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March 14, 2002 Festival showcases the work of our young artists

 

  

Scott Mackiak

Shawn Mackniak, an employee in the Vanier Library and a sculpture student, displayed his ceramic sculpture in The Hive at Loyola as part of the Art Matters Festival. It was the second year he has done so, and this year he played a role on the coordinating committee. Mackniak periodically displays his pieces in the library’s showcases.

Marguerite Bromley

Art Education student Marguerite Bromley with her unusual quilt.

Photos by Andrew Dobrowolskyj
by Anna Bratulic
It’s the half-way mark of the 2002 edition of the Art Matters festival and everything’s just peachy.

“We’re all still alive,” said coordinator and Cinema student Katharine Harris with a laugh, though she says it feels as though she hasn’t slept since October. “I don’t think I had any concept of how much work this would be.”

A daily flood of e-mails, paper work and phone calls have occupied much of her time and that of the other committee members. Even the enjoyment of some of the 125 performances and exhibits is somewhat curtailed by having to pitch in with jobs for some events, like tending the bar.

Harris is not only impressed with the content of the presentations, but with the viewing public who have supported the festival by attending and by being “respectful of the art.”

Art Matters was started last year by students wishing to offer Concordia’s Fine Arts students a professional setting in which showcase their art works. It coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Here are some examples of work on view.

Andrew Tay (Contemporary Dance): Third-year Contemporary Dance major Andrew Tay and a troupe of other students put on Dance Variables 2002, a show consisting of 10 different dance performances ranging in styles. Tay, who choreographed some of the performances, said that his work can be classified as abstract. “I like the audience to choose their own meaning.”

Melanie Authier (Studio Arts): Melanie Authier was a venue coordinator for the D. B. Clarke Theatre during last year’s inaugural Art Matters festival. She describes the experience as a “baptism by fire” that took her from zero knowledge to intense knowledge of the theatre. This year, the Studio Arts major is taking it a little easier by exhibiting her acrylic painting, Terrarium, in which she explores her interest in the concept of territory as landscape.

Zen Nakamura (Interdisciplinary Studies): Transductions was labelled as an “event‚” combining music and the visual arts. Zen Nakamura, an interdisciplinary major focusing on electroacoustic studies, explained that the name of the show refers to the transfer of energy from one form into another, in this case, into sound. Eight to 10 electroacoustics students presented their work as part of the show and Nakamura hopes this will give the department’s students a stronger voice.

Marie-Claude Plasse (Photography): Marie-Claude Plasse’s photographs are close-ups of overlooked details, from toes viewed in a distorted mirror to part of a bicycle she claims saved her (from “small-town-strandedness”) this summer. In the exhibit Little Moments, Plasse, a second-year photography student, wants to recapture a childlike wonder of the mundane.

Marguerite Bromley (Art Education): Images are such a commodity, says Art Education major Marguerite Bromley, why not turn them into a quilt? So she hauled out a sewing machine and began sewing pictures of fabrics together to create a “quilt” that now hangs in the space in front of the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall. Bromley, who often works with fabrics and other fibres in her art, was particularly amused by the reaction to her sewing from curious onlookers, some of whom thought the photos were real fabrics!

The closing gala of the Art Matters festival, to be held this Friday in the D.B. Clarke Theatre, will feature Miss Tabasco and the Band. Miss Tabasco, aka Sabine Dieudonné, promises a lively night of Latin jazz, salsa and samba. Sabine is a second-year student majoring in English and minoring in music, and she has the support of 12 musicians and artists. The show starts at 8 o’clock, and admission is free.