Fully Realized.
GROUP EXHIBITION
May 26 – July 9, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 28 at 7 PM
FEATURED ARTISTS
GIUSEPPE ALBI, AMANDA CHWELOS, FATME ELKADRY & FERN FACETTE, BRAXTON GARNEAU, JESSICA JOHNS, MARILYN OLSON & RICHARD BOULET, TAIESSA
Fully Realized showcases work made by artists over the past two years, during a time of uncertainty. Latitude 53 invited intergenerational artists based in Edmonton-amiskwaciwâskahikan to highlight work created during the pandemic that has not been seen outside of their homes and studios.
Fully Realized reflects the continually developing and adapting nature of a global pandemic, and presents a shared sense of isolation and community. This exhibition came together as a means of making the most of our last year in Latitude 53’s current home of 10 years by showing as many works as possible. This immediacy is reflected in the works featured—many of these pieces are “sketches”, preliminary pieces that will be further developed by the artists, or experiments with new, more immediate ways of working. Other works were completed early during the pandemic, and have not been shared publicly.
(left to right) Weaving to Reclaim (Fatme Elkadry and Fern Facette), Braxton Garneau, Taiessa (on plinths) and Jessica Johns.
About the Artists
Giuseppe Albi has been an active visual artist and member of the Edmonton community for the last 40+ years. His work has been shown across Canada, New York and the UK with his most recent exhibition being at the Scott Gallery this year. He has also published articles in The Edmonton Journal, The Globe and Mail, VUE Weekly and more. Giuseppe is a longtime friend of Latitude 53 as he served as our first Board President from 1974–1979.
About the work
These small works are made on paint sample chips, a material designed to showcase the performance of individual colours. Albi’s gestures with interferent pigments on this surface are humorous yet loving moments in conversation with the expressionist abstract tradition he works in and around.
The colours and humour of these works place them in a playful relationship with Amanda Chwelo’s work on the other side of the partition wall.
Amanda Chwelos is an artist living in Edmonton, Alberta. She received her diploma in Fine Art from MacEwan University in 2017 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Art and Design from the University of Alberta in 2019. In 2019, she was awarded the McLuhan House Artist Studio Residency. Upon finishing her year-long residency, she completed her first solo exhibition titled One or The Other or None of the Above. Her work has been subject to many group exhibitions including Imitation Crab at Parallel Space and Salvage at Lowlands Project Space. Chwelos’ current work explores banality and contemporary malaise through a practice based in painting and sculpture.
About the Work
Most pieces that were created apart of McLuhan House residency, shown in summer of 2020, during a highly uncertain time referencing the strangeness and banality of everyday life.
Acrss the gallery from Richard Boulet & Marilyn Olson’s work, they reflect the bright colours and on-screen vernacular of those works through a different generational lens.
Weaving to Reclaim
Fatme Elkadry (she/her) is a second-generation settler on Amiskwaciwâskahikan from Safad, Palestine. She is a multi-disciplinary artist and has studied visual art, fine craft, graphic design, prose, and performance art through a variety of experiential opportunities, including formal education and personal mentorship. Fatme utilizes her art practice to explore and express her identities. She passionately advocates for barrier-free and equitable involvement of all folks in the arts. Fatme’s favourite things in life are her mom, magpies, and purple figs.
Jessica Fern Facette (Fern, she/her) is an Amiskwaciy Waskahikan based fibre artist who has been weaving for nearly two decades. She is a passionately engaged artist who shares knowledge and encourages others to discover textiles. She founded Fern’s School of Textile Craft in 2017, a place where fibre artists from across Canada meet to carry on the long tradition of sharing skills and knowledge. Fern is a stalwart advocate for the accessibility of textile arts and has created many opportunities for folks to explore textiles through years of volunteering, mentoring and most recently an in-studio textile residency. Fern’s own weaving is an exploration of colour, pattern and texture.
About the work
Placemat and table runner are the finished pieces, and the other parts are the preliminary sketches before attempting the final pieces.
The Amulets are designed by Fatme, and serve as a study. They feature the imperfections and the process—with uneven weft and pins to anchor parts where the thread has broken. Read Fern’s writing on the amulets
Braxton Garneau is an emerging visual artist living in Edmonton - Amiskwaciwâskahikan, Canada.He holds a BFA degree from the University of Alberta and a Diploma of Fine Art from Grant MacEwan University. He has exhibited in group exhibitions within Canada and the United States and is currently working on his second solo exhibition in Alberta.
His current practice combines a variety of harvested and hand-processed materials with printmaking, painting, and installation to create portraits, shrines, and corporeal forms. These materials often share inextricable colonial histories and significant cultural ties to those who’ve spent generations in close proximity to them. Exploring the materiality of culture, Garneau mines his own Caribbean heritage to charge his practice with the essences of animism and masquerade that swirl within Trinidad and Tobago. He merges classical aesthetics and double entendre to cultivate a visual language steeped in burlesque and iconoclasm.
About the work
Asphalt pieces created to force the artist to make and finish work quickly, instead of spending months on a single piece as Garneau typically does on his oil paintings.
Drawing from every-day materials make the pieces rough and ready, a theme of DIY, punk, or provisional ways of working that echo through several bodies of work in this show.
The three-dimensionality of these is also important: Braxton’s use of shells, straw, and other sculptural materials are not only a collaged element that fits this rough-and-ready theme, but an engagement with elements of costume, masking, and ritual drawn from the African and Carribean traditions of the Black diaspora.
Jessica Johns is a nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. She is a writer, artist, and kombucha-maker.
About the work
This summer, Johns is collaborating with Latitude 53 through her commercial identity, Kokôm Kombucha. But the materials of the brewing process are interesting ones from a tactile and visual perspective.
The provisional nature of this work—the SCOBY pieces being drawn together by stitched twine—and the ways that it continues to change as the material dries and shrinks, present an impression of a way of life during the last two years. Home-brewed Kombucha here stands in for a host of small, solitary craft activities, presented in this way.
Marilyn Olson and Richard Boulet
Marilyn and Richard met at the Canadian Mental Health Association-Edmonton about 5 years ago in a peer run club called “Textile Arts Open Studio”. It was not long before a friendship started to blossom. Marilyn took note that Richard was making textiles for his art practice. Richard took note that Marilyn had many textile skills and a good eye for visual thinking. They started to work together albeit slowly at the beginning. Richard was purchasing piece work. From Marilyn’s point of view there was a true start to a collaboration the day Richard let Marilyn take one of his cross-stitches to her home for Marilyn to add her crochet. Trust takes time to build.
They say opposites attract. Their skills and approaches may be different but in the end there is much satisfaction on jobs well done. Richard has 3 university degrees including a MFA. Marilyn has 2 college diplomas none in art but much life experience and a strong motivation to teach herself. It is a good mix. There has even been some success in exhibiting including McMullen Gallery.
This exhibition is a series of 13 different texts that are meant to be the point of departure for cross-stitches. 5 are finished. 3 are under construction and the rest are in the wings. Richard always has a cross-stitch on the go. Marilyn is the same in crochet, including riding on Edmonton Transit. Truth be told Marilyn’s first love is training and showing her dogs. Richard quite simply enjoys peace and quiet and busy work.
These are Excel spreadsheet and Word document “schematics” on 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper, and are studies for future cross-stitches, crochet and beading, etc. See Art From Here feature on this artist duo
Taiessa (she/her) is a multi-discipline artist living in amiskwaciwâskahikan, so-called Edmonton. Her primary mediums include print, soft sculpture, and long conversations with friends. Taking an auto-ethnographic approach to her work, she explores themes of intimacy and nurturance. In 2018, Taiessa obtained a Fine Art diploma with distinction from Grant MacEwan University before completing her BFA at the University of Alberta. She recently participated in the Mitchell Art Gallery’s Artist Exchange program, and when not in the studio spends her time as Production Supervisor at The Works International Visual Arts Society.
Website: www.taiessa.com
Instagram: @tai.the.girl
