Fine Arts Faculty Biennial Twelve

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Reproduction on cover: detail of Dearly Departed by David Hall, 2014, oil on canvas.

Foreword by Dean of Creative and Applied Arts Andréa ColeIntroduction by Fine Arts Chairperson David Hall

March 24 – April 14, 2016

Warren G. Flowers Art GalleryDawson College4001 de Maisonneuve WestMontreal, CanadaH3Z 1A4

Fine Arts Faculty Biennial Twelve

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Foreword

One of my clearest memories of my early days at Dawson College is walking into the Fine Arts Faculty Biennial exhibition. The sheer diversity and creativity of the faculty work, so beautifully exhibited in what was then a new gallery space for the College, took my breath away. It was difficult to fathom how such dedicated teachers could find time to continue their own personal creative work on such a scale of excellence, while still giving Dawson students their all in terms of teaching and mentorship.

Now, as we approach the quarter century of this exhibition’s life, it’s time to celebrate that dedication, as well as the inspiration, provocation, and adventure that our faculty bring to their art. We continue this lively tradition in a newly renovated and expanded space; the updated Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery has given us new possibilities and multiple ways of viewing art and exhibitions within the College. We’ve welcomed a Gallery assistant, currently personified by Olivier Forgues, to assist with the expanded operation of that Gallery and outreach to both our internal and external communities.

As the structures that we work within continue to grow and nurture our abilities to celebrate art and creativity in all their manifest forms, so to does the Biennial remind us that we cannot rest on our past accomplishments. We think of Robert Browning’s poem celebrating Andrea del Sarto, which reminds us: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a Heaven for?” We must look up and forward, striving for the heights of that next achievement, however challenging and far away the pinnacle may seem.

In this striving, we are constantly nourished by the inspirational work our faculty provide for this exhibition, just as we are provoked in the best of thoughtful ways by the adventures in all dimensions upon which they ask us to embark. To participate in the Biennial is to be immersed in the living waters of art at this College, and it is in drinking from those waters that we are privileged to become part of the spirit of this time and place.

Andréa C. ColeDean, Creative and Applied Arts

Andres MannisteFish Tank, 2015Acrylic on canvas67 cm x 111 cm(Please note: an additional artwork by Andres Manniste, entitled Water, is reproduced adjacent to his statement later in this publication.)

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Harlan Johnson

Offshore Well, 2015Charcoal & pastel on paper65 cm x 50 cm

For the most part, my works evolve as parts of a serial exploration. Such is the case of the presently exhibited piece, which explores the theme of the offshore drilling platform at sea. In my paintings, I like to work from monochromatic sources so that the colours are intuitively selected for open-ended storytelling. In my drawings too, I frequently fold in the element of colour, to recharge the associational tone of the image. If I think back to the subjects I studied imperfectly in high school, I find many of the themes that reappear spliced back together in my later work. Hence, other painting series have focused on plant and animal physiology, geography, cartography, history and pop culture history. Also, my work seems partly to exist as a dialogue and argument with the history of painting itself.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Harlan Johnson studied at Concordia University and then became an adopted Montrealer, residing and pursuing creative work in this city. His paintings have been disseminated via more than thirty one-man shows in Canada and abroad, and have been reviewed in magazines such as Parachute, C Magazine, ETC, Vie des Arts and Artforum. Recently he curated an 18-artist exhibition, “Acadie Mythique,” which toured 7 Canadian and American art venues with the support of Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, as well as the Dawson College Professional Development Fund. Most recently, Harlan Johnson has assembled an exhibition of paintings at Central Queensland University, Noosa, Australia.

In 1992 Andres Manniste, with assistance from Al Pringle, initiated the first Fine Arts Faculty Biennial exhibition at Dawson College. Mr. Manniste, a highly respected senior member of the Fine Arts faculty, was motivated by the desire to share with the Dawson College community the rich and varied visual arts practices of the Fine Arts department. He and his colleagues decided to write a clause into the department’s mission statement, which reads; “Work produced by members of faculty is an integral part of the relationship between the college and the community and supports not only its cultural development but also the college’s mission to “contribute to the intellectual, economic and social development of our society.”

With the seed of a Biennial planted, a designated space along the 5C corridor provided the original venue for the exhibition. Eventually the exhibition found a more permanent home in the new Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, for which the Fine Arts department diligently lobbied to have built. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the past, and to the support of the College, we now have the twelfth edition of the Fine Arts Department Faculty Biennial. By way of the recently enlarged gallery space, it is more prominent than ever.

There have been many changes within the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College over the past twenty-four years. There have been two programme revisions in that period. The most recent, in 2013, resulted in a designation change from the Fine Arts to Visual Arts programme. What has remained constant is the commitment by the faculty to provide the highest level of arts education possible to our students. As practicing visual artists and writers our research and experimentation directly influences how we conduct our classroom activities. The lectures, demonstrations, presentations and critiques we carry out in the classroom have a direct correlation to the planning, execution and reflection to which we commit ourselves in our studios and offices. One activity really does inform the other. In the classroom we stress the concepts of technique, practice, discipline and patience to our students. It is a fallacy to think that art-making comes from some divine inspiration from above or beyond. It comes from hard work and open-mindedness. Artists, whether in the media of paint, wood, digital images or the written word, strive to be receptive to the world and in turn reflect upon it. This sense of self-reflection is what enables us to connect with our fellow man and woman. It is only by dedicating a significant portion of ourselves to this pursuit that we can ask our students to do as much; otherwise we run the risk of becoming irrelevant and disconnected from the field in which we teach.

This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue allow the Fine Arts faculty an opportunity to present a diverse range of artistic practices, small examples of much larger bodies of work, to the Dawson College community, including the students we teach daily. As in the first Fine Arts Faculty Biennial it gives the teachers an occasion to communicate directly with their peers through the shared experience of art-making.

David HallChairperson, Dawson College Fine Arts Department2016

Dawson Fine Arts Faculty Biennial – Then and Now

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My recent series of paintings and sculptures is titled Familiars. This term references the spirit guides or animal companions described in folklore dating back to the Middle Ages. In this series I re-imagine these magical guides as enigmatic forms composed of bound, contorted plush toy animals. Here, these animal guides, our familiars, enter a menacing and dark realm, a surreal mindscape where associations swirl and tumble. As in Grimm's stories, these altered creatures evoke the shadow side – anxiety and menace lurk behind their playful façades.

Lorraine Simms has exhibited her work across Canada and in the United States in museums and galleries including, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton), the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal), the Musée de Joliette (Joliette), the Tom Thomson Gallery (Owen Sound), the Centre d'exposition Expression (Sainte-Hyacinthe), A.R.C. Gallery (Chicago), Stride Gallery (Calgary), the Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax), the McClure Gallery and the Galerie d’art d’Outremont (Montréal). Her work has received critical acclaim in magazines such as Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Parachute. She has received numerous grants from the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Lorraine Simms has often been a visiting artist and panelist in university and gallery settings. She served on the Board of two influential Montreal artist-run centres, La Centrale and Optica, and has curated a number of exhibitions for these and other galleries.

An artist, curator and educator, Lorraine Simms currently teaches in the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College, where she has also served as Department Chair.

Lorraine Simms

Nursery Rhymes, 2015Oil on canvas152 cm x 147 cmPhoto: Guy L’Heureux

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In earlier works my interest gravitated from the observation of the cold inside to larger views of ice and snow outside. Images of the accumulation and removal of snow are metaphors for repetition, resistance and submission. My process trans-forms original photographic captures using scans, digital reworking, photo etching, and traditional etching techniques. Some work explores the juxtaposition of digital and traditional printing processes. In traditional printmaking, the reproducibility of the printed element takes the form of multiple identical prints constituting the edition. Lately, my work explores the reproducible matrix as a means to create installation work. In 2012, I printed white snow on black paper which formed a cube, inviting the viewer to take a snow layer. In 2013, I turned a chair upside down creating a functional swing using silkscreen. The swing engaged the viewer in a physical experience with the artwork that departed from a simple appreciation of aesthetic qualities. The public response to this work motivated me to further explore the contribution of the viewer, beyond that of visual appreciation. In May 2015, a three dimensional print work, Silence, codes et propriété, was selected for an exhibition at the Galerie d’Art du Parc in Trois-Rivières. I am presently working on a large instal-lation piece using print based work in which the viewer will be invited to physically wander through.

Claude Arseneault completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at McGill University. She has taken many workshops on printmaking and digital imaging. In 2008, she curated the exhibition entitled Book: Artwork, shown at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery of Dawson College in Montreal. In 2009-2010 Claude exhibited in the 14th International Biennial of original prints of Sarcelles and in 2012 her work was selected for the Okanagan Print Triennial and shown at the Kelowna Art Gallery. She received a residency in 2009 from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette where she editioned a print for Marais Press. Identités Multiples, the result of a residency and collective art project at l’Atelier Graff, was exhibited in 2012 at la Maison de la Culture Plateau-Mont-Royal, and the Warren G. Flowers Gallery. In 2013, print based instal-lation work, Nouvel Elan, was exhibited at la Maison de la Culture Plateau-Mont-Royal. In 2015, Silence, codes et propriété, exhibited at the Galerie d’Art du Parc in Trois-Rivières, expressed a continued research on 3D print based work. Claude, an active artist member of Atelier Graff and a member of Arprim, has sat on the boards of both artist run centres as administrator, president and vice president. She is an art teacher at Dawson College, Montreal. Her work is part of the collections of L’institut Canadien de Québec, l’artothèque de la bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy, and Joyce Yahouda Gallery.

Claude Arseneault

Silence, codes et propriété, 2015Metal, wood, silkscreen, wax, 3D digital prints, Japanese paper63.5 cm x 63.5 cm x 63.5 cm

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My work explores the ways in which bodies share and negotiate space by highlighting physical transformation, vulnerability and intimacy. Although I mostly work with live performance, I also have a body of work in sculpture, photo and video. This performance-photo was inspired by an interior space. In most boiler rooms machinery continually runs without human presence, creating a secluded but active organism. In this image, light streams into the isolated basement, in a manner reminiscent of a 17th century Dutch interior painting, as a solitary body attempts to merge into its colour-coded system.

Rachel Echenberg is a Montreal-based visual artist whose work has been exhibited, performed and screened across Canada as well as internationally in the United States, Europe and Asia. Echenberg holds a BFA (1993) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and an MA (2004) from Dartington College of Arts in the UK. In addition to teaching at Dawson College, Echenberg has had much experience in curating and writing. She is also active with several Montreal artist-run centres, such as Optica, and VIVA! art action, a biennial performance art festival.

Rachel Echenberg

Boiler Room, 2014Digital print on archival rag paper51 cm x 91.5 cm

Having a feeling of air in my paintings – being able to breathe inside the paintings – is my most important goal. Everyone needs air to live, but it is invisible, and the challenge is to suggest that it is there! The paintings are becoming more simply representational, while retaining the abstract attention to both compo-sition and edges, with the textured spaces suggesting the movement of air. A new series of still life paintings often makes references to my long landscape tradition, and may also include social references to contemporary events, such as gun control, or human migrations.

Catherine Y. Bates (Invitee: former Fine Arts Faculty)

Warm Air Outside, 2016Oil on wood81 cm x 61 cm

After a Fine Arts degree in Ontario, Catherine Young Bates moved to Baltimore, Maryland, studying painting and printmaking, and exhibiting in many juried exhibi-tions. After teaching in the Fine Arts Department of Dawson College for many years, while continuing to exhibit regularly, she now works full time at her studio, exhibiting with galleries in Montreal and Toronto. The most recent solo exhibits were in Magog and in Sherbrooke, Québec, in 2015. Her works have been acquired by major public and private collections. She has exhibited extensively in Canada, the United States, and England.

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My practice continues to focus on drawing wherein the body is centered as an emblematic form measuring my implication in the human condition.

Inspired by the musical work Wings of Silence by composer John Rea, I could not help envisioning being transposed into an enchanted tangle where a myriad of sensations disrupt the nocturnal stillness of the place. Within the evocative layers of sound, my drawing is an attempt to interpret sensations of awe and apprehension captured in a narrative addressing the tension between sublimation and sensuality. Allegorical reference to moral rectitude is suggested in situating a female figure amidst turbulent waves of motion where she appears steadfast in defiance of seducing allures. A jellyfish, rectilinear planes, dense string-like spirals, and serpentine-like branches extending from an upturned centenary tree are cogent metaphors for distracting vices.

The silent vacuum of dark burgeons,into a polyphony.Vigilant, she feels the hushed gust of her breath,suspended.

The weight of nocturne descends.An unfamiliar pressure implodes to the depth of her chest.

The pulsating throb hastens,abounding in sensations.

Born in Italy, Giuseppe Di Leo received an Honour’s BFA from Concordia University in 1978 and shortly after completed a Master’s degree at York University, Toronto, where he held his first solo exhibition at the Oakville and Gairloch Galleries in 1980. Throughout his career, Di Leo has maintained a practice in drawing and watercolour and has participated in a number of exhibitions held in cultural institutions and private galleries in Canada, Italy, and Mexico. His drawings have been reviewed in various publications, and are featured in both museum and corporate collections including Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Loto-Québec, the Canada Council Art Bank, Collection Prêts d'oeuvres d'arts du Musée du Québec, Ministère des Communautés Culturelles et de l'Immigration, Québec, and Museo Civico d’Arte Contemporanea, Casacalenda, Italy. Over the last decade, concurrent to his practice and teaching, he has been active as Director and curator of the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery at Dawson College.

Giuseppe Di Leo

Suspension / Sensations, 2015Colour pencils on black Arches paper 51 cm x 76 cmPhoto: Sarah De Guzman Ducharme

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As I drive through the places I come from, powerful childhood memories affect me. My eyes capture familiar scenery in the present as memories of childhood events surface from my past, all of which blend together with significant meaning. The body always remains in the present while the mind thinks and time travels. I sense an intriguing divide between reality and the parallel existence we have created for ourselves online. Both kinds of life experiences challenge my image-making as a painter in a time where Web Art and its environment are being defined. At times I think of the cave paintings and what is understood by experts who attempt to define their meaning and I think that somehow painting my life experience in the world now remains quite a similar practice. At the core it remains simple communication through one's own body. Full consciousness of a natural world that repeats in time, shape upon shape, says to me that I am just the same, that I am an instrument in time, recursive of my own nature. That the shapes I make lived in me from the start, and so, my paintings consist of a sense of the conditions of the world and myself together, unfurling, painting by painting by painting.

Lynn Millette has substantiated her inquiries into perception, creation and ontology through an active art practice. Her interests include neuroscience, psychology and the art of the present. She thinks there are a lot of interesting things happening between language and images right now and she loves the way language works visually. Dr. Millette has exhibited several compelling projects, most recently Les Fenêtres dans l’eau at the Maison de la Culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (2013). She has been invited to discuss her work in radio and television interviews as well as in academic and public venues. Millette’s work is indexed in the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, is in public collections including La Collection patrimoniale de la Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, as well as several private and public collections in Canada and the United States.

Lynn Millette

Road trip [Back home], 2015Acrylic on canvas160 cm x 200 cm

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My work is about the fragility of art and nature. As the computer infiltrates our social fabric with new energy, fusing traditional disciplines in my 3D software, I like to exploit this hybrid nature that creates a distance from the real while confronting us to a "cold fusion" that ultimately re-mediates the disciplines to spur new emotional conditions in the art experience. 3D animation is my "tool" to rearrange the elements of the traditional languages of photography, sculpture and painting while I explore uncharted visual realms in 3D animated film. I use the virtual camera to create simulated photos. My palette consists in animating the colors of my lights and finally I model organic objects using algorithms.

Lise-Hélène Larin – BFA Concordia University 1976, MFA Université du Québec à Montréal 1988, PhD Université du Québec à Montréal 2011 – teaches at Concordia University and at Dawson College. Early in her career, she did 2D animation at the NFB and for CBC for which she received many prizes. Since 2002, her 3D work was selected numerous times at Siggraph and was part of a travelling show throughout Europe and the United States. She recently showed her films at the Sony Centre in Berlin and also in Belgium and the USA where her images were projected onto buildings in Times Square. She also received a prize of excellence for her research in 3D animation.

Lise-Hélène Larin

Untitled, 2014Simulated photo printed on Ecoflag98 cm x 60 cm

Within a three-year span, I lost both my parents and was confronted with emptying the possessions that filled my childhood home; I felt both sorrow and absurdity. The psychological and physical impact of facing this process led me to challenge my painting explorations through diagrams and fragments of deconstructed and nonsensical space through shifting and shaky grounds, and skewed geometric shapes. What was once a home transformed into an unrecog-nizable, disembodied ghostly shell filled with removing, dismantling, discarding, detaching, remembering, and forgetting. How do we rebuild and maintain a sense of history after something or someone is lost? How is continuity redefined when fractures comprise struc-tures that are otherwise whole? Through this work,

Antonietta Grassi

Flip, 2015Oil and ink on canvas120 cm x 175 cm

the emotional and psychological traumas of the past produce fleeting blueprints for structuring the present; a delicate stability hinted at through the solidity of color, shape and light.

Antonietta Grassi holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MA from L’Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work can be found in public and private collections. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the United States, and Europe and has been the recipient of many grants and awards. She has participated in notable shows on contemporary abstract painting organized by Galerie René Blouin, Galerie Lilian Rodriguez, the Boston Center for the Arts, the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, and the Musée du Québec. Her upcoming solo exhibitions include Centre d’exposition Art-Image in Quebec and the Harris Warke Gallery in Alberta.

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Pohanna is currently producing a participatory ‘walking monument’ to commem-orate the spirit of water and the work of Water Walkers. In 2015, she co-created Gibideweshinimin (Anishinaabemowin for “we are heard walking here”), a performative sound-walk about coexistence, with artist Emilie Monnet and seventeen Montreal high school students during an eight month in-school residency. In 2014, she presented While Walking, an audiowalk that featured voices from seven Montreal artists who walk as an aspect of their practice. Pohanna also designs and guides art education programs for cultural organizations and schools (DHC/ART, PHI Centre, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, Wapikoni Mobile, The Banff Centre, Vezina high school, Jean Grou elementary school) and teaches art history at Dawson College. In 2011, her curatorial project titled [in-tur-pri-tey-shuhnz] raised ethical considerations related to the inter-sections between contemporary art and oral history. The same year, she completed an MA in Art History at Concordia University. In 2009, she created www.InspireArt.org, an on-line magazine with the mandate to increase awareness about community-based art in the Montreal region.

“The print […] expresses the temporality of a place through shadow. It is of the moment and of the place – yet, it is also a unique expression.”

Pohanna Pyne Feinberg 

While a photograph is taken in an instant, a photogram is about time, process, patience. It is a whisper, slowly and quietly tracing the shadow of a moment. These moments are collected by Pyne Feinberg in the same way that she collects the plants and the leaves that are the subjects of her work. It is in a contemplative and meditative state; it is during meanderings, through the alleyways of her neigh-bourhood and her mind; it is by observing, listening, sensing and connecting. Her practice of walking as an art form is about opening herself up to the possibility of finding art and inspiration in the everyday. The patience required by the photogram echoes the pace of her step. Calm. In and of the moment.

Amanda Beattie

Since 2011, Amanda Beattie has been teaching Art History at Dawson College as well as working as an educator at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art. Amanda’s international work experience includes working at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, Italy) and La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy). Locally, she has worked in the Education Departments at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal. Amanda has worked as a consultant in art and museum education at a variety of insti-tutions including the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Association des galleries d’art contemporain, CV Ciel Variable, and the Canada Council Art Bank. Amanda has a BA from McGill University and an MA from Concordia University in Art History.

Pohanna Pyne Feinberg and Amanda Beattie

Pohanna Pyne FeinbergAlleys of Montreal, 2015Cyanotype photograms12.7 cm x 17.8 cm

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Murray MacDonald

With this vessel of words, or the debris of commu-nication, it seems the next step would be the construction of a binary dialogue, an explosion of information sharing as it happens in today’s age of instant exchanges. An abundance of thoughts and opinions pours forth, sometimes well informed but often banal—perhaps the latter more prevalent. It appears we must all say something whether it is relevant or not: expression of the self has become all-important, leading to a battle of opinions and narratives.

Graduated from UBC, the Vancouver Art School (Emily Carr College) and Concordia University, Murray MacDonald, who recently retired, had been teaching at Dawson College for nearly 30 years in both Fine Arts and Industrial Design.

His sculptures and installations are part of private and public collections, among others, that of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec which will include one of his installation works, Steel Echelon, in a forty-year retrospective of installations by Quebec artists, in June of this year.

Ballast, 2014Steel, rust patina145 cm x 305 cm x 95 cmPhoto: Don Corman

Landscape has been a recurring theme throughout my painting career. It is a subject full of possibilities, both conceptual and formal. Over the years I have recali-brated this genre, most recently painting seascapes and marine subjects. These marine compositions pull the viewer into a space that is a combination of fact and invention. The subjects of the paintings are naval vessels, ranging from World War One era to contemporary submarines, troopships and icebreakers. The vessels have been researched to the extent that they are accurately depicted in correct scale, detail and displacement, but they appear to be in a state of decay and obsolescence. These compositions suggest the vulnerability of the once-threatening ships within their watery surroundings. Composition, light and palette refer back to artworks of the Romantic period where nature is seen through the concept of the Sublime. Painters of this period tried to create a heightened sense of awe or elevated emotion in the viewer, primarily through the representation of violent atmospheres and savage landscape. In my work the sea is depicted as great, infinite and obscure all at the same time. The lonely vessels in their unforgiving environments transmit fear and a feeling of insignif-icance. Machine, man and elements are poised for potential collision.

Collectively, these artworks convey a feeling of loneliness, loss and a sense of the futility of human endeavour in war and conflict.

David Hall was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1959. He is a Montreal painter, a professor of Fine Arts and current chairperson at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. He studied at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His painting subjects are architecture and landscape. Hall’s artistic theme is the history of human activity and its impact on the environment. Recent exhibitions include Reflects IV at Maison De La Culture Marie-Uguay, Montreal and Nature of Conflict at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, Montreal. His work is represented in public and private collections.

David Hall

Dearly Departed, 2014Oil on canvas114 cm x 106 cm

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I am interested in how the boundaries that distinguish history and social customs become intertwined with personal and familiar recollections. I make paintings that build on this discussion. The narrative quality of the works wanders into an in-between zone allowing for multiple readings. Messages and possible meanings shift from the materials, my usage of them, and how these elements bond within the images.

Natalie Olanick is a painter who also writes and curates exhibitions that explore contemporary art. Recently, she has exhibited work in Dubai U.A.E. as part of the International symposium of electronic arts and also curated the work of Penelope Stewart for the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery.

Natalie Olanick

Trail of the Sugar Map, 2001-2015Oil on canvas61.0 cm x 121.9 cm

Over the past 15 years I have been involved in drawing and sculpture/sculptural installation using un-orthodox materials for their specific associations. The work included in this exhibition was made entirely from spools of thread I inherited from my mother. This work is in part a continuation of an earlier work shown in the 2014 Biennale, which was composed of balls made exclusively of my mother’s unused fabric. In contrast to the scale of the previous project this collection is distinctly anti-monumental and aims to create a quiet sense of intimacy through its modest size and use of a humble material.

Naomi London

Thread Museum (after SHL), 2015Cotton and poly-cotton sewing thread, pinsInstallation, variable dimensions

Naomi London is currently the Assistant Chairperson of the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College. She has exhibited in Canada, the United States as well as Europe and Japan, and her work can be seen in several public collections including the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, and the Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec. She earned an MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal.

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The artwork Over Time (1987) by John Rea, as well as what it reveals, called upon my senses: “This work is more about the succession of its tone colours over time than about harmonic change or formal development.”* While characterizing this piece as klangfarbenmelodie, the composer points out that in this case, “timbral structure is much more elaborated than the harmonic structure”.*

It is indeed the timbre shades and their layering over time that inspired this slightly elevated from the ground space installation. As a whole or grouped together, as in a variety of timbres from orchestral instruments, the spiralled forms interplay with their many inherent qualities. White light vibrates seamlessly pulsing with violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, thus evoking klangfarbenmelodie.

A form as well as a space in continuous movement, the spiral pursues its trajectory while acting on time and space. Illuminating our existence, it generates creative power, in the here and there.

*John Rea, Program notes. Orchestre Métropolitain. 1988. Print.

Gilles Morissette has a BFA from the University of Alberta, a Masters in Visual Arts from Concordia University and a Doctorate in Esthétique, sciences et technologies des arts from Université Paris VIII.

Morissette has had numerous group and solo exhibitions in Canada, Europe and Japan. His installations and creations can be found in many private and public collections. In 2015, for the Fondación DANAE in Gijon, Spain, he created an installation for the international exhibition Vanguardias Siglo XX. Concurrently in Spain, at the Biblioteca Pública de Lleida, he participated in a bicultural four-person exhibition with Canadian artist, Héon and Catalan artists Bordas and Massana. His most recent installation, Timbre de lumière, was created for the thematic group exhibitions John Rea - musique vue. It consisted of two subsequent venues in Montreal, the Centre Pierre-Péladeau in 2015 and the Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges in 2016.

Gilles Morissette

Whitevioletwhitebluewhitegreenwhiteyellowwhitered, 2015 Paper/veil, cast acrylic, stainless steel rods, light15 cm high x 300 cm diameter comprising 12 units varying from 75 cm to 100 cm diameter each

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The individual depicted here has acquired water, food and shelter despite a scarcity of means. However, the need for safety, love and belonging may not be satisfied. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of human needs suggests that the fulfillment of these states is prerequisite to higher requirements being addressed, such as the need to express oneself creatively, the quest for intellectual enrichment or the transcendence of self through altruistic thoughts and actions.* The dweller in this drawing appears to have engaged with these latter processes, given the architectural invention, literary explorations and offering of an extra bowl of sustenance to the viewer. Perhaps this subversion of the hierarchy of needs is what it takes to thrive artistically and to achieve self-actualization and self-transcendence.

*Neel Burton. “Our Hierarchy of Needs: Why true freedom is a luxury of the mind.” Psychology Today. Sussex

Publishers. 23 May, 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

Frank Mulvey is a visual artist specializing in charcoal drawing. He uses figuration and realistic imagery as a means to explore the unsettling beauty of human experience. He holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts, and his artwork is represented in numerous private, public and corporate collections. He has been a member of the Fine Arts Faculty of Dawson College for 26 years, and also teaches in the Illustration & Design Department. He has coordinated and/or curated over 30 exhibitions in the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, and has had 14 solo exhibitions of his work in Canada.

Frank Mulvey

Dweller, 2016Charcoal on paper135.9 cm x 126.0 cm (framed)

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Mia Archer’s painting We Make No Mistakes is a sample painting made to look like a painting by Bob Ross. Mia is interested in how meaning collapses in a culture of reckless appropriation and what values this may produce. Her paintings are reproduced in China and can be found in retail locations worldwide.

A Montreal native, Mia has lived in different cities across Canada and Europe. Inspired by urban living, Mia rarely goes out without her camera. Her paintings reflect the beauty she finds in the everyday experience of city life. The traces of this inspiration are seen in her palette, gesture and style.

Kristi Ropeleski is a Montreal-based artist. She has exhibited in North America and Europe, notably at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Art and the Philoctetes Center for the Study of the Imagination in New York City. She studied at Concordia University and holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from York University. She has received Research and Creation Grants from Québec and Canada and is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Award.

Mia Archer (Kristi Ropeleski)

We Make No Mistakes, 2015 Oil on canvas114 cm x 114 cm

As a ‘baby-boomer’ – child of the ‘50s – I grew-up with glorious expectations. Always restless, ever reluctant to sleep, I listened to the calming drone of sports commentators’ voices on late night radio. The occasional boxing match was my preferred ‘wave’ of media lullaby. … I recall the whispers of names repeated over-an-over again – Rocky, Sugar-Ray, Cassius … Boom! Boom!! BOOM!!! Out went the lights.

“Al” has taught Art History, the Philosophy of Aesthetics and Communication Theory for thirty years.

Allan Pringle

Boom Box [Brick Red series], 1955-2015Found objects and manipulated photograph 13 cm x 39 cm

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Michael Smith’s paintings investigate the relationship between image and abstraction. Although informed by the work of artists of the past, the idea and context of the landscape is always changing. His paintings often draw from contemporary digital references of striking elemental forces and also sites of war. His physically wrought paintings emerge out of a series of moments in flux.

Michael Smith’s paintings have been exhibited across Canada and internationally including, the Appleton Museum, Ocala, Florida, Galerie Damasquine, Brussels, the Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montréal, and The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan. His work was also exhibited at the Charles Cowles Gallery, New York. Michael Smith’s work can be found in the permanent collections of The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound; The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; The Glenbow Museum, Calgary. Several of his works belong to the prestigious Canadiana Collection and can be found in the Prime Minister’s residence at 24 Sussex, Ottawa; Rideau Hall and the Citadel in Quebec City. Michael Smith is represented across Canada by several important galleries. Solo exhibitions of his work have taken place in each of these galleries over the last three years including: The Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, The Trepanier Baer Gallery, Calgary; The Michael Gibson Gallery, London and Art 45 in Montreal. In 2016 Smith will be exhibiting his work in Toronto, London, Ontario and Quebec City.

Michael Smith

Through Fire #2, 2015Acrylic on canvas142 cm x 152 cm

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I reflect on destiny, unfulfilled promises and missed opportunities in the Jacquard weaving Pensive Monarch. My goal is to understand and tame life through art. The work is inspired by a true life-story. I had watered the swamp milkweed in my office and watched the caterpillar eat the leaves to increase its mass. I saw it attach itself to a branch and molt into an opaque, blue-green chrysalis. Then the adult Monarch butterfly formed its wings in the beautiful orange, black and white pattern, inside the exoskeleton. That is when the life cycle stopped; the last stage of the metamorphosis was never completed. I am looking for a balance between the narrative and the formal, figuration and abstraction, emotion and idea, traditional techniques and new technologies, visual arts and crafts.

Julianna Joos lives and works in Montréal. She has been a printmaker for forty years, creating mostly etchings, woodcuts and digital prints. Since 2004 she has added digitally created Jacquard weavings, then digital prints on fibre while her art-making was gradually becoming multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary. She has presented over twenty-five solo exhibitions, the most recent ones were held at la Galerie d’art du Parc in Trois-Rivières in 2014 and at la Galerie du Rift in Ville-Marie in Témiscamingue in 2013. Her works have been selected for more than two hundred international juried group shows. She has completed a Maîtrise ès arts (MA) Programme de maîtrise en arts plastiques, concentration création, Université du Québec à Montréal, in 1996. She teaches printmaking at Dawson College. She has won two major international prizes in the discipline: 2005 Purchase Award Premio Consorzio Brachetto d’Acqui: VIIème Biennale Internazionale dell’Incisione, ACQUI TERME, Italy; and 2002 First Prize VOIR GRAND, Biennale d’estampe grand format de l’Atelier Circulaire, Montréal.

Julianna Joos

Pensive Monarch, 2015Jacquard weavingCotton & linen150 cm x 100 cmPhoto: Richard-Max Tremblay

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...What is the link, therefore, between the paintings and the sites? What is their time scale in terms of mediums? The first anachronism belongs to the paintings: recov-ering and applying a 19th century painting tradition to images found on the Internet, on television, or elsewhere. In the profusion of contemporary images, Manniste’s choice is not motivated by the images’ formal qualities, but only by the work to be done on them. Faced with this profusion, he reproduces the images through a slow painting method by creating them point-by-point, colour-by-colour. Pointillism is a process of breaking down that could be considered the aesthetic trace of the binary breakdown of 0 and 1. How does the arrangement of distinct and simple elements produce complexity? By painting, he reflects on the images that surround and engulf us, imposing a different rhythm on them, the rhythm of making paintings, of the particular attentive slowness that painters experience day after day. He doesn't take up pointillism because of aesthetic taste but, it seems to me, through an existential procedure, in the manner of Roman Opalka, reappropriating that which seems to be imposed on him. Picking from the existing stock, like (Jon) Rafman, is the last decision that saves the honour of our era. The same thing applies to the sites Manniste makes, and this is why their formal incoherence does not matter: in each of his sites, he creates a new landscape out of impersonal images collected here and there. The notion of the landscape takes on a new importance: the artist appropriates medias and rearranges them so as to produce something not contained in the original images. Here once again, it is a matter of reappropriating through the artistic work that which is imposed on us, of re-singularizing that which has no singularity—the ordinary, the insignificant, the zero-level of sensation—by diving even deeper into the web to test its transcendental limit, rather than by contesting its anonymity. This is undoubtedly the secret affinity between Manniste’s paintings and websites.*

*Grégory Chatonsky. "Post all Internet. Three figures." Etc Media 2015: 106. Print.

Andres Manniste has consistently factored technological and critical environments of electronic communications into his projects. Educated as a painter and printmaker, he has participated in many solo and group exhibitions over his career and has been the recipient of several important prizes including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Ministry of Culture. His work can be found in public collections including the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Heritage Collection of the Quebec Archives and the Canada Council Art Bank.

(Please note: an additional artwork by Andres Manniste, entitled Fish Tank, is repro-duced adjacent to the introduction of this publication.)

Andres Manniste

Water, 2015Animated digital imageVariable dimensions

Dean of Creative and Applied ArtsAndréa Cole

Fine Arts ChairpersonDavid Hall

Faculty of Fine Arts, Dawson CollegeExhibition CoordinatorFrank Mulvey

Catalogue creative director and file managementFrank Mulvey

ProofreaderAmanda Beattie

Graphic DesignCatherine Moleski

Image source for cover designDavid Hall

Admin. Support Agent, Visual & Applied Arts ProgramsHelen Wawrzetz

Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery CommitteeAndréa Cole, Don Corman, Cheryl Simon, Giuseppe Di Leo, Raymon Fong, Olivier Forgues,Mary Di Liello, Scott Millar, Frank Mulvey, Luc Parent and Michèl Seguin

© 2016, Dawson College

AcknowledgmentsGratitude to all individuals and entities listed below:

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication 

Fine Arts Faculty Biennial (12th : 2016 : Montréal, Québec) Fine Arts Faculty Biennial 12 : March 24 - April 14, 2016 / foreword by dean of Creative and Applied Arts, Andréa Cole ; introduction by Fine Arts chairperson David Hall.

Companion publication to the Fine Arts Faculty Biennial 12 exhibition held at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, Dawson College, Montréal, Québec on March 2016.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-55016-455-8 (paperback)

1. Dawson College. Fine Arts Department--Faculty--Exhibitions.  2. Art,  Canadian--Québec (Province)--Montréal--21st century--Exhibitions. I. Cole, Andréa, 1965-, writer of foreword  II. Dawson College, issuing bodyIII. Warren G. Flowers Gallery, host institution  IV. Title.  V. Title: FineArts Faculty Biennial twelve.

 N6547.M65F58 2016                 709.714’2807471428               C2016-900139-3