SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 2011

Gerald Beaulieu exhibited his monumental work Field, consisting of an upwards of one hundred corn stalks rising six feet in height.  For a viewer, this work created a field-like corn maze experience, drawing the outside into the constructed gallery space.  Additionally, the artist exhibited other agricultural related sculptures bringing both wit and an examination of food production trends. The show was timed to coincide with our current agricultural discussions focusing on the value and necessity of local farmers and home-grown food.
Image credit:  Gerald Beaulieu, 2011. Field, installation view.

July – August, 2011

Continuing his interest in landscape imagery, artist and Mt. Allison Fine Arts professor, Chris Down considered the function of our representation of “nature” and his own “rootedness” in the physical world.  His paintings and wall drawing addressed cycles of growth and decay as well as geological processes.www.chrisdown.ca
Image Credit:  Chris Down, 2010.  Working Drawing (study of Love Does No Good), gouache and oil pastel on paper.

May 15-June 26, 2011

Created during a residency at the Ross Creek Centre, this multimedia installation included sculpture and video. The exhibit concentrated on MacRae’s interest in the commodification of water and the associations implicated by water branding through an artistic and mechanical imagining. The process of constructing the harvester, as well as the actual water collection, examined our deep-rooted connection to water.

Image credit: Alisdair McRae, 2010.

March 6- April 30, 2011

Alissa Kloet ’s textile works combined illustration, dye, stitching and appliqué.  Through this medium the artist considered space and movement and the interaction of textile artwork in a constructed environment.  Thematically she considered themes of nostalgia and memory and the notion of an idealized past.  www.alissakloet.com
Image credit: Alissa Kloet, 2011. Rest of the Story.

March 6 – April 10, 2011

Artist in residence McKellar’s stunning large scale works on canvas took the viewer to a new world, timeless and sometimes surreal. All of her works were created during her residency at Ross Creek, inspired by her time at the Centre and discovery of the local community.

November 5 – December 18, 2010

Ella Morton is a Canadian artist whose spectacular photographic works focused on her time in Iceland. This graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris was in residence at Ross Creek for November and December, working on new works and teaching in local schools on behalf of Ross Creek. Her exhibit of colour prints and a video installation, sought to address the mystery and inscrutability of the natural world. 

Image: detail  

October 3- November 2

Ross Creek welcomed the stark and moving sea inspired work of Anna Ruth. Ruth explored the world and civilisations through the exploration of line. Her accomplished spare images combining paper, coloured light and plastic told grand stories about the world under the sea. Anna Ruth is a Canadian artist currently living and working in Jyväskylä, Finland. Ross Creek thanks the Canada Council and the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for their contributions

July 1 – August 25

Pat Loucks is a textile artist and  graduate of NSCAD, who has worked in a variety of forms including shibori, weaving, felting, screenprinting, resist dyeing, embroidery and quilting, Many of which were on display.  In addition to her studio work, Pat works with schools to bring arts programs to elementary and high school students. Her textile work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada and in Europe.

May 2 – June 22, 2010

This show included new works and those previously exhibited as Adam’s series for the Alzheimer’s Clinic in Halifax and formed a powerful examination of the brain and memory through art. Large scale paintings and  a series of small pieces, all added up to an intense study of the mind’s eye. This was part of our Mind Matters: Arts and Mental Health Series

Image: detail 

May 2 – June 22

A wonderful collection of work by artists of Creative Spirit East, and supported by the Veith Street Gallery. Creative Spirit East is a collective of artists challenged by disabilities who work together to express themselves through their art, build on their talent and skills, learn about the business of art, showcase their artwork and meet with the public at venues and galleries.

April 11 – April 30, 2010 
A wonderful and sometimes whimsical, sometimes moving, exploration of the theme of faith by four contemporary Canadian artists. With works ranging from spirit goalie masks to photography, this show included works by Alisdair MacRae, Jamie Campbell, Barbara Hobot and Patrick Cull.

March 7th – March 31st, 2010

Artist Amy Friend took us to a place of memory, beauty and desire, transforming everyday objects into transcendent icons through her spectacular large scale photography. Amy Friend was born and raised in Ontario before embarking on intermittent travels through Europe, Morocco, Cuba, and the United States. Her work has been exhibited at several contemporary galleries and in 2008 she was selected for the Magenta Flash Forward Emerging Photography Competition. In the Fall of 2009 Amy exhibited a series of photographs in Camaguey, Cuba titled Agua de Noche.

Image: Detail

November 1 – December 18, 2009

In her work, Halifax-based textile artist Joanna Close wove images of the rural landscape into a richly coloured and delicately textured series of hand-woven, hand-dyed blankets inspired by the members of her family. Says Close regarding her work, “I consider space as a defining factor of Canada’s geography. Knowing the land and the area around you is an idea I explore. In particular the connections we have to the landscapes we grew up in.”

Close is a NSCAD graduate and completed her MA in Textile and Fibre Art at the Winchester School of Art (U of Southampton) in the UK in 2006.  She has exhibited widely throughout Atlantic Canada.

October 2009

A fabulous series of new works by Maliseet artist Christmas focused on the stories of Glooscap in Cape Breton. Working in layers with ancient petroglyph imagery as the basis with airbrush on top, these paintings brought the legendary Glooscap to life.

Image detail 

September 13th – 30th 2009

Mae Leong presented multi-media installations that filled the room with an impressive array of sculptural artworks fashioned from reclaimed materials, everyday objects and sounds.

September 2009

From Away featured images of migrant farmers living and working in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. The inciting question that served as a focal point for project: Where and how does the image of the migrant farmer appear in our pictured agricultural landscapes? While commuting and passing from one place to another, one witnesses “temporary foreign workers” actively farming in the fields of Nova Scotia, yet they do not tend to figure in its quaint pastoral.  The image of those “from away” remains distant in most instances, despite physical nearness.

July 12th – August 7th, 2009

Cape Breton artist Teena Marie Fancey came to Ross Creek Centre for the Arts with Redux, Redux, a collection of enchanting mixed media artworks. Inspired by half-forgotten poems and fairy tales from her childhood and combining discarded objects and scraps with traditional art forms she told enchanting visual stories.

May 3 – July 1, 2009

Memory, Tradition, Evolution investigated the uncanny way in which memory is difficult to articulate, but palpably felt. Through the use of installation, mixed media and sculpture, the viewer was taken on a visual journey that stepped outside the comfort zone of everyday life.

Anne Pickard is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist who has been exhibiting since the 1980s. Based in Newfoundland, she is known to many as Handy Girl, an advocate of sustainable living and conscious consumerism.  

Image: detail 

April 5 – 25, 2009

This show explored the work of five local artists who each in their own way redefine, redress, or reinvent traditional materials, techniques and artistic themes. Working in mediums ranging from textiles and painting to photography and collage, each artist explored the theme of tradition in a unique and imaginative way.

January 11 – March 15, 2009

Shirley Moorhouse’s work offered a visceral and imaginative glimpse into the timeless space of legend, belief, and spirituality. Without hesitation, Moorhouse combined traditional materials such as tanned smoked caribou hide, wool, sinew and felt with non-traditional objects found in her immediate surroundings. Says Moorhouse, regarding her work, “Within each piece I feel a deeper awareness of my ancestry, my family and myself. It is an individual foray into the ongoing story.” Moorhouse is an Inuit artist based in Labrador.

Artist-in-Residence Sojourner Truth drew her time at Ross Creek to a close with an exhibition of work created while in residence. Truth worked with mundane or discarded materials–cardboard, string, feather, twigs—to create transmutative paper sculptures. Emphasizing change, the sculptures came together with Truth’s pen and ink drawings in enchanting installations that were both tender and coarse at once.

November 2 – December 18.
Alexandra McCurdy’s work created a stunning confrontation between the soft mediums of quilts and textiles with hardened forms in porcelain and clay. Inspired by Mi’kmaq Quill and needlework, European textile and her personal history, McCurdy’s work investigated the passage of time and the influence of tradition on both a personal and cultural level.

November 2 – December 18. 
The MY STORY Photo Project 3  was a community based art project facilitated by photographers Nat and Sue Tileston, that encouraged and provided an artistic outlet for refugees at the Thai/Burma border. “There are no art galleries in the jungle or refugee camps; so this was a new experience for these young artists. They were treated as artists, not refugees,” says Susan Tileston regarding the project. Nathaniel and Susan Tileston worked as professional photographers in New York City for 20 years before moving to Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County in 1982.

Rachel Ryan – Night Travels  
September 14 – October 24 20008

Rachel Ryan’s work is story-telling through art, with evocative images of a landscape and a  community in fabric.  “Rachel Ryan began making art based on sea-faring folktales, set against the backdrop of rural Newfoundland, where she grew up. Gradually, her vision turned to ‘dreamscapes’: surreal landscapes reflecting an integration of influences such as Frida Kahlo, Marc Chagall, Gustav Klimt, and Friedensreich Hundertwasser with her own experiences and surroundings. ‘My work has always retained a strong environmental element, and I find myself becoming more and more interested in the interactions of human construct within the natural world, as well as the balance of secular realities and the sacred realm. Like the symbol of the mermaid, half human female and half mythological creature, I feel the pull of each.’ ” – CRAFT COUNCIL of NEWFOUNDLAND and LABRADOR website.

Barbara Hill-Taylor – Recursive
July 1 -August 30, 2008

“Barbara Hill-Taylor creates three-dimensional quilts that are displayed on specially-made wrought-iron obelisks, like free-standing quilted sculptures. The quilts evoke layer upon layer of a landscape that goes on forever, brown upon brown, green on upon green, and topped with a big sky. In between layers, there are surprises: a shot of yellow like a canola field; or a floral fabric suggesting wildflowers by the side of the road.” – Dalnews.dal.ca

Her work at Ross Creek included both traditional Quilts and collaborative three dimensional quilted sculptures of both natural and created materials.

Tony Myers - Journey to the Border
May 4th – June 22, 2008

Myers’ work draws on the traditions of Western relief printmaking from medieval woodcuts and examines the “border’ between the physical and spiritual worlds in work that is strong, expressive and moving.  His exhibited work included an exploration of the “language of birds” and the bird as messenger, primitive spirituality and mankind’s relationship to nature. “The language of birds is very ancient, and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is understood.” (Gilbert White)

Journeys – Group Show
April 6-May 1, 2008

The Ross Creek Centre for the Arts was excited to present a group of Nova Scotian artists and craftspeople all exploring the world of Journeys, both literal and metaphoric. With new works by Wayne Boucher, Lynn Misner, Rachel Reeve, Alan Syliboy and Christopher Webb and revisited works from Bob Hainstock and  CMK Hull.

Les Newman – Death of the Party
February 3 – March  27, 2008

Death of the Party was a whimsical and inspired series where there’s more than what first meets the eye. A great exploration of colour and message, inspired by a recent trip to Japan, this exhibit from Winnipeg’s Les Newman continued with the theme Journey  in his own colourful, satirical journey.

Image: Messenger by Tony Myers

Nick Rudnicki  - Dead of Night
Nov 4 – Dec 20, 2007

“It can only happen at night.” Dead of Night is the most recent incarnation of Nick’s passionate pursuit of his artistic practice.  Nick has always been interested in the notion of the pointedly sublime, of the fruitfully tense and the heroically bold image.  This body of work taps into that sensibility in the most refined way to date.  The detailed studies of  the city at night resonate with the ghostly tensions and anticipations of 4am.

Christine Ross – Memento  
September 13 – October 26 2007

Christine Ross’s exhibit is a result of experimenting with photography, paper and an Epson printer resulting in images that appear as memories of the original with the qualities of rich darks and luminescent lights maintained.

Sara Hartland-Rowe – The Gods that Walk Among Us
June 29-September 2, 2007

Sara Hartland-Rowe’s powerful work examined images of the Fates in our world. Using the theatre as inspiration, she showed mythical sisters in ordinary dress, weaving their magic in a world both familiar and mysterious. Her large scale work was developed and inspired by her residency at Ross Creek.

Lucie Chan – MISSED FUSIONS
January 14 – March 2, 2007

Lucie Chan’s work takes the form of portraits. Her portraits communicate as a single face or through the layering of faces, which suggests a broad history emerging from one image.

Tonia diRisio – Misbehaving
November 12-December 15, 2007

A witty and thought-provoking photographic exhibit by first generation Canadian artist di Risio. She looks at relationships between mother, daughter and grandmother using the humorous backdrop of doll house scenes and assemblage.

 Image: Misbehaving by Tonio di Riso

Julie Adamson Miller – Shelter.
September 10 -November 5, 2006

Shelter is defined as protection, asylum, or sanctuary. Humans build physical as well as emotional shelters. A unique hands-on exhibit exploring the impact of our physical and architectural environments.

Frozen Ponds and Singing Peepers:
Reflections of Women Artists in Nova Scotia.
April 23-June 2, 2006

This collection of works from Nova Scotian women artists featured the Atlantic Bestiary series by Cecil Day. Her text based prints are borrowed from a variety of traditional Atlantic Canadian folk sayings:

Ponds must freeze three times in spring,
Before you hear the peepers sing.

Bob Hainstock - From Land to Sky: Patterns in Nature.
February 19 – March 26, 2006

This exhibition from well know Valley artist Bob Hainstock featured a collection of original oil paintings celebrating the big skies and open horizons reflected in the landscapes across Canada. The show was complemented by an exhibit of select works from his Ross Creek students in the RBC Community Gallery.

New Moon Festival: Reflections of an Ancient Culture.
Jan 15 – Feb 10, 2006

This Ross Creek Gallery exhibition focused on current projects of three students who have connections to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and who are of Chinese descent. Yang Hong, recently graduated with a Masters of Fine Art in Painting, was one of fifteen finalists in the Canada wide RBC Young Painters Competition 2005. Christine Cheung is completing a NSCAD MFA in painting, and Guang Zhu is in her Foundation year at NSCAD U.

Image: Shelter by Julie Adamson-Miller

Travels with Charlie.
Sept 18 – Dec 19, 2005

Charles MacDonald traveled the world as ship’s carpenter at the end of the age of sail. During his years at sea, and continuing through his life on land, MacDonald recorded the places he visited, the people he met and the sights he saw in water colour sketchbooks and on canvas. The exhibition traced, through his journals and paintings, some highlights of the artistic journey of this talented Nova Scotian. Through the images, visitors were able to share some of adventures of this remarkable man from Steam Mill NS. Works in the exhibition were on loan from the Charles MacDonald Concrete House Museum in Centreville, NS, and the Harley Hazelwood Collection.

Acadia Surfacing.
July 30 – Sept 6th, 2005

Featured the work of 4 Acadian artists: René Pierre Allain, Marcelle Belliveau, Denise Comeau and Francois Gaudet. Each artist uses abstraction to explore issues, concerns, and hopes common to the contemporary Acadian community. The art works express emotions related to relocation, loss of identity, assimilation, and re-definition of traditional cultural roles.

Roots and Wings.
March 13-April 17th, 2005

Roots and Wings was an exhibition of Contemporary work by three First Nations artists currently living and working in the Atlantic Provinces: Ned Bear, Alan Syliboy and Arlene, (Dozay) Christmas. The works were connected by common threads: each artist calls up memories from the past through family or spirit ancestors and guides, and through their images creates a vision for our current times. Woven throughout all the work is an immense strength and dignity. Roots and wings provides viewers with an opportunity to see and hear the voices of these extraordinary individuals, strong voices from the past recalled to the present.

Image: Rene Pierre Allain