The Miracle Of Leaf | Jason French's incredibly detailed foliage stuns an Art Walk passerby.
Every year after the Whyte Avenue Art Walk, The Fringe Gallery puts on an exhibition of works from participating artists. This week, Jill and Mandy rest their tired feet and discuss The Best of The Art Walk.
Mandy: Oh, the Art Walk. She’s a powerful force, there’s no denying that. What did you think of the works the Fringe Gallery chose for this show?
Jill: Well, first, let’s give some background about the Art Walk, which entered its 13th year this July. For a whole weekend, dozens of artists (more than 200 of them this year) line the streets of Whyte Avenue with their creations, hoping to make a few sales and/or make connections with other artists and patrons. It’s not juried, and so the range of artworks is quite large; amateurs mingle alongside professionals, and each pays the same small fee to sit on a lawnchair and sell art with no commission. It’s quite an interesting event, and one I have personally taken part in for the last five years. Every year, a committee selects a handful of works they feel either are very strong, or which represent the Art Walk in a way they deem appropriate. These works are then showcased in the Fringe Gallery every August.
And every year, it seems as though the work is strikingly similar to last year’s. Not that they’re bad, mind you—it’s just that they can’t help but be somewhat tame, since this is a festival about selling and displaying your work to a very general public. It’s not really a venue in which to make aggressive, alienating artistic statements.
Mandy: The Art Walk, broadly speaking, is dominated by three main themes: landscapes, abstracts (big and colourful), and paintings of Alberta animals (especially buffalo). I know that a lot of active artists have mixed feelings about participating in this kind of festival, but this year I saw a lot more “emerging” artists out on the Ave. I think that helped to up the diversity of the work shown.
Jill: I totally agree about the emerging artists... except I think you see a lot of them every year, not just this one. Unless by “emerging artists” you mean people who have recently graduated from university with a B.F.A. or people who are still in the program, or people who are otherwise affiliated with the arts in this way. In that sense, then yes: I did notice a significant increase in the number of “trained” amateur artists taking part in the Art Walk. Which is great! This fact is reflected in the Fringe Gallery’s selection of several works by recent B.F.A. grads and Grant MacEwan students.
As for the works themselves, I was particularly drawn to Jason French’s work—a huge canvas with a landscape in the background and then extremely detailed foliage in the foreground. The foliage is so detailed that it becomes almost unreal—or surreal, if you will. So weird! And the background—the mountains, the sky, and all of that—is so strangely painted in a flat and yet deep manner that it really makes you think and look. Twice. Or a few times. I couldn’t stop looking at it!
Mandy: It is a pretty intense painting. There should be goats wandering around in front of it. My favourite work picked for the show has to be Murray Allen’s assemblages. He collects tons of old scraps and materials, and combines them into these incredibly lively objects that are just so fantastic and unexpected. I’m really glad his work was picked to be included in the show.
Jill: Yeah, those assemblages were great! I also really thought the smaller, more collage-and/or-printed-on-paper works were pretty excellent, like Jess Hogan’s “I Love NYC” or Mariya Karpenko’s “Power of Confusion.” It’s good to see how many of the “young” works like that were included, and not just the usual watercolour flowers. (Not that there’s anything wrong with watercolour flowers!) I think overall, the works exhibited are works that are very Edmonton, right now. It’s a collection of different artists who represent the various facets of Edmontonian amateur and semi-professional art; the landscapes, the collage, the watercolour, the student, the weekender, the animal lovers—and of course, the big, bold acrylic abstracts that we love here so much!
Mandy: Ha! They are your favourite, for sure. I really hope that all the folks who were in the Art Walk and those who missed out on it will check out this exhibition. The Art Walk’s definitely become more accessible to a wider variety of artists, which is such a positive development—and not just for the artists. It exposes the people who see it to a wider range of work as well, and that can only lead to good things for the community in general.
The Best of the Art Walk runs until August 30 at the Fringe Gallery (10516 Whyte Ave, under The Paint Spot).
