Moved!

I have now moved to Montreal and over to www.agilliankingblog.tumblr.com - see you there!

And the Winner is...

Time to announce our Bolo Neck Tie Give Away Winner....

Drumroll.....

Tamara!!

Tamara and I have been following eachother's blogs for a few years now. She is an awesome textile artist from Vancouver with an incredibly quirky and fun blog. I love reading about the processes of the work she does as well as amusing day to day activities.

So congrats Tamara!

(Tamara if you're able to email me your address I'll have the bolo sent out to you asap! a.gillian.king@gmail.com)

[source]

Tamara, is this what you drink? I know I'm more of a coffee drinker...

It was so great reading all of your responses - thanks friends :) Your comments made my heart warm which helps on cold and rainy days like today. 

If you're still wanting a Bolo Neck Tie they are currently available at Lune Vintage and as of this week, Urban Waves in Winnipeg! If you're from out of town and want to get your hands on one just shoot me an email!

I dressed this mannequin at Lune Vintage today - featuring a handmade purse by local designer, Snootsie, a bolo by myself, and vintage skirt and shirt.

Wishing everyone a happy weekend!

'Everything Good is Bad'

There has been a serious influx of amazing new music and art this past week that I feel is necessary to share. As it keeps piling up I'm becoming more concerned that I've had blinders on or have been living under a rock! Anyways, it feels good to now be in the know and have some new favourite artists and musicians :)

First! Fastwurms! A crazy Canadian art collective who currently have three large mixed media pieces in the Bestial Encounters show at the WAG. I am so attracted to the colours and symbolism in their work - I just find their work so overwhelming and powerful to look at. Even crazier is that they are practicing witches! I would love to see one of their performances as they stock up on dollarstore goods and in one performance gave participants haircuts with these dollarstore wigs to use the hair in spells. These are apparently good spells - not that I know much on the topic but it sounds fascinating!

Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse with their cat companions

Stigmata Otter from the series Six-Pitch-Otter-Slide by Fastwurms

Paper, pigment, varnish, copper, birch bark, encaustic, fungi, epoxy resin on plywood

Spotti Fang, photo by Fastwurms

Then there's Nicola Tyson, a New York based artist whose minimal figuartive abstractions focus on the psyche and physical body. I just can't get enough of them. It makes me want to do minimal abstracts!

Nude by Nicola Tyson

Figure Running by Nicola Tyson

Arm in Arm by Nicola Tyson

Self Portrait Laying Egg by Nicola Tyson

And since Kaja has come home she has introduced me to both Sharon Jones and JJ Grey & Mofro.

Hope you all enjoyed those newbies - kind of a mash up!

Also a reminder that the bolo give away ends this Thursday afternoon so if you haven't entered yet there's still time - hope you guys are having a wonderful week

'Singing Condition' and Bolo Give Away

Currently sitting on Darrin's porch drinking coffee and guarding the basket on my bike. 

Darrin's on the second floor so I can watch my bike like a hawk...

It's been so great to finally have nice weather in the peg and be able to bike around, catch some sun and watch the tulips open.

Tulips outside my old house ('Oakwood')

 It's also been an interesting shift from an intensive studio thesis year to being in writing courses for first time again in over a year. I enjoy studio courses the most so I have left all the writing to the end of my degree. My first assignment for my 'Writing About Art' course involved us doing an object/subject analysis of a piece currently in the Winnipeg Art Gallery and we were told to 'put ourselves in it'. I got quite excited about this as the most writing I have tackled in the past year has been artist statements and blog posts. Being an avid blogger on an art/personal blog I have gotten used to relating my own personal experiences to what I see so I was quite excited to have written a more 'formal' piece on contemporary art with a personal spin on it. I was a bit disenchanted upon getting my paper back and was told I may have gotten a bit too personal. For the next assignment I made sure to take myself out of it but have decided that this would be the perfect venue to share my potentially too personal writing assignment - hooray for blogs! So here is my piece on Erika Lincoln's piece the 'Singing Condition'. The show will be on at the WAG until June 12 and I highly recommend you go check it out!

Birds of a Feather:

A Look Into Erika Lincoln’s Sound Art Installation in The WAG’s Bestial Encounters Exhibit

[source]

Winnipeg based artist, Erika Lincoln, set out to make a sound art installation with ‘Singing Condition’, that focuses on the adaptability of urban birds in Winnipeg but I think the figures in this piece also draw connections to the tight knit community of musicians and artists who have adapted and made a home here. Lincoln lives in Wolseley and noticed that the birds in her back lane had started to mimic the sounds of car alarms, almost like budgees or parrots mimicking their surroundings.

Entering the Bestial Encounters exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery you instantly sense Lincoln’s installation from the echoes of what sounds like electronic birds chirping. By following these sounds I was led around a corner to twenty bird like creatures standing at eye level interacting with one another while standing in groups of four or five. Each ‘bird’ is made up of a microphone stand equipped with a copper plate, etched with stylized, feather-like designs, a speaker that emits electronic bird sounds, and a mechanical ‘beak’ made of wood similar to drum sticks that opens and closes as its ‘voice box’ sings. The placement of these birds standing and interacting like people, rather than hanging or ‘flying’ from the ceiling, reinforces my view of these sculptures as figures or musicians.

The first thing I thought of when experiencing this piece was the old house I used to live in South Osborne where I too had a backlane and could hear the birds chirping amongst the broken down snowmobiles and cars when I went outside. My roommate at the time was a musician and used our house as a jam space five nights of the week. This was a constant source of amusement as well as annoyance when I was trying to sleep, but made me so aware of the incredibly close knit and supportive music scene in Winnipeg as I am not a musician but a visual artist. Experiencing Lincoln’s piece brings me back to that house we call ‘Oakwood’ (as it resides on Oakwood Avenue) and I imagine Lincoln living there, having these same experiences and these ‘birds’ scattered around the house as she’s building them, mingling and singing as if mimicking the artists and musicians around them.

The curator of the exhibit, Mary Reid, made the same observation about Winnipeg’s collaborative arts community saying in her interview on local radioshow ‘Eat Your Arts and Vegetables’, “I love the way that the artists here are incredibly connected to one another… In Winnipeg I find that people are extremely collaborative, excited about what each other’s doing, [and] wanting to share… I’m also interested in the interdisciplinary nature where you have artists working with dancers, working with composers, working with video artists.”

I feel connected to Erika Lincoln’s ‘Singing Condition’ as the piece makes me think of the incredibly creative home I resided in for my early university years and the little things I will miss about Winnipeg when I move to Montreal in the fall.

My bff Kaja and I checking out the exhibit the other day

I don't think I've mentioned that I'm moving to Montreal yet! That may have been the first debut - I had been holding off until things were more solidified and until I found an apartment but it's been decided for a few months now that I'm moving! I'm moving with the lovely Kaja (featured above) who is an amazing contemporary/jazz dancer. And Darrin got into grad school at Carleton in Ottowa so we can be an hour away from eachother via train and have TWO cities to hang out in! 

Darrin playing with my parent's dogs

All very exciting :) I've never lived in a different city before and with graduation at the end of summer I thought what better time to move to my favourite city? It also helps that the place is busting at the seams with art! Kaja and I are heading out mid summer to look for places and the plan is to move in the fall. I'm really looking forward to all the new experiences and keeping an ongoing log of it here. 

Keeping on with new things - I realized the other day I have never done a Give Away before! I've decided to give away one of my favourite bolo neck ties - it features a close up of the innards of an electronic device which I think is a pretty fun contrast with the idea of a traditional western bolo tie.

Oh right! I've dyed my hair blue! My dad calls it "Robin's Egg Blue" and he shockingly likes it?

I also am so curious to know all about you guys so to enter the give away you must answer the following questions in the comments section of this post!

Questions:

1. Where are you from and what makes it special to you?

2. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?

3. What sort of things do you enjoying seeing/reading about most on 'Gillian Giggs'?

* Be sure to leave your name and email or blog at the end of the post so I can contact you to let you know if you've won!

The giveaway will end in exactly one week so by 3pm (Winnipeg time) next Thursday May 26th. I will be drawing out of a hat and announcing the winner later that day - I will then contact you for your shipping address :)

And lastly, Kara and I just finished taking down the GORGE show at the Edge last night so I just wanted to share our interview with Derek Brueckner and Aleem Khan from the radioshow Eat Your Arts and Vegetables last week - to listen click here. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week and I can't wait to hear the responses for the give away!

Full French Presses

Whew! It's been a while! This has been due to life madness and potentially the busiest week of my life that ended yesterday... It feels so good to finally be able to sleep in, have a full french press of coffee (vs. barely time for one cup), make some tofu bacon, and sit here catching up while listening to Derek Brueckner and Aleem Khan interview Mary Reid (the WAG curator and the instructor to the new art class I'm taking 'Writing About Art') on Eat Your Arts and Vegetables.

Speaking of Eat Your Arts and Vegetables, Kara Passey and I will be on it this Thursday May 12th at 5:30pm on 95.9FM to talk about our current show, GORGE, at the Edge Gallery. If you're not able to listen this coming Thursday the interview will be available to download or stream for the next 10 weeks off their site.

So onto the GORGE show - Kara and I had our opening night this past Friday and it was amazing! We held a vegan potluck - not that there was a lot there - but so many great people came and there were great vibes all night. We both enjoy making crafty things so we even have a craft wall full of Kara's cat pillows, 'pussy pins' (buttons with cats on them), small watercolour studies, and my bolo ties. The show will be on until May 18th Monday through Friday 12-4pm so if you're in the city check it out!

And the one of a kind bolo neck ties! I've been making them like a crazy person lately and am currently selling them at Lune Vintage, the GORGE show, and soon Urban Waves. My lovely artist/photographer friend, Ashley Gillanders, and my old roommate/musician friend Alex Campbell and I got together last week and did a hilarious shoot in the art barn bathroom. The art barn is actually an old dairy cattle barn that was transformed into the University of Manitoba Fine Arts Painting building in the sixties, so due to heavy art use, the building is now quite a dive but is very close to my heart. One of the upstairs bathrooms has an amazing blue wall so we decided to use it as the backdrop for our shoot. I couldn't stop laughing at Campbell because when I picked him up to go to the shoot I asked him what sort of shirts he had and he whipped out A DOZEN western shirts! Talk about a prepared model! Campbell has played in and with a plethora of local bands including Jicah, Imaginary Cities, Bad Country, The JD Edwards Band, Retro Rhythm Review, and The Freaky Circles, to name a few and has acquired a large collection of these shirts because of it.

Here's Campbell playing keys with Imaginary Cities on tour last year.



And here are some of the shots that came out of our shoot!

* Click to enlarge *

Along with our upcoming interview on Eat Your Arts and Vegetables, Kara and I also sat down for an interview with Taylor Burgess of Stylus to talk about our work. Check out the article here!

And on another fun note I was featured this past Saturday in Dani Finch's 'My Stuff' column in the Winnipeg Free Press. When getting to the photo part after having given my answers I was a little embarrassed to be holding a stuffed animal... at least I was honest with my selections... 

To top off the week, it was Lauren McPhaden's wedding social on Saturday night, which was by far the best social I have ever been to and Day of the Dead themed - photos to come!

Off to another crazy week - if you get a chance go check out the U of M Photography Thesis show (featuring my brilliant bolo photographer, Ashley Gillanders) at PLATFORM Gallery Friday night!

Sharing is Caring

So the FLUX IN FLUX U of M painting, drawing, and sculpture thesis opening on Saturday was a great success! Such a nice way to cap off the thesis year with friends. It was fantastically curated by current Gallery Ingenue artist, Gen Levasseur, so if you didn't get a chance to see it the show will be on until April 30th.

Here are some photos Gen took at the opening...

Left to right: Jen Adams, Rachel Schappert, myself, and Lauren McPhaden choosing remnant keepsakes of Gen's Manitoba made ceramics which she burnt at Open House

Left to Right: Chris Miller, Derek Brueckner, Jen Adams

Left to right: Rachel Schappert, Jill Peters, Steve Basham, and myself

Next on the show roster is my duo show at the Edge Gallery with Kara Passey, GORGE, with the Opening night May 6th. I'm really excited for this show as Kara and I's work have overlapping themes including food, sexuality, fertility, and feminism. And along with our art we will have a craft wall so you can own a piece of our work if you can't afford a large scale oil painting or sculpture.

Kara also has a new blog you can check out for her latest and greatest! She also reposted a great blog post today by Austin Kleon, which I had to share, called 'How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)'. I found the post so interesting because I've been telling my painting students to always reference other artists and to borrow ways that they paint because that's how the old masters learnt. I think this post is helpful for any artist. 

With my thesis year being over (this really hasn't sunk in yet) life is still jam packed. This week will be full of making new bolo neck ties (photos to come), experimenting with spray insulator to make sculptures and wearable art, a big painting thesis potluck tomorrow night, a ladies night with Leo (DiCaprio) movies, a bus trip to Brandon with my friend and upcoming May Gallery Ingenue artist, Megan Driedger, Diana Thorneycroft and a busload of other people to see Michael Boss's show. Darrin's also heading to New York where I'm hoping he goes to the George Condo show and takes sneaky photos from his iphone for me... I'm so jealous...

And if you haven't seen, Gallery Ingenue just got a makeover by the talented Kyla Roma of Freckled Nest! With the makeover also came a new widget so you can share the Gallery Ingenue blog and support Winnipeg artists on your blog! Copy and paste the link below to get your hands on the new widget.

Hope everyone has a great week ahead!

FLUX

With the past few weeks being a whirlwind of activity prepping for the Annual Fine Arts Open House held last Sunday, I woke up Monday morning not knowing what to do with myself. After making coffee and sitting down at my computer, reality struck, and I realized I in fact still have a lot to do - I still have my final thesis crit this Thursday, I've started teaching another adult's abstract painting class and a children's mixed media class last week, and I've got four more shows in the next two months including the FLUX IN FLUX show which starts this Saturday... 

With the amount of things to do it's hard to settle into the fact that I'm two days away from being finished my thesis year and once I'm finished my final art history and studio courses this summer I will be finished my undergrad... But life is great and being busy with things you love to do is the way to go!

So let's recap! Last Friday was the final installment of the TOMS Shoe design contest held by Segue and the Students of Fine Arts Association. We held a Style Your Sole Event in Conjunction with A Day Without Shoes. All the winning artists from the contest were sitting in University Center throughout the day painting shoes. Here's Julie Coss, also a current Gallery Ingenue artist, painting our friend Tammy's daughter's shoes. We did a little collaboration of umbrellas and rain :)

And then The Open House on Sunday! SOFA organized a pretty big event this year with five local bands; Girth, The Upsides, Fists In, Mise En Scene, and Cannon Bros. as well as a beer garden and art auction. Here's Kara Passey and Dany Pickeret's band Fists In...

and a video of the lovely ladies of Mise En Scene...

Fun fact: Jodi Dunlop, Stefanie Johnson, and Helga Jakobson of Mise en Scene are all Fine Arts students!

There was also a surprise performance from performance artist, Rachel Scahppert's, Anarchist Marching Band! Rachel is the self proclaimed hula-hoop enthusiast in red.

Now for some shots of the art!

My studio, shockingly clean with my paintings, sculptures, and breast milk fountain. Please ignore my awkward pose.

Standing beside my Goddess of the Hunt painting

My partner in crime, Lauren McPhaden's thesis space

Lauren's Extinction Series

Lauren McPhaden - One of my faves - to be shown in the 'Primitive' show this June at Gallery Ingenue!

Lauren McPhaden - a self-portrait based off a photo she found when she was young

Mixed Media Installation by Rachel Schappert

Rachel Schappert

Peeled Paint Paintings by Julie Coss

Made in Manitoba by Gen Levasseur

A House Within A House series by Ryan Trudeau

Ryan Trudeau

Jen Adams

Rebecca Blue

Unknown artist

Ladies of Mise en Scene by Unknown artist

Installation and Painting by Kara Passey

Bones painting by Megan Driedger

Jill McGillvray's Hunting series

Jill McGillvray

Paintings by Dee Barsy

Sadly the Open House is a one day event but if you'd like to see work by the 2011 Fine Arts thesis students you can visit the FLUX IN FLUX show I have listed above or head down to Gallery 111 in the Fitzgerald Building at the University of Manitoba and see selected works until April 20th.

I also had a chance to get together with, Ashley Gillanders, photographer extraordinaire to take some photos of my new work and here are the results!

The cooked chicken human aka 'Poultry'

My bronze, One of the Same, overseen by Mexican Sculptor, Octavio Gonzalez

In other exciting news, I start my job at Lune Vintage this week! I can't wait to work in the same room as the ladies creative of Freckled Nest and soak up the loveliness of the shop. If you haven't been there yet you HAVE to go! And if you're from out of town, no need to fret, there is an online store!

Kyla Roma of Freckled Nest also just finished an amazing new design for the Gallery Ingenue blog! Check it out here and be sure to add the new Gallery Ingenue widget to your blog!

Ok signing off for now - more to come this week!