Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Opening Saturday April 27: ESTER PUGLIESE & JJ LEE


JJ Lee and Mei Lee Ogden Sign Languages 
and Ester Pugliese Disfluency and Delay

April 27th – May 19th, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday April 27, 2 to 5 p.m.

JJ Lee and Mei Lee Ogden  Sign Languages

My Little Pony, Mixed media on watercolour paper,  60" x 70", 2013
“Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso

loop Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition by member artist JJ Lee in collaboration with her daughter, Mei, entitled Sign Languages. 

Five-year-old Mei was identified as Hard of Hearing at the relatively late age of three and a half; consequently, her spoken language development was delayed. Before turning four, she received her first hearing aids, and heard birds for the first time. 

Using gouache, glitter paint, wax crayons, watercolour, and pencil crayons, Lee and her daughter explore the space between high and low art, visual languages, mark making and representation, process and result, narrative and abstraction. Their marks overlap and interact, blurring these distinctions. This body of work explores the primacy of drawing and Lee’s interest in art education and creative development in our current system.

Lee, (BFA, NSCAD 1992, MFA, York 1999) was born and raised in Halifax and has lived and exhibited from coast to coast. A recipient of several awards, she currently is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University. Mei Lee Ogden was born in Toronto and is currently in Senior Kindergarten. She is also in the second year of a specialized Deaf and Hard of Hearing program. Her favourite colours are pink and purple, and she loves olives and blue cheese. JJ and Mei live with James Ogden, a kindergarten teacher in Toronto. The three of them are currently learning American Sign Language.

A portion of proceeds from the sale of artwork will be donated to the Canadian Hearing Society.
Please join JJ Lee for a Q & A, moderated by Carla Garnet on Sunday May 5, at 2 p.m.



Ester Pugliese   Disfluency and Delay

Impromptu Performance: Branson School Chamber Singers and Singing Iceberg,
Acrylic, chalk, conte, carbon, and chalkboard paint on panel, 22" x 30", 2013
loop Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Loop Gallery member Ester Pugliese entitled Disfluency and Delay. 

The exhibition considers the human inclination for controlling outward appearances, illustrating this tendency with contrasting examples from nature. Each work presents audio graphs of impromptu performances culled from YouTube videos, layered with audio spectrograms of natural events (glacial collisions, ice fractures, earthquakes). Subsequent layers depict sculptural forms implying air movement, coupled with charted output and capacity data from Ontario's wind farms. 

Disfluency is the inability to produce smooth, fluent speech, such as inadvertently repeating words or uttering “um” and “uh” during an impromptu or practiced speech. Delay refers to the repetition of a sound at intervals: delayed sound can diminish with reducing volume, or create a feedback loop becoming endlessly louder. Breaking the cycle to calm the frenetic, mounting energy requires stopping the sound or pausing - taking a breath. 

Ester Pugliese is a Toronto artist who has exhibited her work in Canada and England. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Specialized Honours) from York University in 2001, studied Painting at Leeds University in England and received the Humber College Board of Governors Achievement Award with her post-graduate certificate in Arts Administration/Cultural Management in 2004. Her work can be found in private and public collections in North America and Europe, including the Donovan Collection at the University of Toronto. She has been a member of Loop Gallery since 2009.