Guelph Artists Help Art Centre
Celebrate City's Anniversary
From Arts in Guelph- November/December, 2002
Guelph artists are the focus of Macdonald Stewart Art Centre's 2002 exhibition schedule in celebration of the city's 175th anniversary. Throughout this year the changing shows at the public art gallery continue to impress visitors with the strength of Guelph's visual arts community.
The current fall line-up of three exhibitions and sculpture unveiling represents various styles and generations of Guelph artists. Running November 21 to December 23, Gordon Couling: One Day in New York features sixty sketches by the late Gordon Couling (1913-1984) created in a single day in New York city - July 29, 1958. Couling was the founding chair of the University of Guelph's Department of Fine Art established in 1965. He helped create an undergraduate studio art program that today ranks as one of Canada's largest. His work ranges from figurative drawings and abstracted landscapes to abstract expressionist paintings and geometric wall reliefs. In his most intimate drawings, Couling distilled the essence of his subject with fluid lines drawn in charcoal, ink, and crayon - a talent evident in this series of New York sketches. Couling was also well known for his drawings of Guelph heritage structures including his illustrations for the historical guide booklets published by Guelph Arts Council in 1979 and 1982.
Guelph artist Verne Harrison's Dual School Bench is the Art Centre's second bench commission. Harrison takes his inspiration from a child's school desk and from the Art Centre's origins as Ontario's model consolidated school. The bench commissions are offered through an ongoing juried process with the objective of six works to be acquired for the Donald Forster Sculpture Park over the next few years.
Ken Danby, one of Canada's most accomplished realist painters, exhibits sixteen of his works spanning 1969 to 1977. Danby received both the Order of Canada and Order of Ontario in 2001 in recognition of his artistic achievements. The exhibition runs until December 15.
Pearl Van Geest's exhibition, This Pale Mouth, explores the changing relationship between humans, nature and spirituality. The kiss motif used in her paintings is a potent symbol of healing, desire, escape, power, and memory. Included in the exhibition is a series of one-metre-square lipstick and oil on canvas paintings completed in 2002. Van Geest's first solo exhibition in a public gallery runs until December 22.
These four celebratory events complement earlier exhibitions presented this year at the Art Centre. Greg Denton's show, "anyone lived …", featured 400 painted portraits of Guelph people, and Historical Views of Guelph presented a perspective of the city in the nineteenth and twentieth with works by local artists David Johnston Kennedy, Fanny Colwill Calvert, Martha Ann Scroggie, Evan Macdonald and Gordon Couling.
The Art Centre's largest group exhibition in its twenty-year history, Guelph 2002, was a collection of 85 works in various media. A recently-published eighty-page catalogue, entitled Guelph Artists 2002, recognizes the works of these artists and features 47 full-colour reproductions and a research listing of previous Art Centre publications on Guelph and area artists. The book serves as a lasting testament to the wealth of artistic talent for which this city is justly recognized.
For more information about these and other exhibitions at Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, call (519) 837-0010.