Gillian King: Gallery Hopping

All of a sudden yesterday I started to sneeze.... uncontrollably... Overnight, this sneezing has started to threaten a full on head cold so I'm spending today laying low, getting caught up on emails, re-writing artist statements, and bios, and later, once I'm full of vitamin C and have had my fill of chamomile tea I will venture to the studio to work on 'The Big Girl'. Since I am trying to recharge at home I thought it would be a great time to fill you in on the eventful and productive weekend I had gallery hopping with my friend Leslie!

Around noon on Saturday we started at the Plug In and checked out the current show Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years which was wonderfully put together and included Kent Monkman who I always enjoy seeing.

Louis Vitton Quiver by Kent Monkman

Then after heading to Mondragon (a local vegan restaurant/bookstore) for papusas and caesar salad lunch we hit up several galleries in the Exchange district starting with Ace Art. Ace Art has a great show on right now featuring work by Kristin Nelson called My Life with Pamela Anderson.

Two main themes of Kristin's work include gender identity and urban sprawl. Kristin 's show consisted of incredibly impressive cross stitched portraits of Pamela, herself, and photoshopped images of the two of them hanging out. Here are some photos, the first with Leslie admiring the scale and intricacy of the cross stitching...

In the smaller section of the gallery Kristin had drawings of Winnipeg's downtown entirely as parking lots. As a Winnipegger this is quite funny/concerning as Winnipeg's downtown is filled with parking lots but people still complain there aren't enough... In the corner of the room was a knitted mock hay bale with a sign out sheet and no one had signed it out yet! So Leslie and I proceeded to sign it out, stuff it through tiny hallways and stairwells and bring it on a photoshoot in Old Market Square in the Exchange district. It was lots of fun and such a great idea - here we are posing and running around like little idiots with the hay bale...

Avid knitters or lovers of the knitted - do not fret - the knitting is not sitting directly on the snow - there is a hidden tarp beneath it

While we were walking out of Ace Art after dropping off the hay bale we bumped into some friends of mine from school and went into the Outworks gallery to see their third year painting majors show. It was awesome seeing such promising work in the show and I can't wait to see what they do in their thesis years!

Later that night we checked out my old drawing instructor, Derek Brueckner's show at the Semai Gallery. Quite a cool space as it is making use of a basement hallway as a gallery and it's always nice to see Derek's work!

After a big day on Saturday Darrin made breakfast Sunday morning that included tempeh bacon, tofu scramble, and avocado on poppy seed bagels - pretty awesome :)