Author: Siobhan Humston

Islands & Time

It is amazing to me that I am already three weeks into the month long artist residency at Earthskin in New Zealand! Since packing my things into storage in Vancouver to make life as creatively exploratory and affordable as possible, I have spent time at Lake Ontario visiting family and house-sitting, attended my beloved Uncle Liam’s funeral in Ireland with my Dad, spent a whirlwind eighteen days in Gwaii Haanas and the Haida Gwaii Museum as one of three artists in residence and am now preparing an artist talk for this Sunday at Earthskin.

With the rise in rent at the ARC (Vancouver’s unique live/work artist’s studios) and my desire to continue to develop my art practice outside of painting work for commercial galleries, these residencies have been a perfect unfolding for me both professionally and emotionally. I have felt my body relax here in a way that it hasn’t in years. Emerging through exploration of the Nikau palm forest, the Gannet bird colony and Muriwai Beach, is the organic linking of new themes that began in Gwaii Haanas with already established ideas from my MFA studies in Cornwall, UK.

My art practice is evolving in unexpected ways and as a direct response to following this interdisciplinary path, I have added two new pages to the website: COLLECTIONS and EARTHWORKS. I am also building a synopsis page of the artist residencies I’ve done since 2012 to visually link these creatively intense periods that have marked significant shifts in the type of art that I make.

Next up: from October 3rd through until mid-January I will be Artist in Residence at the stunning Sitka Center for Art & Ecology (Oregon coast, USA) with several artists, poets, musicians and ecologists. To follow the day to day stream of photographs, please follow me at ‘siobhanhumstonart’ on Instagram

Meanwhile, here’s a sampling of what’s new.

Eelgrass Globe, Haida Gwaii Museum, July 2017 [Globes Earthworks page]

Tidal Marking, Haida Gwaii Museum  [ Tidal Marking   Earthworks page]

Kunghit Island Finds, Haida Gwaii Museum [ Kunghit Island Finds  Collections page]

Ninety Gwaii Haanas Islands, Haida Gwaii Museum [not yet posted]

Never an Island, Always the Sea Rising, Earthskin New Zealand [work in progress]

Earthskin studio, work in progress

Earthskin studio, Never an Island drawings in progress

Gwaii Haanas Artist in Residence

Gwaii Haanas Speakers Series – Friday, July 28, 2017

Upcoming Artist in Residence gigs

I am honoured and excited to share with you that I have been selected as an Artist in Residence by the kind folks at Parks Canada and Haida Gwaii Museum. The residency will be for two weeks this coming July and offers a three person exhibition at the museum for early 2018.

The course of my adult life has seen me following a trail of creative crumbs that continues to lead me to the deeper parts of my soul through connecting with nature and such a lovely variety of people from all over the world. I have followed both my family line and my heart’s path. These two upcoming residencies, the first in Gwaii Haanas National Reserve and the second at Earthskin in New Zealand feel like a coming home to elsewhere, that liminal place of land, sea and the greater past. Of nature and of exploration.

Thank you to everyone who helps with words of encouragement and hope. To collectors of my work and professional connections, to my family and my friends: I am so blessed to be sharing these breaths with you. Haawa. Bless.

Lynn Canyon, North Vancouver

Not Lost at Sea exhibition photographs

Thank you to everyone who came out to the opening reception of my solo exhibition Not Lost at Sea this past Sunday! It was lovely to see people interacting with the work and engaging in a variety of conversations about the pieces. Special thanks to Curator/Director Rosa Quintana Lillo (Rosa Quintana Lillo at Fazakas Gallery) and welcome to new Artist in Residence Bren Simmers.

Tender to the Sea catalogue, re-release

With over eighty photographs of recent sculptures, installations, paintings and drawings, the Tender to the Sea catalogue has been edited and is about to go to a second printing. It contains forty-eight pages of writing & documentation of the work and work-in-progress.

For pre-order at $14, which will include postage to wherever you’d like it sent, please email me at , text or call me in Vancouver at 00-1-604-773-9229 or contact me at twitter, instagram or linkedin.

Payment can be made via Paypal, by cash if you’re in Vancouver, cheque via post to Studio 308-1701 Powell Street, Vancouver, BC Canada  V5L 5C9 or by direct deposit via my email address . I am registered on Paypal under my full name and email address .

Special thanks to Derek von Essen, who helped refine the design and correct all those pesky little mistakes, and to my good friends and my good dad who helped proofread. You are far more insightful than spell check!

Thank you, as always, my lovelies!

Cheers, my lovelies,
Siobhan

Front & back cover |  7″ x 9.5″

Back Lane West, Artist in Residence

December 2015/January 2016 | Back Lane West, Artist in Residence  |
Redruth, Cornwall   UK

Back Lane West was a great space to finish off some new work, develop new iterations of recent pieces and re-stage the Tender to the Sea work from my MFA degree at Falmouth University. Special thanks to Jane & Patrick who run this residency with great dedication and with a compassionate interest in what each artist brings to BLW’s collective story.

In this body of work Tender to the Sea, I weave my art making process through the development of Day-to-Day Aesthetics methodology with varied environmental concerns and personal interests. Through the consideration of materials available to me by chance and circumstance combined with addressing the importance that place plays on the human psyche, I strive to create work that is deeply personal and intricately connected to my time living in Cornwall.

The plan for my time of academic and practical study was not to work on one specific project but to create a body of work that would effectively interlace elements of my existing art practice, adding interests in three dimensional work, sound and video alongside my passion and commitment to issues of the natural environment and human interaction with it.  My task as an artist is to create work that is stimulating, intriguing and inspiring and that may transport the viewer to a state of wonder or awe or inquiry. Using my immediate surroundings, past experiences with my existing creative space, I make objects, installations, video/soundscapes that seek to enrich and broaden the experience of those who come into contact with them. Beyond these concerns are questions, answers, challenges, successes, flops and work that continues to suggest a forward movement. A movement toward connectivity, between myself and the viewer and perhaps even more significantly, between myself and my own work.

Taking inspiration from those artists and critics with similar interests such as Suzi Gablick, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Beuys and the Arte Povera group, I respond intrinsically to the question Where am I in the art? and furthermore think philosophically about Where am I in the seed from which it grows, the fruit that it produces and at all stages in between? To create work that is deeply personal is a risk. It speaks beyond the fashion of what is expected and aspires to uncover new territory. I believe the greatest potential of art-work created from a place of emotional and spiritual authenticity is that it may inspire its audience to also take risks, ask questions and delve deeply into the humanity and fragility that is life.’

Introduction from Tender to the Sea catalogue, 2016

Catalogue, a work in progress

A preview of the catalogue I’m putting together as part of my final MFA hand in. Special thanks for Pauline for proofreading & Jo for sitting down with me to ask and talk about the work.

Gearing down/up

Tender to the Sea exhibition video

To do a short walk through of my most recent exhibition, click on the link below.
Tender to the Sea exhibition slideshow

Photo selection of work below, in order: Tender to the Sea (drawings), Row the Boat Out (drawings), A Day Like this (installation), Tender the boat (sculpture), The Stories I Tell (drawing), Flaneur’s Walk (installation), Onto Into Above (painting)

MA & MFA Exhibition

Tender to the Sea Exhibition

I am an interdisciplinary artist with a full-time practice in two and three dimensional art with sound and video installation. I create abstract narratives about human interaction with our environment; stories of degradation, resilience and interconnectedness.

This exhibition is a culmination of nine months of steady schematic development centering on ideas of our displacement from nature, my own separation from and longing for a sense of home. Although themes of fragility run through my work, the intent is to offer a sense of hope and wonderment both through the creating process and in the outcome of these artworks.

It is my wish that through interacting with this body of work, or connecting even with a single element of a particular piece, that the viewer is transformed in some way, becoming a participant in the thoughts and ideas presented or in sharing appreciation of the astonishing environment that surrounds us.

Preview Tuesday August 25, 6-9
Show runs from Wednesday August 26 through to Saturday August 29, 10-5