Gallery 96 is pleased to partner with the Ontario Arts Council through spotlight: the arts where you live plus Factory 163 to give the public an opportunity to experience local visual arts. Factory 163 is the new home of Gallery 96 and is located at 163 King Street in Stratford.

Gallery 96 Members’ Showcase

Gallery 96 Members’ Showcase features the diverse talents of the artist members of Gallery 96.  Media explored include oil and acrylic paintings, sculpture, photography, fibre art, printmaking, and digital art.  The opening reception will take place on Friday, June 5 from 7 pm – 10 pm at Factory 163 at 163 King St in Stratford.  The exhibition will be opened for spotlight: the arts where you live Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7 from 10 am to 5 pm.  The show continues until Sunday, June 14 and is open from noon to 5 pm daily.  Everyone is welcomed to view the exhibition.
 
Artists participating in this show include:  Glenn Elliott, Nancy Groenestege, Gloria Kagawa, Anna Koot, James MacDougall, Irene Miller, Darlean Morris, Wendy O’Brien, Valerie O'Flynn, Wendy Orr, Kathi Posliff, Michelle Salter, Erik Sansom, and Lesley Walker-Fitzpatrick.

Environmental Poem

Let poetry lead you through the architecture of this converted factory.  Artist and poet Lesley Walker Fitzpatrick will take you step-by-step up the staircase of Factory 163 with her environmental poem.

Fri: 7 pm–10 pm Sat & Sun: 9 am–5 pm

Gallery 96 would like take this opportunity to thank Wendy O’Brien for organizing Gallery 96’s participation in spotlight: the arts where you live in Stratford.                                                  .
 

Stratford, Ontario – Manipulate This is an exhibition featuring the work of ten Stratford area artists, which expresses their vision of hybrid art. It explores the digital arts from the perspective of traditionally artistic backgrounds such as that of painting, sculpture, photography, drawing and printmaking. The opening reception is on Saturday, September 6 at 8 pm. The show is at Factory 163 at 163 King St in Stratford in the southeast corner of the building. Nick Storring provides music for the evening in a meld of the classical and electronic. The exhibition runs from Saturday, September 6 to Sunday, September 14 and is open daily from noon to 5 pm. The artists will be present at the reception.

The second weekend (Saturday, September 13 at 8 pm) will bring a related event – Manipulate That – an opportunity for the public to manipulate materials to create new artworks, both visual and/or musical, just as the artists have done.

Through several workshops on computer graphics and animation sponsored by Gallery 96 and the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the artists have combined their traditional art forms with new media to create exciting new art works.  Each artwork is as individual as the artist.

Glenn Elliott combines clay sculpture with animation to produce a playful work called living water.

Photographer Elisabeth Feryn layers images from nature to create a rich tapestry of line and form.

Graphic artist and painter Nancy Groenestege creates fanciful and colourful abstracts from unlikely source materials.

Gloria Kagawa takes one of her early prints and transforms it into a completely unexpected work.

Wendy O'Brien manipulates an image of her fibre art, prints this and then embellishes the print, to bring the piece full circle: an art quilt to a digital canvas to a new fibre work.

Valerie O'Flynn layers images from past paintings to create a complex and thought provoking image that speaks to today’s issues in society.

Michelle Salter explores the intricacies of a sculptural piece, expanding and playing with line, colour and composition, to create new 2-dimentional artworks.  

Published illustrator and cartoonist Erik Sansom photographs the gallery space at Factory 163, enhancing the complexity of line in his image to produce a unique vision.

Painter and sculptor Bonnie Steinman’s latest exploration of clay sculpture has morphed into a series of beautiful and mysterious 2-dimensional images.

Lesley Walker-FitzPatrick creates a strong message within a collage of photographs, demonstrating the potential of manipulation in conveying content.

Music for the opening is generated by Nick Storring, a traditionally trained cellist who uses manipulation to compose “his own feral version of beatboxing, gibberish rapping, and crude vocoder histrionics”. He is involved in a diverse cross-section of bands and projects including the experimental jazz sounds of I Have Eaten The City, the haunting music of Picastro, the wayward cello duo The Knot and the backing ensemble for soulful singer *Saidah Baba Talibah. He has also appeared live and on recordings with many artists and orchestras and is a recent winner of the 2008 Jeux de Temps/ Times Play competition.

Arts writer Christine Walde comments on artists influenced by the new media arts: “Artists have always employed the technologies of their time, and as the knowledge and usage of computers and digital technology increases, it is only natural that artists should incorporate this technology into their work, pushing the boundaries of their artistic practice. As a result, a new generation of artists are emerging, exploring technology at the root of its power. As the future pulls us forward, many artists feel they are compelled to follow in modernism’s footprints, propelled by the technology that carries them. In many ways, digital technology and new media is the new clay. But what’s most interesting, however, is when the technology falls away to reveal the art itself and the viewer is empowered.”