Arnold Guebert Library Gallery Exibits

Prairie Quilts

Northern Piecemakers Quilting Guild in Grand Prairie has over 50 members which meet monthly to share with one another the designs and projects each is working on. It is our wish that the 15 works in this exhibition may help bridge the gap between craft and art.

Artists: Debbie Brown, Alice Chrenek, Nikki Crisfield, Lynn Czaban, Lorraine Glendinning, Marg Johns, Janet M. Jones, Marilyn Keillor, Alison Lincoln, Sandy Nofziger, Emily Quinn, Elaine Monette, Kathy Richardson, Dawn Wawrzasek, and Suzanne Whyte. 

Earth Meets Sky

The body of works in this exhibit includes imagery from Saskatchewan, through the Alberta badlands areas of Drumheller, Dinosaur Provincial Park, and Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, as well as various sites in the southwestern United States. All the works depict Jacques Rioux’s (from Sherbrooke Quebec) fascination with the mysterious land formulations sculpted by nature. The horizons play a significant role in these works — the intersection of the earth and the sky depicted in each horizontally formatted photograph serves to exemplify the huge expanse of the land in which these formations are a part.

Story Board to Story Book

This exhibit shows behind-the-scenes glimpses of how six Albertan artists developed their artwork for picture books.

Artists: Kyrsten Brooker, William Roy Brownridge, Carolyn Fisher, Georgie Graham, Barbara Hartmann, Murray Kimber.

Finding Our Way Home: Alberta’s Disappearing Grain Elevators

In 1934 Alberta had 1,775 grain elevators. By October 1998, Alberta had 307, a loss of 75% of our primary elevators. The Provincial Museum of Alberta launched a photographic contest in November 1997 to help document these disappearing landmarks.

Artists: Alex Baril, Ross Bertrand, Byron Cameron, Mervyn Colwell, Adrian Cooke, Lois Craig, Robert Dawe, Parke Dobson, Joe Haracsi, Judy Lamour, Gordon Lariviere, Doug MacKenzie, RFM McInnis, Chris Schuld, Jeanne Skytt, Edward Stephanson, Joseph Trohubiak, Wildrose Argi. Producers.

Calgary in Perspective

A small sampling of 50 years of artistic evolution in the city of Calgary.

Artists: Maxwell Bates, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Alan Dunning, Marianna Gartner, Alexandra Haeseker, Joice Hall, Eve Koch, Bill Laing, Grant Leier, Marion Nicoll, Marcia Perkins, Stranford Perrott, John Snow, R. Gyo Zo Spickett, Caroll Taylor-Lindoe, Bev Tosh, and Paul Woodrow.

AFA Collection Portraits

Portraits have played a major role in the development of artistic interpretation and exploration of the human psyche. Portraits often speak about the artists’ personal experiences and their association with the subject; they also convey the personality of the sitter through style and mood.

Artists: Primrose Diakow, Roy Kiyooka, Don Mabie, Jim Brodie, trevor Travis, Charles Mitchell, Illingworth Kerr, Gabor Nagy, Douglas Curran, Ruth Syme, Rad Culjat, Jim Westergard, Dana Shukster, David Svendsen, George Webber, Bernard Bloom, Daniel Dugas, Katherine Fraser, D.Helen Mackie, Maxwell Bates.

NABIS: Refocusing After Injury

Northern Alberta Brain Injury Society (NABRIS) in conjunction with Glenrose Hospital and Harcourt House Arts Centre, produced this photographic art exhibit. Over a period of a month, survivors of brain injuries were supplied with instant cameras to shoot photographs depicting the necessary refocusing after their injury. The photographs chosen are images that capture the essence of this experience. 

Artists: Dawn Noyes, Ron Young, Soren Jensen, Ted Weber, Michael Germann, Craig Hicks, Joan Walker, Richard Pfeifle, Richard Hanes, Marge Rowe, Wendy Mathewson, Susan Wirtanen, Tenny Whitfield, Carolyne Burkart, Steve Ball, Colleen Davidson.

Art of the Raven King

The Raven King is the third in a series of new operas written for children in elementary school. All the pictures and stories in this exhibit were created by children from elementary schools in the Wetaskiwin and Millet areas.

Subjective Eye

The three artists in this exhibit all belong to a tradition known as documentary photography – a photography that was thought to shed light on the “truth” of the human condition in general and of “social evils” in particular. Documentary photography and social reform were closely related; the idea being that if you exposed poverty, corruption, and the like by photographing it, those problems would then be addressed.

Artists: Sima Khorrami, Orest Semchishen, and George Webber.

Art Out There: Artists and Youth in the Community

Funded in part by the Edmonton Community Lottery Board and Capital City Savings, this paired local artists with schools and community groups to provide art education and programming to youth between the ages of 15 and 20.  Participants learned to connect themes through investigative and experimental projects that focused on visual literacy and technical and critical thinking skills. Personal and artistic growth was encouraged through experimentation with diverse media such as cyanotype printing, photography, collage, and abstract sculpture. 

Artists: Sherisse Burke, Aaron Moorish, Paul Clyburn, Megan Quedada, Nathan Cardinal, Mitch Burns, Sarah Lampereau, Bonnie Crane, Gabrielle Matchatis, J.R. Saddleback, Terri Razor, Diana Power, Shane Louison, Julia McGarvey, Matt Stevens, Delton Andony, Joyce Bolton, Jesse Tracey, Maria Munson.

Urban/Suburban

The artists look at the changing meanings of urban and suburban spaces: how the city can be both a place of prosperity and a site of poverty and danger, and how the superficial beauty and symmetry of the suburbs can be both comforting and stifling.

Vikky Alexander, Daniel Bagan, David Ballantyne, N.C. Meijer Drees. Walter Jungkind, terry Munro, Paul Murasko, Katherine Neiman, Theodore Nelson, Jacques Rioux, Bill Simpkins, Sylvain Voyer, Harry Kiyooka, Lee Anne Pellerin.

Blooming Prairie

21 artists celebrate different aspects of the landscape to bring together the “blooming prairie”. 

Artists: Cindy Barratt, Vern Busby, Bill Duma, Linda Carney, Elaine Flemming, Angela Frootelarr, M.R. Jordan, Yuriko Kitamura, Brent Laycock, Helen Mackie, Rosalette Mandryk, Destanne Norris Brown, Rayma Peterson, Audrey Pfannmuller, Phyllis Polanski, Adeline Rockett, Arlene Wasylynchuk, Ron Wigglesworth, Pam Wilman, Tammy Woolgar, Judy Matlock.

SNAP Crackle POP!

From the 1950s onward, Pop artists have elevated everyday objects and images by placing them on centre stage and turning them into “art”. Snap Crackle Pop features a selection of works from the membership of the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists (SNAP), focusing on work that portrays our fascination with popular culture and new media techniques.

Artists: Cindy Baker, Allan Ball, Blair Brennan, Taiga Chiba, Briar Craig, Nancy Fox, Lisa Murray, Carl Skelton

Stanford Perrot: Strength of Vision

This exhibit focuses on the work of legendary artist, Stanford Perrott, who studied in New York with American Abstract Expressionists Hans Hoffman and Will Barnet … Stanford Perrott was also the head of the Alberta College of Art in Calgary from 1967 to 1974. … in 1998, he was awarded the Frederick Haultain Prize for his outstanding contribution to art and art education in the province. This exhibit provides a forum for learning about the life and work of this important artist, and gives viewers the opportunity to discuss the development of abstraction in Canadian painting.

Not Just Another Cowboy Show II

An exhibition of vintage photography drawn from the collections of several museums and heritage institutions in Alberta. Most images are derived from aspects of the working cowboy, and to a lesser extent the rodeo cowboy. The cowboy as an ‘artiste’ or entertainer comes in a distant third. What we arrive at is an assimilation of roles – a visual symbol of the strength and vigour of the CAnadian West. … The dangerous lives they lived, the sad songs they sang, and the colourful vocabulary they used have all become part of American and Canadian folklore. Visually romantic and free-spirited in nature. These hard working and rugged individuals became icons – heroic horsemen living a life seemingly unfetted by the artificial conventions of society, and always badly paid! 

Photographers: H.J. Perrier, S.A. Smyth, L.A. Huffman, John Moir, Joe Rosettis, R.A. Bird, Milward B. Marcell, H. Pollard, William Carsell, Nancy Hargrave, W.J. Oliver, Fredrick Steele, Edward Borein, and many others are unknown. Dates of photos range from 1888-1932, 1960.

Tracking History

Images in Tracking History dates back to the late 19th century when, in 1885, the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven into the soil of British Columbia, uniting the nation of Canada for the first time. The CPR hired artists to depict the western part of the country to attract investors, new settlers, and tourists. In doing so, they demonstrated the dominance of this new technology over nature, a visual connection that was deepened as artist travelled across the country on the railway.

Artists: George Angliss, Ernst Bollhorn, Dorothy Barnhouse, Dale Beaven, Steve Burger, Donald Cook, Alfred C. Leighton, Helen Muskal, James Nicoll, Marion Nicoll, Stan Phelps, Richard Thompson, Peter von Tiesenhausen, John Zupan.

Wood You Believe It?

This exhibit features 13 artists that subtly reference wood in a variety of forms. Trees have a profound effect on our everyday  lives. The earth’s trees are the lungs that produce oxygen and cleanse the air that we breath. They provide shelter and sustenance for countless animal species. For centuries they have  provided humanity with a reliable source of energy and material to build civilization. None of us can go through a day without interacting with something derived from wood.

Mark Arneson, Sean Caulfield, Alan Dunning, John K. Eesler, Bart Habermiller, June Montgomery, Katie Ohe, Stanford Perrott, Jane Ash Poitras, Orest Semchishen, Robert Van Schaik, Jennifer Stead, and John Vickers.

First Nations Artists

Dale Auger, Farron Calihoo, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Alex Janvier, George Littlechild, Jim Logan, Fred McDonald, Kim McLain, Jane Ash Poitras, Heather Shillinglaw, Brenda Jones-Smith.

20 Century Men

Depression-era Photographs by Frank Goble

This exhibit celebrates a lifetime of photography. Frank Goble documented history alongside capturing moments from his life and the lives of others in the Waterton area during the 1930s and 1940s. These images show the way of life on the trapline.

This Village Work

In the early 1960s Edmonton-born education, philosopher, and scholar, Marshall McLuhan, coined the term global village to describe a new social organization that would develop when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture. This theory referred to technological changes which are making the world a single community and has been used as a metaphor for mass media, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. This has also been used to describe a world where people are living without borders or boundaries; a world where ideas, beliefs, and cultures intermingle and societies are interdependent like never before.

Artists: Erika Vela, Shumba Z. Ash, Ljubomir Ilic, Akiko Taniguchi, Pedro Rodriquez De Loz Santos.

Maskwacîs (Bear Hills)

This exhibition examines the framework of representation and authorship through narratives constructed by those who actually live the story. Presenting an eclectic mix of artworks created by both young artists and professionals, this exhibition reflects upon the attributes important to the Nehiyaw and their individual stories.

Pretty Much Black and White

This exhibit presents historical and contemporary artists who use a black and white approach by choice to convey content and form. The photographs and prints from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts demonstrate that infinite gradations of gray can be viewed as nostalgic or timeless in character. People, places, and common objects are boldly defined by theatrical light and incomparable visual texture. Colour is not absent; rather it is muted, simplified and open to interpretation. 

Artists: Maxwell Bates, Dale Beaven, Larry Cosiatto, April Dean, Steven Dixon, Karen Dugas, Joel Feldman, Jeremy Mayne, Garry Newton, Stanford Perrott, David Reece, Clifford Robinson, Dana Shukster, John Snow and Richard Yates.

Urban Animals

Urban development has long been pressing upon the boundaries of natural wildlife. Far too often our urban population presses upon animals’ natural habitats.  These 18 paintings showcase six animals indigenous to Alberta shown in three different environments. The first image celebrates the beauty of each wild animal; the second depicts its natural home, and the third is the merging of urban landscapes into their homes. Jason Carter explores this constant dialogue of urban versus the natural environment through a vibrant series of paintings. 

Wild Thing!

Animal imagery has been part of humankind’s cultural repertoire. Like all genres of artistic examination, the visual renderings of animals reflect the various artistic styles practiced by artists. From realistic representations to abstract impressions, the artists in the exhibition have pursued the ‘wild things’ of Alberta and beyond. This exhibit investigates this pursuit and celebrates the beauty of wild things and the important place they hold within the world and the consciousness of humankind.

Path Makers

Contemporary First Nations artists are now recognized as a significant and distinct part of the fabric of Canadian art history. Aboriginal artists pushed for the inclusion of Aboriginal art in exhibitions, galleries, and collections and advocated for the highest level of art education for First Nations people. Dale, Joane, and Kimowan created relationships and pathways for many future First Nations artists. They inspire us with the artwork they left behind, the lives they shared, and, most importantly, the inspiration to create.

Artists: Dale Auger, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, and Kimowan Metchewais

Geneva Moore

Painting & etching in Edmonton since 1990, ‘my task is to reflect an intuitive, experimental perception of Realities such as joy, mirth, wonder, aloneness, and mystery, imaginatively received, and pointing beyond myself. These are small glimpses of Heaven, an earthly landscape, meant to transport the mind into the imagined transcendental realm.’

Artist: Geneva Moore

Eye and the City

This exhibit examines the contradictory views of the city and various reasons for representing it as expressed by artists from Calgary and Edmonton.  Whether considering actual or implied narratives or focusing on strictly formal matters, these artists traverse the streets and alleys of these two cities, presenting their perceptions of the familiar and drawing attention to what is often overlooked. Though examining the city for different reasons and in diverse media these artists are united in their wish to arrest the fleeting quality of our experiences, inviting viewers to recognize the special experiences and complex beauty to be found all around us.

Artists: Russell Bingham, Gordon Harper, David Janzen, Paul Murasko and Verna Vogel.

Wayfinders

The exhibition is a combination of the three artists’ unique talents. Through their artwork, the viewer is treated to a compelling show that will stay with them for years to come. A reflection of the complex world we live in, these artworks provide us with both unexpected answers and even more interesting questions. The threat that ties them all together is a deep love for the natural world contrasted with the sometimes confusing challenges of our times. 

Artists:

Jane Ash Poitras – exposing secrets of our history, specifically in regard to Residential Schools and co-opting of Indigenous spiritualism by non-indigenous society.

Paul Smith – purposefully native landscapes and trickster characters offer a thin, bubble gum veneer for the indigenous reality of living in the city, dealing with alienation and the obsessive drive for wealth found in the boardroom to the streets in oil-rich Alberta.

Amy Malbeuf – emerging performance and sculptural artist whose works push boundaries of modernism while strengthening her ties with her Indigenous roots. She shows us that there is space, and indeed a bright future for the voice of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit artists in our changing times.

Rug Hooking

Rug hooking is both an art and a craft where rugs are made by pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base such as burlap, linen, or rug warp.  In its earliest years, rug hooking was a craft of poverty. The vogue for floor coverings in the United States came about after 1830 when factories produced machine-made carpets for the rich. Poor women began looking through their scrap bags for materials to employ in creating their own homemade floor coverings. Girls from wealthy families were sent to school to learn embroidering and quilting; fashioning floor rugs and mats was never part of the curriculum.

Imprints

The word imprint can be defined in two ways. As a verb it can mean baking a distinctive mark or impression; the act of stamping or printing on a surface. The noun imprint can refer to something or someone that affects another deeply as to mind or feelings. Both of these uses of the word are appropriate when describing the artistic media of printmaking. First, the term can be used to describe the various methods of printmaking used to create print-based artworks. Secondly, the word imprint can refer to those artists who have made an impression in the visual arts and the cultural life of a region through their artistic efforts. Over the 20th and 21st centuries printmaking as a form of artistic expression has definitely made its mark on the visual arts in Alberta. This exhibition acknowledges the importance of this media within the visual arts and some of the individuals responsible for the stature of print-making within the province and on the national and international art stages.

Art and Design in the 21 Century

Our world is extremely visual. Everywhere we look we are bombarded by a multitude of visual stimuli, categorized under the rubric of design, clamoring for our attention. Meanwhile, there are objects which also ask us to stop and think which are classified as ‘fine art’. It is common practice to clearly demarcate these realms of creative expression. The two, however, are not mutually exclusive. Rather, those works defined as ‘fine art’ and those considered ‘design’ are based on the same principles, often have similar purposes, and are often created by the same people. This exhibition investigates the principles which are shared by fine art and design; examines the considerations which separate these practices; and contemplates how the artists featured in this exhibition seek to balance these two realms of expression in their artistic endeavors. 

Artists: Jason Blower, Lee Nielsen, and Jill Stanton

Celebrating the Journey

This artist makes art that includes the people, places, and events that surround and inspire her. While her prints are firmly rooted in direct experience, they remain highly detailed and whimsical, like a stylized snapshot of the event. They show the unique landscape of different provinces, the changing seasons, as well as scenes from concerts, operas, dances, and other performances. Many of her subjects are itinerant artists as well – members of traveling troupes, rodeo performers, dancers, and opera singers.

Artist: Carole Bondaroff

Ramen Love

Sparked by her love of ramen, Sarah Gonzales explores the roots of this noodle and its mid-twentieth-century journey from Asia to North America. Her quirky sensibility balanced with her skillful drawing ability creates a body of colorful works on the history of noodle making, the introduction of “cup-a-soup” to North America in the 1950s, and most importantly, the various noodles and broth. Gonzales explains, “As a cultural phenomenon, ramen has sparked tens of thousands of restaurants worldwide, influential films, documentaries, blogs, and [has] provided affordable comfort to millions of destitute college students across the globe” … 

Intercultural Days

On January 23–25, 2017, a series of events and performances will be happening at the university to celebrate diversity and exchanges of cultures. The aim of this multicultural event is to raise awareness about cultural diversity and the importance of remaining open to new cultures. We want to encourage our students to grow professionally and personally in a culturally rich environment at Concordia and abroad thanks to our Study Abroad program. Our goal is also to reach out to different cultural communities in Edmonton and build significant partnerships.

In Dreams Awake

This exhibition explores the enduring legacy of the landscape genre in Alberta. This exhibition investigates both the physical topography of Alberta as well as the different stylistic approaches and intents expressed by the featured artists. Through this examination, this exhibition expresses the beautiful diversity of Alberta’s landscapes as well as the continued vitality of the landscape genre in the visual arts.

Jennifer Annesley, Jim davies, Les Graff, David Shkolny, Pam Wilman.

Chinese Stories

Forty years of economic reform and openness in China: Retrospect and Prospect by Marcella Siqueira Cassiano.

Abstractland

These paintings span four decades of this artist’s prolific career. The paintings, which he refers to as “oil studies,” were produced on location in various settings around Alberta: mountains, prairies, lakes, and farmland. His spontaneous and intuitive approach produces abstract works that “intensify the real by defamiliarizing it,” a fundamental quality of abstract expressionism. The results convey characteristics of nature, such as the light over a farm field at sunset or the silence of the boreal forests in winter. They are both aggressively and thoughtfully rendered, evoking the power and beauty of our natural world.

 Artist: Les Graff

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Men

A day of discussion with an opening prayer and smudge ceremony by Elder Francis Whiskeyjack

Real Women

Inspired by cultural shifts in the first decades of the 21st century such as international Women’s Marches and the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the art in this exhibition questions societal perceptions of women, art-making itself, and express how the featured artists define what it means to be a woman and how they personally wish to be seen.

Artist: Ali Bischoff

CUE 100 – Library History Exhibit

This exhibit shares the 100-year history of the Concordia University of Edmonton Library. In its formative years, the Arnold Guebert Library relied predominantly on book donations but has since expanded its physical and online collections and formed crucial relationships with Canadian libraries, colleges, and universities. Since 1921, the library has continued to encourage innovation, embrace new technologies, forge effective partnerships, and promote student excellence.

See the exhibit online: CUE 100 Library History Panels

Researched and assembled by: Natasha Eklund, Brianna Sorensen, and Meghan Staal

 In 1974, the library was officially named the Arnold Guebert Library in recognition of the first librarian, Arnold Guebert, who played a crucial role in the institution’s beginnings.

Creatures

Imaginary animals may not have a place in modern zoology, but their endurance in our contemporary mythologies indicates something very real about human needs. Perhaps they endure because we need places for our minds to go – alternate realities that reflect the playfulness and possibilities of our imaginations. The artwork present in Creatures does just that. Amongst the elongated ears, discombobulated limbs and topsy-turvy environments are open narratives that we can make our own.

Creatures features 19 artworks of fantastical begins by seven artists.

Bring a Folding Chair

Though people of African and Caribbean heritage have been in what is now Canada since the earliest days of colonization, their inclusion in the political, economic, social, and cultural landscapes of the country has been limited. The visual arts have been one realm where Black Canadians have been very under-represented.

Inspired by Black History Month, this exhibit celebrates and recognizes the significant contributions Black artists make to Alberta. With artworks exploring history, heritage, and contemporary concerns, the artists in this exhibition Bring a Folding Chair to the table of Canadian society and the art scene in Alberta, and, in sitting at the table, they give voice to our common humanity.

Ahkameyimo- Never Give Up

As of 2016, over half of the Indigenous population of Canada resided in urban areas with a population of 30,000 people or more. The city of Edmonton has the second largest urban Indigenous population with 74, 430 people. Despite these statistics, the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples in the urban environment are often ignored and erased. Many Canadians continue to think of Indigenous communities as remote and reserve-based and that Indigenous people are defined by their relationship to the land.

The traveling exhibition Ahkameyimo- Never Give Up features the work of two emerging Indigenous artists who challenge this narrative and whose works, while respecting traditional culture and visual imagery, engage with the urban environment in which these artists reside. Through their works, these artists challenge colonial beliefs and provide viewers with alternate perceptions of what ‘indigenous art’ can be. This exhibition features artworks by Matthew Cardinal and Loinigan Gilbert.

Women Gone Wild!

Since the dawn of human history animal imagery has been an aspect of humankind’s cultural repertoire. Animals have long been a viable subject matter for visual artists, however, in the annals of Euro-North American art history, any exploration of wild animals has almost exclusively been the domain of male artists. Beginning in the 20th Century this began to change as the roles of women in society broadened.

The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling exhibition Women Gone Wild! explores the subject of wild creatures as this is expressed in the work of three contemporary women artists from Edmonton. Featuring works by Cynthia Fuhrer, Jenny Keith, and Samantha Walrod, the depictions of wild creatures presented by these artists range from realistic representations to more abstract and surrealistic impressions. These artists also demonstrate diverse reasons for choosing their subjects. Whatever their artistic approach and intentions, however, all three artists reveal a love and respect for nature in their works and through their works invite viewers to ‘go wild’ as well.

“Alone Together is a solo exhibition of hyperrealistic pencil-crayon portraits by Calgary artist Kelly Isaak. During one of the more severe COVID-19 lockdowns in Alberta, Isaak posted on Instagram asking if anyone would be interested in submitting photographs of themselves in isolation that she would later draw. With so many people seeking ways to connect with one another during this time, Isaak received an overwhelming number of responses from interested participants. Most of the people who engaged in the ensuring project were not people she knew, but Isaak endeavoured to capture a communal familiarity, each portrait featuring the face of someone who’d shared a similar experience of isolation with the next. The resulting portrait series is a reminder that through small acts of collaborative effort, we can connect as a community and wade through uncertainties together.”

– Ashley Slemming, Curator