Gareth Bate and Carolyn Dinsmore talk about their work!

Two new shows to liven up the dead of winter

February 28 – March 22, 2015 Opening Reception: February 28, 2015, 2-5 p.m.
Guided Visit: Sunday, March 22, 2015, 2 p.m.

Sandra Gregson Erebus & Terror

Sandra Gregson’s initial idea for this exhibition was a consideration of fear and how it is shaped by culture, for example, fairy tales of ‘big, bad wolves’. Whilst researching, Gregson lived for a year in Edinburgh, Scotland and her research about fear and wolves led to an investigation of topics such as the Scottish landscape and land use, legends and children’s stories, wilderness, rewilding, British explorers and settlers in Canada, including Franklin’s search for the NorthWest Passage on his ships, presciently named, Erebus and Terror. This is Gregson’s second exhibition at loop Gallery. During the past year, she participated in an artists' residency in Portugal and her video works were screened at Cinecycle in Toronto.


Mary Catherine Newcomb Lucy in the Dark

In Lucy in the Dark, Mary Catherine Newcomb continues to probe the ways in which we perceive and construct models of reality. She frames the concept of blindness in terms of perceptual bias, and/or a willed/imposed mechanism for psychological survival. By contrast, Newcomb considers being in the dark as indicative of both a loss of control and a state of potential.

Mary Catherine Newcomb’s work has been recognized with several grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council, as well as prizes from various organizations. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in Germany. She currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario and teaches in the Visual and Creative Arts program at Sheridan College in Oakville.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

                                                    a visit with Sandra Gregson

Any studio goals for 2015? 

Any new material you've started playing with in your studio? 

I'm finishing up work for a show which opens at Loop at the end of February; I'm very excited to start a new project after that. I've worked with drawing, sculpture and video for several years however I have this desire to start painting! During a residency this past summer in Portugal, I used water-based oil paint to make the images for a stop camera video and loved using paint. I was seduced by the texture of the paint and the intensity of the colours. 

I'm looking forward to process of clearing up my studio, putting away the research resources, preparatory work, and materials I've been using. I intend to empty my studio completely to ready for what I see as a big shift in my work. I'm curious how I'll approach painting: if I'll work in series, or integrate it again with video.

  How do you know when a work is finished?

I often spend a long time on work, often 'practicing' the work before starting it by doing maquettes or sketches, then intensely working to make it. Then I'll pause with the work, leaving it not quite finished in order to reflect on it. I don't hurry to finish work. I don't like the feeling of having to let it go so will linger, reluctantly completing work, changing details, refining parts. 

When I think the work is close to finished, I  take the work out of my studio and put it in a room in my house to look at it in a different context, to see how it holds up outside of the studio context. If the work feels self reliant, if it presents itself as its own entity, I know it's done. It's not finished if it doesn't feel convincing and I'll take it back to the studio to rework it.

What is your most important tool as an artist? 


Because of sculpture and video work, I have used a variety of tools. My most important tool, and most sustaining for me however, is a pencil. There is something so satisfying about the sound and feel of a pencil on paper. I particularly like a 2B pencil when it has been used and sharpened several times so that it is about a third of its original size.  
 
Using a pencil and paper is my way of thinking about what I want to make or do. It's how I work out ideas, visualize work. I usually draw a combination of images with words to start the process of shaping ideas into form. Later, if I feel stumped by a work, I'll go back and draw it in order to rethink it, and with pencil and paper it is so much easier to change, rethink, redo because it is so immediate. 





What are you listening to in the studio these days?
  
I like silence in the studio because it helps me concentrate ad become immersed in the work. Sometimes I listen to radio but only when I'm at a stage in the work which involves repetitious tasks; it's usually cbc that I listen to - music and talk shows.

 Thanks Sandra for the studio visit!

Plan to see her upcoming show at loop:
Erebus & Terror  February 28 to March 22, 2015
Opening Saturday February 28 from 2 to 5 p.m.
Gallery visit with artist Sunday March 22 from 2 to 3 p.m.
 

or visit her website at www.sandragregson.ca

Maybe it’s the minus15 degree temperature that has me thinking about hot houses, but if you have ever walked through botanical gardens with interconnected glass and iron ribbed structures like the ones in Glasgow, you’ll know that as you move from room to room,  you move from one climate to another.

Where am I going with this? Lanny Shereck has a show on at Queen Specific, Dufflet’s window gallery. He has stacked a series of small paintings and  attached them to a narrow  board so they are interconnected like rooms. It reads like a schematic diagram of the aforementioned greenhouses, except that we are looking at paintings of artists working in their studios. Within the intense studio clutter, we see that exotic specimen - the artist - almost camouflaged as he or she works in the unique microclimate of his or her own making - the habitat essential ( sorry can’t resist this ) for the flowering of their  creations. 

“Studio Visits” is on until March 3
Lanny Shereck and Libby Hague are 2 of the 30 plus  members of the  Loop collective in Toronto.

New works from loop Gallery artists: Gareth Bate and Carolyn Dinsmore

loop Gallery presents

January 31 – February 22, 2015 Opening Reception: January 31, 2015, 2-5PM

Q & A: Sunday, February 22, 2015, 2PM

Gareth Bate Cosmos and Anarchy Part 2

Gareth Bate's Cosmos and Anarchy paintings depict humans fighting a war with the cosmos. They are fighting their inevitable fate. An impossible battle. Whipping grenades into the void. Firing catapults at nothingness. Tear gas and burning buildings morph into galaxies. The series evolved out of viewing violent and chaotic photos and videos of recent global protests, riots and revolutions happening in Kiev, Cairo, Tehran, Athens, Madrid, Belfast and London. Here global turmoil plays out as part of a cosmic drama. 

Gareth works primarily in installation, painting and photography. He has exhibited in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa and is a graduate of OCAD University and The Art Centre at Central Tech where he currently teaches History of Modern Art, Art History - The Masters, and two Abstract Painting classes. He is festival curator for the World of Threads Festival of contemporary international fibre and textile art.

January 31 – February 22, 2015 Opening Reception: January 31, 2015, 2-5PM

Q & A: Sunday, February 22, 2015, 2PM

Carolyn Dinsmore Surface – A Collection

Carolyn Dinsmore’s paintings of roads and rocks are cropped landscapes (urban and rural) that zoom in and focus on surface pattern and texture. Collecting photos, litter, stones, etc. during everyday travels through familiar surroundings help in reconstructing images - evidence of everyday use and natural erosion. Weathered layers express the opposing dynamic of building up and wearing away.

Carolyn studied art history at Queen’s University and the University of Toronto and taught art at the high school level. She left teaching to open a shop that specialized in decorative textiles from India, Africa, and Indonesia. After retiring from the retail business, she got back into her art practice by attending the adult art program at Central Technical School. The resulting paintings seem to be a sub-conscious response to texture and pattern, coming from a close connection with textiles for so many years - chunks of rock and road from the surrounding landscape/swatches cut from bolts of fabric.

           

                       

loop Thanks: AUDAXlaw     Sumac.com

loop Gallery

1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1X8 (3 doors west of Dovercourt).

Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat 12 to 5 pm, and Sun 1 to 4pm. Artist is in attendance on Sundays and for the reception.

For more information please contact the gallery director at 416-516-2581 or visit: www.loopgallery.ca

New shows for a New Year!

Elizabeth Babyn: Hieroglyphs  

P. Roch Smith: equilibration

January 3 – January 25, 2015

Reception: Saturday, January 3, 2-5PM

Q+A with the artists: Sunday, January 25, 2PM

loop Gallery is pleased to present Hieroglyphs,  an exhibition by member artist Elizabeth Babyn, and equilibration, an exhibition by member artist P. Roch Smith.  

In the past several years, Elizabeth Babyn has been exploring the inter-relationship between sacred geometry and the Fibonacci number sequences; where each number within the sequence equals the sum of the two numbers before it. The golden mean can also be obtained from this infinite sequence, resulting in proportions that are constantly being repeated throughout sacred geometry and, surprisingly, nature. This inherent connection to the universe and to humankind is what drives Babyn’s work.

Evoking ancient hieroglyphs, Babyn has chosen the language of mathematics to meditatively and laboriously handwrite a portion of the Fibonacci number sequences onto multiple large scale sheets of Tyvek.  As a symbolic gesture, a plinth heaped with Fibonacci equations on strips of paper will be on offer to audience members; since these mathematical elements have the potential to carry with them the purest revelation of universal truth. 

Babyn views the process of surrounding and enveloping gallery visitors within these eloquent fundamental mathematical foundations as a metaphor for our connection to each other and to nature.

Babyn and her husband moved from Caledon, Ontario to Saskatoon three and a half years ago. She is currently doing her MFA at the University of Saskatchewan and teaches art at USCAD. Babyn received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD and has exhibited in Italy and Canada. Her work can be found in collections in Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. She has been a member of loop Gallery since 2003.

Image:  'Hieroglyph 1' detail,  5' x 9', Tyvek and sharpies,  2014

In equilibration, P. Roch Smith explores scale, restructuring expectations and notions of play.  He transforms plastic soldiers, skateboarders, Lego blocks, model bombs, tanks, planes and ships by casting them in bronze – a material traditionally used for monuments or grand sculptures.  Smith challenges the medium’s historical prestige, casting at a scale that renders the bronze anti-heroic.  

Smith's constructions speak to work and play.  The small bronze figures support house forms or lift large objects - others move “body- sized” burdens up inclines and ramps – still others are used as wall mounts and brackets.  To equilibrate is to bring into or keep in equilibrium, and there is a precarious balance achieved within Smith’s work.  At first blush, the Sisyphean nature of the images conveys a sense of futility; with time, the sculptures reveal an honest representation of the integrity of work and the importance of being intentional in one’s efforts.

Toys have always fascinated Smith – how they function, and how their meanings can be read.  For such simple objects, toys inhabit a complex space – a space that might not be exclusive to issues of socialization, aggression, domesticity, violence, gender and cooperation.  

P. Roch Smith is a sculptor and installation artist currently living and working in Toronto.  Born and raised in Victoria, he holds degrees from the University of Waterloo (BES), Emily Carr University (BFA) and York University (MFA).  

Libby Hague and Sandra Smirle’s Guided Visit

New Exhibits by Loop Gallery Artists : Libby Hague & Sandra Smirle

            

loop Gallery presents

December 6-28, 2014 Opening Reception: December 6, 2014, 2-5PM

Guided Tour: December 20th, 2014, 2-3PM

Libby Hague Alone together

In Alone together, people, animals and things are connected along a rhizome baseboard or floorboard, through sympathy and other intangibles. From the misery of an elephant in the Shanghai zoo to a child too big for the baby swing - and more abstract points in between, Alone together attempts to move beyond autobiography into the big wide world.

Hague studied fine art at Concordia. In 2014, she had an interdisciplinary residency in Scotland at Hospitalfield Arts, and installed Shift, a woodcut and helium installation at the University of the Arts, Tokyo with Rochelle Rubinstein. Her recent Toronto shows were Family Dynamics, Verso, 2014, Synchromesh, loop 2013, Be Brave! We are in this together, YYZ, 2012 and Sympathetic Connections at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011.

The artist wishes to thank the Ontario Arts Council for their generous help.

December 6-28, 2014 Opening Reception: December 6, 2014, 2-5PM

Guided Tour: December 20th, 2014, 2-3PM

Sandra Smirle String Theory: Potential Probabilities

This past summer, Smirle had the opportunity to participate in a residency aboard a 120’ tall ship sailing the waters of an Arctic archipelago just 10 degrees from the North Pole. Traveling to such a remote location as Longyearbyen in Svalbard, the site of renowned historical explorations, offered a unique opportunity to work in a stark and seldom-seen landscape. Drawing on research material from her residency, Smirle’s multidisciplinary work offers the viewer a unique, panoramic view of a partly real, partly imaginary Arctic land-and seascape of converging and diverging images

Smirle’s work has been exhibited nationally as well as internationally, and is contained in private and corporate collections in Canada, Australia and Europe. She is currently completing her MFA at Concordia University in Montréal.

The artist wishes to thank the Arctic Circle Org., the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for their generous support.

                    

loop Thanks: AUDAXlaw     Sumac.com

Videos by Sandra Gregson and Barbara Sternberg at CineCycle: Ver(sing)

Still from video                                            'Still from Land'                                 by Sandra Gregson 2014

vers(ing)
Vers, moving toward something, around a certain time.
Versing to express in verse.
Conversing to talk informally with another or others; exchange views, opinions by talking.
videos by Sandra Gregson and Barbara Sternberg
Saturday November 15 at 7:30 p.m. at

CineCycle
laneway at 129 Spadina Avenue, Toronto

free admission