, Alondra Ruiz-Hernandez, Christine Hirtescu, Jackie Justein, Zahra Lakdawala, Amy Lee, Samantha Leggett, Donny Nie, Arruniya Mohendran, Emma Moore, Lauren Porter, Debora Puricelli, Áine O'Neill, Jade Reyes, Fernando Diaz de Leon Rendon, Connie Santos, Christine Sawa, Hillary Snyder, Peter Tran, Angela Lea Tupper, Colin Zhao, Emily Zou

This event is sponsored by OCAD University DRPT Faculty of Art, in partnership with the generous support of Friends of Awenda and First Student Canada (North York).

For more information: Linda Martinello lmartinello@ocadu.ca 

This year's Awenda Inspired trip brings together nearly 50 students, alumni and faculty from Drawing and Painting to Awenda Provincial Park.

For a full day students have the opportunity to explore, investigate, research and produce work in variety of mediums on the historic and scenic park grounds.

This event is sponsored and organized in partnership with the staff of the Awenda Provincial Park, Friends of Awenda Association, First Student Canada, and the Faculty of Art.  

A follow-up exhibition will take place next month in the Ada Slaight Student Gallery, October 24-28. Participating students come from all year levels which culminates into a diverse and extraordinary group exhibition.

Please attend the opening reception of Formations, an exhibition by OCAD alumna Lisa Johnson.

More information about Lisa Johnson's work is available online at www.lisajohnson.ca.

Medrie MacPhee was born in Edmonton, Alberta and has resided in New York City since 1978. She received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Her work has been exhibited in over 20 solo exhibitions including shows at Michael Steinberg, New York; Paolo Baldacci Gallery, New York; Baldacci-Daverio Gallery, New York; Phillipe Daverio Gallery, New York; Stadtische Galerie Haus, Siegen, Germany; the Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto; Espace 502, Montreal; Linda Generaux Gallery, Toronto; Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto; Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver, B.C; 49th Parallel,New York; and the Concordia University Art Gallery, Montreal.

Her work has also been included in more than 40 group exhibitions, including: Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York (2004 and 2006); ArtCore, Toronto (2005); Plus Ultra, Williamsburg (2004); Collaborative Concepts, Beacon, New York (2004); ArtPoint, Miami Art Fair (2003); DUMBO (2003); Edmonton Art Gallery (2003); Winnipeg Art Gallery (2002); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2002); National Gallery of Canada (2001); Edmonton Art Gallery (2001); seph Helman Gallery, New York (2001); Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto (2001, 1999); Nicole Klagsburn Gallery, New York (1999); Campo, Antwerp Belgium (1999); Marcel Sitcoske Gallery, San Francisco (1998) Nielsen Gallery, Boston (1997); Musee d' art contemporain de Montreal (1996); Paolo Baldacci Gallery, New York (1996, 1994, 1993); MIART, Italy, (1995); Katonah useum, New York (1995); Power Plant, Toronto (1995) Phillipe Daverio allery, New York (1991).

The Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver and the Art Gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, Montreal organized Flight in the Variable Zone, a solo traveling exhibition of MacPhee's work, which toured Canada in 1999/2000.

MacPhee is represented in various private and public collections in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery of Canada; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Edmonton Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the Confederation Center Art Gallery, Charlottetown; and the Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary.

MacPhee has taught at Columbia University, Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of Design, Sarah Lawrence College and is the Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist-In-Residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Every seven years, each of the programs at the University undergoes an internal review for possible audit by the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents. Last year in the Faculty of Art, Photography and Printmaking underwent this process. This year, CRCP and DRPT are being reviewed. Assessing student experience is an important part of this process. In addition to a student survey to be distributed in core DRPT classes this semester and next, a DRPT Town Hall Meeting has been scheduled for the morning of Thursday, November 6th in order to obtain program-specific student feedback, comments, and suggestions. Please mark this important event in your calendars. Coffee and tea will be served. Hope to see you there.

Meet artist and former OCAD faculty member Richard Nevitt, and celebrate the launch of his new book of drawings, A Caledon Sketchbook. A collection of reflective
writings and more than sixty pen-and-ink drawings, A Caledon Sketchbook illustrates moments of solitude, highlighting the
spiritual side of the Caledon Hills.

Painter Benjamin Edwards has spent the last several years exploring what he calls "the architecture of suburbia"---the structural and design forms found in strip malls, fast-food joints, gas stations, motels and other familiar citadels of consumerism. Accompanying the architecture is what Edwards refers to as "the iconography of the roadway"---those commercial signs, symbols, colors and artificial elements juxtaposed with the natural scene or environment.

In order to gather material for his work, Edwards has taken a number of cross-country automobile trips, searching out the "roadside life that almost exists in a separate channel." Along the way, he takes photos with his digital camera and keeps detailed logs and diaries containing "location notes," recording where he stops, where he stays, and what he buys.

The digital photos are loaded into his computer. He subsequently selects various elements in the photos, isolates them, and reduces them to the basic geometry found in the subject. Once he makes his selections, he projects the design elements onto a canvas, incorporating as many as three hundred separate photos into a single painting. The result is a conflated composition which becomes emblematic of what he refers to as the "American consumerist utopia."

Benjamin Edwards (b. 1970, Iowa City, Iowa) attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (MFA 1997); the San Francisco Art Institute's graduate painting program (1992); and the University of California, Los Angeles (BA, 1991). He is represented by Artemis Greenburg Van Doren Gallery, New York City (solo exhibitions - 2006, 2004, 2001). His recent solo exhibitions include Ether Studies, Galerie Jean-Luc et Takako (2007) and T)he Sorrows of Democracy, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2008). He participated in the Prague Biennale, in the Czech Republic (2003); and his work has been in numerous group exhibitions in venues such as The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2003); Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Gallerie Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark; and P.S.#I/MoMA Center for Contemporary Art, Long Island City, New York; Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2008). Edwards lives and works in Washington, D.C.

This exhibit is about collage. Each artist uses materials with a connection to effeminate imagery. Layer and pattern are used to create intuitive narratives, and common materials are manipulated to expose new meanings. Featuring Drawing & Painting students Abena Asomaning, Marta Chudolinska, Stephanie Latulippe and Megan Speers.

Image credit: blues manicure, Abena Asomaning

OCAD Drawing & Painting Professor, Sarah Nind shows work in Heartquake, a group show curated by Raphie Etgar at the Musuem of the Seam in Jerusalum, Israel. Exhibition Heartquake is dedicated to exploring anxiety in its local and universal contexts. Heartquake seeks to expose and to accentuate people's emotional confrontation with their surroundings, and through the prism of anxiety to examine their responses as injured and as injurers, with the aim of understanding and influencing the dynamics of political and social relations.

Created primarily in acrylic on canvas and board, the series explores in depth the effects of colour, formal composition and materiality. Though abstract in nature, Steele's paintings are often partially representative of actual scenes or contain visual elements recollected from first encounters.

April Steele is an emerging visual artist and curator from Peterborough, and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design's drawing and painting program. She has also lived and studied in Florence and Venice, Italy, where she specialized in fine art and art history, and has exhibited her work internationally.