Gallery 96

Under Construction

Under Construction

Under Construction

Under Construction

Glenn Elliott

Loretta Czernis

Vanessa Degroot

Caroline Horley

Virginia Joyes

David Leaney

Tony Los

Jack MacAulay

James MacDougall

Howard Minnett

Wendy O'Brien

Valerie O'Flynn

Wendy Orr

Victoria Shannon

Lesley Walker-Fitzpatrick

Artist Statement: I am a mixed media sculptor and painter utilizing found objects while commenting on social  issues.

I am basically a self taught artist, growing up in a scrap yard finding inspiration from outcast objects.

You can view more of my work at www.virginiajoyes.ca

Bio: Virginia Joyes was born and brought up in Ellice Township. She is a webdesigner and graphic artist.

Glenn Elliott is a sculptor who works in clay, mixed media and welded metal. Many of his pieces are figurative. In his latest body of work, he created 3-dimensional tattoo pieces, some with religious overtones. Elliott enjoys creating works with an interactive component and many of his sculptures are kinetic. Elliott was born in 1941 in Fort Worth, Texas, as both a military brat and a preacher's kid. His family moved within the rural south approximately every two years and he subsequently attended a total of eighteen different schools before finishing high school. Elliott attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, then spent four years in the United States Air Force serving in Okinawa and North Africa.

Elliott moved to Stratford, Ontario, in 1969 to work at the Stratford Festival as a props builder. He explored hundreds of different media through his theatre work and some of these techniques—such as clay modeling, casting and welding—have transferred into his personal work.

Elliott’s work is currently in private and public collections across Canada and the United States.

 

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Gloria Kagawa is a traditional printmaker, painter, and mixed media artist.  However, her activities have also included photography and digital media which began in earnest in 1996 when she launched one of the few artists' sites on the internet (www.gloriakagawa.com).  In the Spring of 2009 she exhibited her first manipulated digital photos in the Gallery 96 group show entitled "Industrial Strength".

Her contemporary style of art reflects on our environment and architectural structures, while her focus is on capturing the human spirit or bringing social or emotional issues to light.

Gloria Kagawa earned her Honours B.A. in Fine Arts in 1982 at the University of Waterloo, specializing in printmaking.

Her farmhouse studio, located near New Hamburg, Ontario, is open to the public annually on the first week-end of November for the Rural Routes Studio Tour (www.ruralroutes.org), of which she is a founding member.  She also welcomes studio visits by appointment.

Kagawa has exhibited in numerous exhibitions, and her art is included in several public and private collections.  She continues to receive awards for her work and has exhibited in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

 

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Artist Statement

The debt we owe to the artists that have preceded us is incalculable. The range of valid expression that has become available to artists in the last 150 years is most welcome. I am not an advocate of a single method of achieving a work. Art is too vast in possibility. My principal enthusiasm is in responding to other persons in portraiture and the figure. This is not however an exclusive source of involvement for me as a painter and sometime print-maker. My portraits are created in the presence of the subject. The occasion is a three way honest conversation among the sitter, the artist, and the canvas, in an atmosphere of comfort, respect, vulnerability, intimacy, music and fun! When the subject's essence moves to the canvas and meets on equal terms with that of the artist to the satisfaction of both, the portrait has a good chance of coming alive in a meaningful way. I explore many ways of achieving this. For both sitter and artist the process is always the excitement of engaging the unpredictable.

Using a variety of materials such as fabric, thread, yarn, wood, paper and metal, I create two and three-dimensional pieces that are highly textured. My artistic methods include painting, dyeing and photo transfer. I frequently incorporate a collage technique in both my two and three-dimensional works.

Recently, I have investigated several themes such as theatre, architecture, memory and family. My current work is a consideration of the fragility of Nature and the environment.

 

Wendy O’Brien was born in 1951 in Montreal, Quebec. Raised in Toronto, Ontario, she graduated in 1972 from Sheridan College and went on to design costumes and scenery for theatres in both Ontario and Quebec. Her other roles included cutter, seamstress and scenic painter. O’Brien also worked at the Festival Theatre of Canada for a number of years.

O’Brien taught Theatre Design at both the University of Windsor and Sheridan College. In 1987, she combined her love of fabric with her desire for artistic expression and embarked on a career as a fibre artist. O’Brien continues to teach art classes to all ages for both Gallery Stratford and The Foundation for Enriching Education. She currently resides with her family near Stratford, ON.

 

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The artist Wassilly Kandinsky stated that the form taken by art is dependent on the epoch, the nationality and the personality of the artist. O’Flynn feels the impact of these forces on her own work and thought processes. 

Currently, O’Flynn’s art provides commentary on political and social issues, ranging from the specific to the universal. She is also inspired by great artists and works of the past—E. Munch; W.B Yeats’ poem "The Second Coming"; the apocalyptic imagery of W. Blake and H. Bosch; and the disquiet of G. De Chirico and K. Kollwitz, just to name a few.

This exhibition has given her the opportunity to take visual content from original works and play with its physical aesthetic form, while still retaining a link to the original content.  The flexibility of the digital medium, particularly the ability to easily "undo" actions, makes it a powerful tool in the artists' box that encourages exploration.

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Valerie O'Flynn was born in 1960 in London, Ontario.  She graduated from the University of Western Ontario with an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983 and a Bachelor of Education in 1984. O'Flynn has exhibited across Southwestern Ontario and won three Jury awards in her career as a visual artist. At the Stratford Northwestern Secondary School, she is head of the Arts faculty and teaches Visual Arts and Media Arts classes. O'Flynn has been an active member of Gallery 96 since 1993.

 

 

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Wendy Orr began drawing at an early age. Her subject matter has ranged from portraits of people that are important to her to, most recently, landscapes that reflect her interest in the local countryside. The landscapes are often of open spaces that imbue a sense of solitude. These images allow Orr an escape from a busy and often chaotic career.

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Orr works with a variety of media such as watercolour, acrylic, casein and graphite. Frequently, she is drawn to the quality of light and textures that are present in the image. Presently, she is continuing with acrylic and casein landscape painting while also beginning to experiment with tile and mosaic design.

To see more of Wendy's work, go to www.wendyorrartist.com 

 

 

 

 

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A poppy is a miracle of beauty, often bearing a powerful opiate, that has become iconic for war. It was first observed during the Napoleonic War that war-ravaged land would blossom with blood red poppies. John McCrea’s famous World War I poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’, popularized this phenomenon. Walker-Fitzpatrick photographs these blooms to move them beyond the stereotypical views, by portraying them as a desire for peace rather than for ‘violent addictions’. This work is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War—"the war to end all wars"—and to the beginning of the "acceptance of the unacceptable".

 

Lesley Walker-Fitzpatrick’s career has successfully spanned a number of artistic disciplines.  Her photographic work has been shown in Toronto, Stratford, and Ottawa, Ontario, as well as Rochester, New York. She was an amanuensis to her late brother, the inspiring poet John C. Walker, who was a quadriplegic and mute. Walker-Fitzpatrick toured Europe, the Mid East and Canada as a magician and dancer. She is a drama and movement artist and teacher, specializing in anti-war, social justice and environmental themes. She has been the recipient of the YMCA Canada Peace Medal, the Du Maurier Search For Stars award, the Ontario Arts Council award, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Guthrie Award, and the Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Award.

 

 

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Emilio Ramirez

Emilio Ramirez is very different today from the young artist he was in the 80's when sign painting and portraits were his main source of income. He sporadically returns to these previous styles as a necessary exercise to prove to himself and to others that he continues to be capable of the skills needed for portraitist and realism.

Emilio's development as an artist has been cautious and disciplined, a carefully guarded path, to become what he is in the present. His maturing path has unfolded in a well-founded formula changing Emilio from a representational and illustrative artist to a new abstract and surrealist artist. This change has proved to be prudent and has slowly developed from his previous styles.

At present Emilio has begun to reinvent a world of element, form, and colour. In the aquatic fauna and flora theme, his expression of growth is expanding into thoughts of rebirth and the need to care for the environment. However, also in this current period of artistic gestation Emilio continues to be faithful to his skill of portraying vibrant representational themes about people.

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