Think Globally, Art Locally
Jurying is done, so we have a preliminary list.
We had hoped to announce today (Aug 22), but hit a snag. Newmarket no longer has a curator for the Old Town Hall galleries, due to Covid cutbacks.
As well, we can’t get into the galleries until later in the week to confirm that selected pieces will all fit. We’re currently working from a floor plan with most dimensions measured, and printed thumbnails.
Thanks for your trust and patience.
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 textiles, for example.
It’s a rare thing for a gallery or museum to dedicate a showing to a textile 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 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.
We have not yet had any Textile entries, so I guess it’s time to really put the word out there…
June 2022 Update: We had a number of excellent entries in Textile Arts in 2021 (and already in 2022, even though submissions have barely begun). Check them out under the Past Shows menu.
Hope to hear from you soon – Deadline approaches!
Dave and Peggy
Here are our Jurists for NJAS2021
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.
Janice LeBlanc is a Simcoe Region based artist, Art Therapist and educator. Janice holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and Bachelor of Education from York University (1986), as well as a Masters Diploma in Art Therapy (2001). She is now a retired secondary school educator, having taught Visual Arts for over 30 years. Janice has been practicing Art Therapy in various organizations for over 20 years and is currently in private practice. Through many ongoing workshops and courses, Janice has explored a variety of art media including acrylic painting, mixed media, encaustic painting, pottery, jewellery making and printmaking. Art exhibitions include a solo show in Barrie and participation in group shows in Creemore Ontario. She continues to enjoy taking art workshops both locally and internationally and creates pieces that integrate many media and varied perspectives.
The newmarket juried Art Show has had some good coverage from local newspapers and radio.
On April 5, our show was covered in Newmarket Today. This was prompted by our media release, and had the headline: Ontario artists share their pandemic creations in Newmarket juried mini show. The cover image was from the Show, and is by Nicholas Keehn.
A few days later, one of “our” artists, Marlene Bulas was covered in Orillia Matters, which is affiliated with Newmarket Today. This story has Marlene as a focus, since she is an Orillia Artist, and features her image from this show. You can read the story by clicking here.
Marlene was also interviewed on CBC Ontario Morning to talk about her Covid Winter, her art and our Show! You can listen to it by clicking here
Start just before the 11 minute mark.
Sunday, March 21: Dave and Peggy thank the artists, who sent us a total of 75 pieces of work. Jurist Brendon McNaughton set up a Google Meet with Peggy & Dave this afternoon, and we made some hard decisions…
Here are the artists and the works that the jury selected. The gallery will be ready in a day or so.
| Artist | Title of Work |
|---|---|
| Aedaa Al-Sammarraie | Water Lillies |
| Amber Lini | Streams of paradise |
| Cheryl Uhrig | Hearty Pine |
| Cheryl Uhrig | Harvest Moon |
| Christine Chin-Fook | Hero Warrior |
| Christine Stewart | Winter Wander |
| Christine Stewart | In the Flow |
| David Kempton | ND Covid Safe Space |
| Denise Lini | Down the Back Roads |
| Denise Lini | Not for the Faint of Heart |
| Donna Greenstein | Calm Before The Storm – Laughing Gull |
| Elayne Windsor | Split Celeste |
| Gordon Reidt | Smooth Landing |
| Helen Agalawatte | Wetlands Walk in Winter |
| Ilja Hup-Warmels | New Horizons |
| Josee Savaria | Dans l’attente de jours meilleurs |
| Josee Savaria | Polka Dot |
| Karen L Bowen | Be Still My Heart |
| Karen L Bowen | No Neighbours |
| Kate Greenway | My Covid Visitors |
| Kate Greenway | Memories of Beaches |
| Kirsty Naray | Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| Lana Soosar | Tiger Swallowtail |
| Laura Higgins | Beauty in the Shadows and the Light |
| Lis Simpson | Exuberance |
| Liz Lasky | Snowed in. |
| Liz Lasky | Winter field |
| Lorraine Moon | The Hide-a-Way |
| Lorraine Moon | Winter’s First Kiss |
| Mark Puigmarti | emertxe-nu |
| Marlene Bulas | The Family Creek |
| MaryLou Hurley | Locked Down Mermaid |
| MaryLou Hurley | Marbella |
| Nicholas Keehn | The Melting Top |
| Paul Williams | GREEN LADY |
| Peter Lauricella | Two Sided Charcuterie Board |
| Rani Satpute | Peace reflects… |
| Rani Satpute | Walking through the memory lane |
| Rosie Sherman | Between the Clouds |
| Rosie Sherman | Home Decor |
| Sera Mohammed | Butterflies |
| Sheila Romard | Tethered |
| shoshana lock | dark winter |
| Stella Capogna | New Wave |
| Stuart Blower | Complicated |
| Stuart Blower | COVID Face |
| Teresa Dunlop | Embracing Solitude |
| Xiao Wen Xu | Ocean Blues |
| Zahra Nasrin | the Rose |
Congratulations to all those who will be in the show. Whether you are in or not, we hope that you will help us by spreading the word about the show, and encouraging sales. Remember – NJAS takes no commission, so all sales go to the artist.
To see a whole post and comment, click on the post’s title.
To get the latest, see our Instagram feed.
We adjusted the awards we gave to respond to work sent in, as well as to the points system we used with the jury panel. For example, we had too few submissions in some categories, and many in Painting & Drawing, so we decided to give two awards in the latter.
Here are the awards. Who got them? Tune in to our online Opening Gala, starting at 7pm on the 15th October to find out.
| Sponsors | Awards |
|---|---|
| The Directors | Jurists’ Choice |
| Jackie Playter | Painting/Drawing (both) |
| Linda Kempton | Sculpture, ceramics, pottery |
| Fuse Chamber | Photography |
| Bike Sports Newmarket | Honourable Mention x 2 |
| Chris Ballard | Honourable Mention |
| Newmarket Public Library | Honourable Mention |
Congratulations to all the artists who will be exhibited in the 2020 online version of the Newmarket Juried Art Show. Here are their names, in no particular order:
Karin Foulds, Holly Archer, Jake Deeth, Walter Bauer, David Schembri, Sibernie James-Bosch, Bill Lunshof, Marc Morais, Julie Robb, Zahra Nasrin, Caitlin Sabean-Untermann, Kathy Pistor, Carol Walthers, Natalia Shields, Laura Schembri, Sheila Romard, Maria Petrov, Donna Fegan, Marlene Bulas, Stella Capogna, Donna Greenstein, Elayne Windsor, Nancy Jones, Kaitlyn Sproule, Marion Plaunt, Carol Teal, Anita Niemeyer, Geoff Clarke
The galleries and individual artist pages are all made, and the show will be available here and on ArtGateVR starting October 7.
The Jury Panel is still deliberating over the awards, which will be announced during our October 15 Opening Gala, starting at 7pm Eastern, on YouTube.
From the submitted works, the jury selected 31 pieces from 28 artists. Results will be announced in the next few days – we’re still working out the awards.
Forty artists sent us work. Here’s a map of where they were from: Click Here
I think that you will be excited to meet our 2020 jurists, Jeff Nye, Pat Dumas-Hudecki and Sarah Burtscher.
Jeff Nye is a Newmarket-based 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 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.
http://www.livestudio.ca/
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/
Sarah Burtscher is the Gallery Director at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto’s leading commercial photography gallery for historical and contemporary work from Canadian and international artists. Sarah has curated exhibitions including Open Call 2019 for the Exposure Festival in Calgary; MYTORONTO, an exhibition through which participants affected by homelessness connect with their community; and SNAP!, an annual photographic fundraiser in support of programs and services provided by the Aids Committee of Toronto. She has also been on several exhibition juries including THE FENCE 2018 and RMG Exposed in 2017 and 2018.
Sarah holds a BFA in Photography Studies from Ryerson University’s Image Arts program.