Shawn Shepherd at Polychrome Fine Art - June 2015

Downtown thoughts. Shawn Shepherd, Gareth Gaudin & Rachel Berman. Philip Willey, 14th June 2014

Shawn Shepherd has a new series of prints at Polychrome. He has taken some old Times Colonist plates and used them to explore the idea of anonymity. The result is a series of small prints.

He says…“Downtown, there’s lots of people and you think they’re anonymous — they’re lost, nobody knows them. So that was the idea of titling the show Downtowners. I’ve taken these celebrities and made them invisible.”

These are the vague half-remembered faces we pass on the street. Shawn Shepherd is always coming up with neat ideas. There’s something very appealing about this one.
The show is at Polychrome until June 26^th.

Gareth Gaudin of Legends Comics & Books has a show at Dales. It’s collaboration with Shane Koyczan about cyberbullying and internet trolls. But there’s more going on than that. Gaudin is a very prolific artist. He is is the mastermind behind the well-known comic character Perogy Cat. A lot of the work at Dales is based on comic books he’s made about his daughters’ adventures in Victoria. The show runs until June 30^th.

I just want to mention Rachel Berman. She passed away recently. I can’t say I knew her well. I’d run into her in Chinatown occasionally. We had coffee a couple of times. It was as if we both had a lot to say but words were somehow inadequate. She struck me as being on some kind of quest. She travelled a lot and it all went into her paintings. She lived with feelings, memories, her paintings evoke a world of dusty boarding houses, waiting rooms and diners populated by characters who look like extras from old movies. I wish I’d written something more substantial. Robert Amos did a good job in the Times Colonist I thought.

http://www.timescolonist.com/robert-amos-artist-embraced-darkness-and-light-1.1119272

Difference and Repetition Art Show at Slide Room Gallery

Shawn Shepherd installation

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki a group exhibit at Open Space

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki is a showcase of works answering the question How would you host an ancient alien? The artists in the exhibition responded to an international call for proposals inspired by Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, a book detailing how the human species originated from extra-terrestrial beings. These distant relatives are scheduled to return to the earth in December 2012. 

Participating artists have proposed a variety of convivial acts to welcome Annunaki families from the planet Nibiru upon their return visit to earth after a 3,600 year orbit. The projects take a variety of forms, from an intergalactic calling card, to a bed away from home, collegial gestures of kindness that reveal the customs that we embrace as human citizens of earth. 

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki provides a constructive take on Sitchin’s mythology, one of the many associated with the year 2012. 

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki Participating Artists:Cindy Baker & Megan Morman (Lethbridge, AB),
Katie Bethune-Leamen (Toronto, ON),  Marlaina Buch & Ross Macaulay (Kamloops, BC),
Roy Green (Victoria, BC),
Robert Gallup & Josh Kopel (Seattle, WA),
Karen Hibbard (Victoria, BC),
Kruno Jost (Cakovec, CZ),
Serena Kataoka (Peterborough, ON),
Robin Kirkpatrick (Victoria, BC),
Kegan McFadden (Winnipeg, MN),  Mary-Anne McTrowe (Lethbridge, AB),  Ella Morton (Vancouver, BC),  Ryan Park (Toronto, ON),
s* (offworld),  Shawn Shepherd (Victoria, BC),
Sherry Tompalski (Ottawa, ON),
Rhonda Usipiuk (Victoria, BC),
Christine Walde (Victoria, BC).
Organized by Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis, members of the artist collective Noxious Sector.

Opening: Friday, November 16, 6:00 p.m.

 Welcome Potluck hosted by Mary-Anne McTrowe
Sound performance by s*
Open Space 

510 Fort Street, 2nd floor
phone
250.383.8833

Shawn Shepherd at Polychrome Fine Arts

ABSTRACTION - "Snow Scud" by Philip Willey

Film for Painted Television by Mark Schmiedl

The collection of abstract works at Polychrome appears austere at first sight but an underlying vitality soon becomes apparent. They range from the expressive to the experimental, paintings to sculpture and combinations of the two. There are 13 artists in the show and it’s called Snow Scud…a climate thing said Mary Patterson. It’s a loose theme. Here in Victoria we try to stay ahead of real winters. In the window is ‘Transporter 3 (Flock)’ by Charles Campbell’s. He has incorporated cut and printed birdlike forms into a Buckminster Fuller type of geodesic ball which suggests circular migration. Also in the window are some small pieces by Tyler Hodgins. Magnetic tape embedded in plastic. Tyler’s more accessible work is gaining acceptance in Victoria as public art. He’s also part of ‘Show Down’ at AGGV later this month during which his latest public project, ‘Sleeping Bag’, can be seen at various locations throughout the city. Tar is a viscous tacky substance. Donna Eichel uses it in rhythmic strokes, along with other substances to create rich visceral‘… mindscapes with their own psychological or emotional geography.’ In the two paintings at Polychrome she employs oil paint on plexiglass to much the same effect. Her work has been described as “cave paintings from a distant past or possible future”.  As I’m musing on Caite Dheere’s vaguely Twomblyesque minimalisms glowing through layers of encaustic and thinking how they could easily grow on one over time, I can’t help noticing an old dude wandering around making notes on scraps of paper. Is he a critic? What’s a critic doing in Victoria? What sort of stuff does he write I wonder. Intellectual exegesis for academics? Snotty artspeak for the incrowd?  Short words and bad speling 4 twitter peeps? I have the same problem myself. Never quite sure what style to use. And these group shows are tricky. Don’t want to leave anybody out. It’s good to know that Karl Spreitz is still going strong. The works on display are from 1975, geometric forms that look surprisingly fresh and contemporary. Ingrid Mary Percy’s calligraphic charcoal shapes on paper may be related to the Spirograph forms I remember seeing at Deluge Gallery. Mark Schmiedl’s work is hard to get a handle on. That may well be his intention. There are suggestions of Kandinsky and Motherwell but not in a derivative sense. A statement on his website says his paintings ‘…aspire to be self-interupting.’ An unintentional slip but curiously apt somehow. The wonderfully titled ‘Film for Painted Televisions’ is a large painting where abstract forms almost, but not quite, become recognizable objects. Meanwhile Lance Olsen pauses his walkabout across the Australian outback with its Antipodean earth-tones and dreamtime tracks to show a brooding but strangely celebratory undated acrylic on paper work called ‘Death by Proxy # 3’. The show also features work by Cody Haight, David Gifford and PJ Kelly. Plus there’s another chance to see some of Shawn Shepherd’s sliced up hockey pucks. I’m not going to single anyone out for special attention. Some of the works spoke to me more than others but let’s not get into what John Luna calls the ‘autocritical mist’. I’m no Jerry Saltz and I want to go on living in Victoria. Artists want cheerleaders anyway, not critics. So think of this as a sort of prose poem. My version of Subterranean Homesick Blues with a quip or two tossed into the mix. Something to do on a cold but sunny Sunday. Kudos to Polychrome for putting together an interesting collection of artists. Apologies if I left anybody out. All I have to do now is sit back and wait for the usual barrage of comments. It’s snowing as I write which may be significant. One more thing. I was going to mention the Carmen Tisch school of art criticism. Carmen you may remember is the tattoo artist from Denver who got a little emotional at a Clyfford Still retrospective. She rubbed her bare bum against a canvas apparently causing $10,000 worth of damage (to the painting). I was going to say something about not seeing Carmen at Polychrome. A silly joke that suddenly doesn’t seem very amusing. I can’t say I knew Jamer Duderon well. Saw him around that’s all. But he was too young to die. It’s very sad.

Snow Scud
Jan. 15 to Feb. 2, 2012  
Polychrome Fine Arts 

Shawn Shepherd at Polychrome Fine Arts

Polychrome Fine Arts
presents:

RETINAL NEXUS

a solo exhibit of paintings by
SHAWN SHEPHERD

Jan. 10 to 28, 2010
Opening Reception Sunday, Jan.10 - 12 to 6pm

Polychrome Fine Arts
1113 Fort St. Victoria BC Canada
phone: 250-382-2787