12 Point Buck and Jenny Keith!

It's opening reception time again, and I for one, am very excited for both shows.

Jenny Keith, our very own local artist, will be showing You and Me and Everyone We Know in the Front Room Gallery. Jenny's interest in animals and people is represented in a whimsical fashion with acrylic, oil and beeswax. She dedicates this show to her hometown of Edmonton.

12 Point Buck will be presenting us with Wild, Wild Life in the Main Gallery. A duo which formed in Lethbridge back in '07, who examine nature, society and all the yearning that comes along with it. They will be creating an installation that explores these ideas in hopes that we can better understand our daily realties and our larger social responsibilities.

September 9th to October 14th

Opening reception: Thursday, September 9 at 8-10pm

Artist Talks: Opening night, Thursday, September 9 beginning at 6 pm

Both shows should be a real treat. If you would like three scoops of ice cream instead of just two, come to Harcourt on Saturday, September 11th for 12 Point Buck's Wild Life Sketch Club!! What time you ask...from 12-2pm. What do you need to bring you say...Yourself and some sketching materials! You'll be in the wilderness of the Wild, Wild Life exhibition merrily sketching along side the 12 Point Buck crew. The best part about these treats, is that they're completely FREE so bring yourself and all the cubs.

Summer Camp is over...

Geri and the kids had an awesome time at summer camp! Now that it's all finished, we thought we'd share a few more photos with you. The fourth camp was aged 12-15. They did neat projects similar to the other three camps, but Geri mixed things up and made them a bit more challenging. Just a few of the cool things they did were; abstract colour theory paintings, blind contour drawings, and collages that they used as reference for their Surrealist drawings. All and all, it was a super-fun summer! Thanks to all the parents and kids who made it out. We hope to see all of you back next summer.

Derek's thoughts...

It is hard to believe but we are beginning to run at our annual art auction again this year. As always we will be looking for art and artists who would like to help us out with donations of work to make this years auction a bigger success than ever. It is our big fund raiser of the year and we hope to make it especially splashy this year. This year due to some funding cut backs we will have to make a particularly big effort.

Of course there will also be a need for a small army of volunteers to keep things running smoothly, God bless them all. Of course we have until November to put all of this together but in my experience 3 months is not a terribly long time to plan these sorts of things.

Our current shows are very cool and you only have until August 28 to catch them! The Opening of "12 Point Buck" with Chai Duncan and Leila Armstrong will be opening on Sept. 8 proves to be just as exciting! Come to the opening night and take in the festivities.

I hope I will see you all there!

Security, Control

Hi Everyone!
It's been a little while since our last blog, but boy have we been busy. The members show has come and gone. We made the gallery all nice and pretty, had DRAW and then set up Sylvia Ziemann and Paul Bernhardt's work.

Draw was a great success. The gallery was full! We even had to bring out our wheelie computer chairs so people had somewhere to sit. It was really nice to see so many people who had never been to Harcourt House before.

We also thought we'd post a few photos from the opening reception for Sylvia Ziemann's Home (In)Security and Paul Bernhardt's Control. They are both great shows with Bernardt's largescale paintings and Ziemann's video and sound based installations. So if you haven't had a chance to see them yet, hurry! You only have until the 28th of August. (Holy moly, the summer is really flying by.)

Exquisite Corps pre-DRAW

This drawing was so funny, I had to make a little post for it.

For those of you out there who either don't know of, or have never participated in an exquisite corps drawing session, let me explain a bit about it. First you find some cool people to draw with, then you take one sheet of paper and fold it into three sections. You can pick a theme, a word, or a figure to work from. The lovely ladies from the Visual Arts Association of Alberta (who we just so happen to share our third floor living space with) offered to help me get some examples ready for our big DRAW event this upcoming Saturday. They used me as their model, each with a section of their very own. Sharon had my bust, Jaye had my torso, and Brittany had my legs! Exquisite Corps works kind of like this...the first person draws their section then folds it over so the next person can't see what they have just drawn. After each person has finished their section, they take a few lines and peak them over the fold so that the person who will be drawing after them, has a starting point. The second person repeats and does the same. Then when the third person finishes their's, you open up all three folded sections and TADA! A beautiful, sometimes strange, and always funny exquisite corps drawing!

Sharon, Jaye and Brittany's drawing actually turned out surprisingly normal, and it was the first time any of them had tried it!

I decided to post another example of an exquisite corps drawing. I'm not sure who's it is because I borrowed it from the internet. I also have no idea what they used for a theme, but it shows how weird these drawings can get.

If you haven't tried this cool drawing collaboration, come to Harcourt this Saturday anytime between 12pm and 5:30pm. We'll be doing it, plus lots of other neat drawing stuff.

There are Happenings, happening!

When we said tons of great things happen at Harcourt during the summer, we really meant it!
The next week is jammed packed starting this Saturday, the 24th. The event is DRAW, and it's all about showcasing the three Artist Run Centres in Edmonton, plus FAVA. From 12-6pm at Harcourt House you can take part in some exquisite corps and life-drawing sessions with two models, one clothed and one not-so-clothed. At SNAP from 12-6pm you can do print making, (which is way cool), and if you've never taken part in the art of print making, there will be nice people who know what they're doing to help you along. The evenings escapades will roll on through from 6pm - midnight at Latitude 53 where you can collage, dance, and drink. FAVA will also be kickin' it, doing some really neat scratch animation! It's basically going to be a really cool day and a super fun night. We should all be there. http://www.latitude53.org/draw


Next up, Harcourt's very own Artist Talk and Opening Reception!
From July 29th-August 28th, Sylvia Ziemann and Paul Bernhardt will be showing in the Main and Front Room gallery spaces.

Ziemann is a multi-media and sculpture based artist from Saskatchewan. Her show, titled 'Home (In) Security', explores our tendencies to turn our homes into utopies that we allow to be haunted by the outside world through virtual means.

Bernhardt is a local artist who does large scale paintings based on landscape and structures of the contemporary environment. His abstracted compositions are drawn from seemingly banal elements; parking lots, tollbooths, billboards and fences, which he reinterprets in rich, electric colour.

And remember, there is always more information on our website, just incase.
www.harcourthouse.ab.ca

Summer is always funner with Art!

At least that's what the folks at Harcourt think.

Our summer Art Xpressed youth camps are in full swing! We have four five-day camps for youth ages 7-11 and 12-16! Geri, our Summer Camp Coordinator is busy teaching the kids really cool things like... how to make figures out of clay, how to screen print t-shirts and cards, paint like the oh-so wonderful Jackson Pollock, all about the colour wheel, and tons of other fun stuff. They even get their very own art show on the last day!

I must say, I wish we had a camp for kids my age.