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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

Tender to the Sea

The Boat, in progress. 3mm steel rods. 220 x 125 x 46cm

SNEAK PEAK!

M A / M F A   A r t   &   E n v i r o n m e n t
M A   I l l u s t r a t i o n : A u t h o r i a l   P r a c t i c e
E x h i b i t i o n
Woodlane campus, Lamorva House & the goldfish bowl
  Falmouth, Cornwall     UK
Opening August 25  6-9pm
Wednesday, August 26 – Saturday, August 29   10-5pm

Life in progress

It’s been a year since I added a post however I did revamp the layout of the website in an effort to put to practice the purpose for coming to the UK to do a post-graduate degree. Although the impetus was initially an ongoing case of wanderlust, once I found the Art & Environment Masters program, applied to then was accepted, the intention became about shifting the trajectory of my art career.  In other words, taking a right turn where the road seemed to be otherwise straight ahead. I wanted to include the other aspects of my creative life: music, fibre arts, writing, installation and love of film, allowing my work to expand outward whilst digging deeper into context, place and purpose. To give voice to ideas through a myriad of processes, each of which would be equally valid. These days, I am still painting, drawing and taking photographs but my main focus is a large scale multidimensional sculpture and installation which, when completed will have been almost a full year in production. It has evolved from simply wanting to be thoughtful about the kinds of materials I was using and to engage with my new surroundings, then grew into the collecting, emptying and sewing together hundreds of used tea bags, researching the history of tea in the UK, thinking about the sense of displacement I was feeling after years of moving from place to place, and setting up workshops to have people help me empty the tea while talking about their stories of boat journeys, their idea of home, displacement and what tea means to them in their everyday life. Along side the life size row boat I plan to build with the tea bags, I am compiling a soundscape of the stories, the sounds and the melodies that are unfolding throughout the process. I have discovered an extended way of working by integrating research gathering with creative idea building. The interest that people have shown about this project and the stories they have shared have become a cornerstone to my time here in Cornwall. I have discovered a new sense of self as a creative story teller, as a woman, as an artist. Life and art are indefinable as separate entities; I am completely immersed and loving it all.