The 2024 NJAS Artists

Ramiro Quiros | Charlotte Sprague | Sabrina Leeder | Sarah Cowley | Kevin Ford | Angie Rad | MaryLou Hurley | Sheila Romard | Zahra Nasrin | wayne smile | Bill Stephens | Sandra Cormier Turnsek | B Dass | William Lottering | Suzie Persa | Bret Culp | MF Herzog |
Steve Leskew | Irene Schaefer | Sibernie James-Bosch | Jane Wang | Janice Jones | Mahtab Abdollahi | Scott Visscher | David Paolini | Stella Capogna | Paulette Fleary | Laura Higgins |
Sean Stone | Allan Flagel | Bob Tunnoch | Linda Szoldatits | Rashmi Baird | Renato Petean Marino | Ghazaleh Naderian | ANITA GIANCOLA | Betty Cowan | Maria Petrov | Julia Sperry | Ilja Hup-Warmels | Denise Brooker | Heather Smiley | Calm Ghosts | Terri Mittelmann

Congratulations to all!

The Show opens April 17, and the reception is on the 18th, 7:00 – 9:30. It’s free & open to everyone.

Meet our 2024 Jury Panel

Janet Read is a painter, musician, and poet, whose childhood was spent near the shores of Lake Simcoe. The artist has sought the water’s edge ever since. Her roots go back to the Ottawa Valley Irish, Belfast, and county Wexford in Ireland. Perhaps this explains a fondness for fiddle music, poetry and the sea.

Residencies in Newfoundland and Ireland, and travels in Norway, Iceland, and Scotland have allowed her access to the sea, leading to a lifetime’s investigation of water as a metaphor for strength and fragility. Recent travels in the high Arctic prompted an ongoing body of work, High Arctic Light exhibited at the Propeller Art Gallery and virtually at the Heliconian Club of Toronto.

Exhibitions include commercial and public galleries, including the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, with a catalogue, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, and the Frederick Horsman Varley Gallery in Unionville. Paintings can be found in public and private collections and internationally in Australia, England and the US.

Pat Dumas-Hudecki is an Ontario artist who has been in many solo and group exhibitions, and has won many awards. She sends this statement:

Through my different painting series I want to chronicle how the everyday objects around us transform and convey their own unique narratives. My realistic acrylic paintings pay homage to the sweet disorder and chaos that surrounds us; they are an integral part of our living spaces-indoors and out.
When I paint the visual chaos of my interior spaces I capture the domestic wilderness of activity and play that is too often tidied up and civilized before it can be appreciated for its beauty and meaning.
When I paint urban and rural utility poles I show how they have developed unique personalities as they alter through time and purpose.
I enjoy creating art that makes people take a second look at their everyday surroundings and transforms their perceptions of it.
http://www.dumas-hudecki.com/

Pat Hertzberg  is a textile / mixed media artist currently living in Caledon, Ontario.  After graduating from York University and Sheridan College Pat had a career as a fashion designer, before transitioning to fine art, as a textile artist.  She was a Resident Artist at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre, and is an active member of the ‘Connections Fibre Artists’ group. Pat has been the recipient of numerous art awards. She has juried several art shows, given artist talks, and taught various courses and seminars. Her work has been in Gallery exhibitions across Canada and included in both Canadian and American publications.  Pat’s innovative fibre and mixed-media works can be found in both corporate and private collections in Canada, the USA, Great Britain, Mexico and Italy.  www.Pathertzberg.com

As well, Jeff Nye joins us again as our curator. Jeff is a Canadian artist, writer, teacher, and curator. Jeff has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with Distinction from Concordia University in Montreal (1998) and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Regina (2007). His paintings and multimedia installations have been exhibited in public galleries across the country. He has curated exhibitions for the Mackenzie Art Gallery, Dunlop Art Gallery, and Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre. He has also instructed studio art, exhibition design, and art history classes at First Nations University of Canada, University of Regina, and Georgian College.
Jeff has received several distinctions and awards for his work, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

2022 Poster!

Here’s the main poster for the 2022 show! It will be hanging by the reception area as you walk in to the Old Town Hall. To download a copy, click here.

2022 main poster
2022 main poster

The artist galleries will be posted later in September, after the Reception and maybe after the Show itself.

Textile Art? Fibre Art? Material? Fabric?

(June 2022 update)

Pretty much forever, the world was told: “Women can’t paint.” Or “Shouldn’t”. Or some other excuse to keep them on the model’s side of the room.

Of course, with lots of hard work and pushing back by female artists and feminists, barriers fell, and women are fully accepted as artists and even leaders in all media.

Or are they?

Even now, I believe, some media are seen as secondary, lesser, not quite art.

As “women’s art”.

Take fiber arts, fabric arts, textiles, for example.

It’s a rare thing for a gallery or museum to dedicate a showing to a fiber artist, and I have long thought that that is due to textile making being seen as a female means of expression, decorative, suited only for utility in the home. “The artificial divide between fine art and textiles is a gendered issue” according to Amber Butchart, writing for Frieze.com (14 Nov 2018)

I’m not saying that textile work such as weaving, dying and quilting, isn’t currently predominantly done by women. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter: these forms are (or can be) art, just as much as paint on canvas is (or can be) art.

As fiber artist Georgianne Holland says in their blog post: “…I can stand with some of my favorite artists who broke free of traditional and perhaps limiting art world boxes and now represent innovation in the fiber and textile arts…” (Wednesday, June 25, 2014)

As Co-Directors of the Newmarket Juried Art Show, we celebrate the reclamation of the textile arts by women who put their work out in the world as art. From our beginnings in 2019, we have backed that celebration by offering a Medium Award for Textile Arts.

Hope to hear from you soon – August 15, 2022 Deadline approaches!

Dave and Peggy

COVID-19 & practical creativity

Has your ability to get what you need for your creativity been affected by Covid-19?

Many of us have, at some point in the past few months, been unable or unwilling to head out to get the supplies we need. Even as a photographer, I have had to wait to get ink for my printer, as my store was closed, and my printer’s manufacturer was unable to get supplies.
Have the costs of your supplies gone up, possibly due to Covid-induced shortages? A jeweler here in Newmarket got a shock when she saw the higher price of the silver she uses to make her pieces.


For some of us, the emotional stress has sapped the inner resources we need to be creative. creativity. For others, Covid-19 has spurred new creativity of its own.

Please use the comment space below to tell you story. I moderate all comments, so it’s a safe space.

Dave

Special Note for Photogs

Here’s a question that was asked twice on the same day, by two different photographers: Do I submit the original jpg file, or a picture of the framed print?

I’m a photographer (but I’m not gonna enter my own show, of course), so I often enter images to shows before making a final print and deciding on the print-run limit. Storing prints is hard, especially framed. I know in advance what size the image will be, and I make an educated guess at the frame size.

So please, just submit the jpeg of the image itself. As you fill in the submission form, you will be asked the size of the image, including any framing.

I’ll add this to the FAQ page, too.

Newmarket Juried Art Show