Work of the Week

This week’s Work of the Week is Tents by John K. Esler.

It’s the start of the May long weekend, which is always the unofficial kick-off to camping season in Alberta! So, if you’re headed out this long weekend to pitch a tent and enjoy the great outdoors, we wish you happy camping!

About the Artist: John K. Esler (1933-2001)

John K. Esler was born in 1933 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and attended the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1960. He continued studies there and received a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962, and in 1964, after a period of travel in Europe, took a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts). He joined the faculty of the University of Calgary in 1968, where he taught intaglio printmaking, staying there until his retirement in the 1980s.
 

Esler was well known in the Calgary arts community and did much to raise the profile of printmaking in the province. He played a major role in the expansion of the printmaking department at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary and in partnership with artist Ken Webb, established Trojan Press to provide a facility for local printmakers to develop their skills.

Esler's works were exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad and he is represented in many public and private collections. His awards included the C.W. Jefferys' Award from the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the G.A. Reid Memorial Award from the Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

John Esler had an irreverent, somewhat Dadaist sensibility which he expressed in his art and in his teaching methods. He encouraged his students to experiment, to make art with a mind open to unexpected possibilities. A series of artworks that offered a typical example of his approach were called “Relics of the Twentieth Century” and involved the use of cast-off garbage and refuse that he ran through the press to create relief prints. Objects that became fodder for the creative process for this series ranged from a squashed lunch box to the flattened chassis of a television set.

This week's Work of the Week is Sun Dog by Carroll Taylor-Lindoe, because we are in the dog days of summer!
 

The dog days are commonly identified as occurring between July 3 and August 11. It is traditionally the hottest and most humid time of the summer. But what does it have to do with dogs? It really has nothing to do with our four-legged friends and more to do with the placement of the stars in the sky - specifically one star, Sirius aka the Dog Star. 
 

According to the Old Farmer's Almanac:

This period of sweltering weather coincides with the year’s heliacal (meaning “at sunrise”) rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Majoris—the “Greater Dog”—which is where Sirius gets its canine nickname, as well as its official name, Alpha Canis Majoris. Not including our own sun, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.

In ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome, it was believed that the dawn rising of Sirius in mid- to late summer contributed to the extreme weather of the season. In other words, the “combined heat” of super-bright Sirius and our Sun was thought to be the cause of summer’s sweltering temperatures. The name “Sirius” even stems from Ancient Greek seírios, meaning “scorching.” For the ancient Egyptians, the dawn rising of Sirius (known to them as “Sothis”) also coincided the Nile River’s flood season. They used the star as a “watchdog” for that event.

Of course, the appearance of Sirius does not actually affect seasonal weather here on Earth, but its appearance during the hottest part of summer ensures that the lore surrounding the star lives on today!

So get out and enjoy the warm weather, because, before you know it, the dog days are over.

About the Artist: Carroll Taylor-Lindoe

Carroll Taylor-Lindoe attended the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts), Calgary, from 1966 to 1967, and again from 1974 to 1975. In 1968, Taylor-Lindoe attended the Instituto de Allende in Mexico.

She has held many solo exhibitions, including many at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery in Toronto, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, and the Glenbow Museum. She has participated in two-person and group exhibitions, at the Triangle Gallery of the Visual Arts (Calgary), the Works Festival (Edmonton), TrepanierBaer (Calgary), the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), and more.

She has been given teaching positions at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax), Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary), and the University of Calgary. She has been a Visiting Artist at many places as well; she was Visiting Artist at Sir Winfred Grenfell College, Memorial University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge, and at Queen's University, Kingston, again, amongst many, many others. Taylor-Lindoe's work can be found in the collections of Petro-Canada (Calgary), the Glenbow Museum, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Royal Bank (Montreal), Department of External Affairs (Ottawa), the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), and numerous private and corporate collections.

She lives and works in Calgary.

July is National Picnic Month! So we're sharing with you Irene McCaugherty's Church Picnic. 

En plein air. Al fresco. Sur l'herbe.

Dining outdoors is a great idea no matter how you say it, so grab a blanket, your favourite picnic food, and a friend, to enjoy a (physically distanced) picnic this July!
 

About the Artist: Irene McCaugherty (1914 - 1996)

Irene McCaugherty was a self-taught artist, writer, and poet. Her folk-art paintings explore the people and cultural narrative of southern Alberta’s pioneer days in the later part of the 19th and early 20th century. She recorded the daily happenings of life in early Alberta with humour and colour and invited viewers to enter her world of auction sales, musical rides, road building, small town life, and ranching.

McCaugherty often painted in an unusual dimension, long and narrow. That rectangular shape reflected the view she had out the window of her pick-up truck, as she drove around southern Alberta to capture the stories of the people and the places she called home.

Her watercolours do not conform to traditional one-point perspective, and she found a voice that was uniquely hers, capturing the imagined past and invented history of life on the prairie. She created more than 1,000 paintings before her death in 1996, many of which have been donated by her family to the Lethbridge College Campus where they are on display in the Founders’ Square Space.

For many years, McCaugherty wrote a newspaper column for the Lethbridge Herald called Diary of a Farmer’s Wife about cowboy life on her ranch in the Porcupine Hills of Alberta. She also self-published three books and one recording of her stories, poetry, and paintings.

McCaugherty received an Alberta Achievement award in 1992, and an Honourary Doctor of Law degree from the University of Lethbridge in 1995, for her work preserving the history of Southern Alberta. Her art can be found at the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada – a time to recognize the history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada. Each June, the AFA honours and elevates Indigenous artists sharing selected artworks and their profiles from our collection as our Works of the Week.
 

This week’s Work of the Week is “Magpie” by Bruno Canadien.

About the Artist: Bruno Canadien

Born and raised in Denendeh in the Northwest Territories, Bruno Canadien is Dene (of mixed heritage) and a member of the Deh Gah Got’ı́é Kǫ́ę́ First Nation, a Deh Cho Region member of the Dene Nation. He now lives in southern Alberta, the traditional territory of the Blackfoot, Tsuu T’ina and Nakoda.

Bruno majored in painting and earned a Diploma from the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts) in 1993. His pieces have been shown in solo exhibitions in Okotoks, Black Diamond and Calgary, and in group exhibitions in Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie.

Through his work, Bruno address issues critical to First Nations peoples, including sovereignty, natural resources, environmental preservation and the oil and gas industries treatment of the land and its people. His collages, paintings and drawings and other pieces reflect his respect for his heritage and his passion for bringing important issues to the forefront. Through the language of art, Bruno is communicating the need for national attention.

This week’s Work of the Week is David Thompson Country by Alvina Green.

Alberta’s David Thompson Country is named after the explorer and cartographer, David Thompson, who mapped Canada from the Great Lakes to the Pacific in the early 19^th century and was born on this day in 1770.

David Thompson Country is located in west central Alberta and encompasses Rocky Mountain House, the village of Caroline, Clearwater County and the hamlet of Nordegg in western Clearwater County. It is an outdoor lovers’ paradise offering incredible opportunities for hiking, biking, fishing, camping and more!
 

Check out the available outdoor activities offered in David Thompson Country through Alberta Parks.

About the Artist: Alvina Green (1934-2014)

Artist Alvina Green painted in oils and acrylics. She began her art studies at the Department of Extension of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta and continued annually to grow her skills while working as an art instructor in communities across Alberta.

Her oil/canvas board landscape David Thompson Country, shown here, celebrates a grey-blue rocky knoll comforting a community of mosses and lichens, while rising behind is an elder assembly of vibrant evergreen interrupted by the skeletons of their siblings; behind them all loom cold and distant mountains that are macrocosm to the knoll of the foreground.

Green participated in exhibitions, including at Canadiana Galleries, Oxford Galleries, and Fireweed Gallery in Edmonton. Her works live in many private collections, and in the collections of the Canadian National Institute of the Blind and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Alvina Green lived in St. Albert; she was a member of Federation of Canadian Artists.

Click the arrows to scroll through images. 

May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada - a time to learn about and celebrate the many contributions of Canadians of Asian descent, who have done so much to make our country an amazing place to live. Immigrants to Canada from East Asia, Southern Asia, Western, Central and Southeast Asia have brought with them a rich cultural history, including diverse languages, art, religions and traditions.
 

We're celebrating Asian Heritage Month by highlighting a few of the diverse artworks in our collection by Canadians of Asian descent! 

About the Artist: Paresh Athparia

Paresh Athparia is a self-taught artist. 

He was born in India and lived there for 25 years, until he moved to the United States in 1977. In 1980, Athparia moved to Canada and worked as a geologist in the oil industry for three years. He left to pursue his long-time passion for art.

About the Artist: Arthur Nishimura

Arthur Nishimura was born in Raymond, Alberta. His parents, Japanese immigrants, came to the area in the late 1910s. His father took up photography as a way to capture his life in Canada to share with family and friends back in Japan. He passed down his interest in photography to his son. 

According to the Japanese Canadian Artists Directory, Nishimura's artistic photography is informed by his love of the prairie landscape, an aesthetic derived from his Japanese heritage, and the unique visual education acquired through many years of composing through the lens of a camera. His notable influences are the photographs of Walker Evans, Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange, as well as the works of American painter, Edward Hopper.

Nishimura taught at the University of Calgary in the Faculty of Fine Arts from 1971 until his retirement in 2010. He still resides in Calgary.

About the Artist: Marigold Santos

Born in Manila, Philippines and immigrating to Canada in the late 1980s, Filipinx-Canadian artist Marigold Santos is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice ranges from drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and tattoo.

You can read more about Marigold Santos and her artistic practice here: AFA Alberta Artist Profile - Marigold Santos.

For this week’s Work of the Week, we are highlighting a few of the diverse artworks in our collection by Canadians of Asian descent, because May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada!
 

Asian Heritage Month is a time to learn about and celebrate the many contributions of Canadians of Asian descent, who have done so much to make our country an amazing place to live. Immigrants to Canada from East Asia, Southern Asia, Western, Central and Southeast Asia have brought with them a rich cultural history, including diverse languages, art, religions and traditions.
 

This year’s Asian Heritage Month comes at a time when Canadians of Asian descent have been facing an increase in anti-Asian hate and violence. That’s why it’s important to take this time to acknowledge and appreciate the achievements of Asian-Canadians and to stand together against all forms of anti-Asian racism.

Please enjoy these artworks by Chin Shek Lam, Diana Un-Jin Cho and Do-Hee Sung.

About the Artist: Chin Shek Lam (1918-1990)

Chin Shek Lam was born in 1918 in Guandong in Canton, China. He graduated from the Hung-Yi College of Art and prior to immigrating to Canada in 1970 and enjoyed a distinguished art career that included the founding of the Institute of Oriental Art in China in 1944 and, in 1949, the creation of the Institute of Oriental Art in Hong Kong. He also founded the Han-Nan College of Fine Art in Hong Kong in 1954.

Chin Shek Lam's painting was rooted in the ancient art of Chinese calligraphy but he also incorporated Western techniques and approaches influenced by his contact with Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, and many other western artists who he met during a period of travel in Europe in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. His art drew on his knowledge of the ancient techniques of Chinese calligraphy, and evolved to incorporate aspects of Western colour-field painting. In his work, he sought to express a Taoist way of balancing dark and light, warm and cool colour, and contrasting shapes and patterns.

Upon moving to Canada, Lam lived in Vancouver and Calgary from 1981 to 1987 and finally settled in Toronto where he resided until his death in 1990. During his lifetime, he had numerous exhibitions in Europe, Asia, Australia, the US and Canada. His work is represented in many public collections, including those of the Canada Council Art Bank, The Provincial Government of British Columbia and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

About the Artist: Diana Un-Jin Cho

Diana Un-Jin Cho is a fibre artist. She received a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design (now the Alberta University of the Arts) in 2007.

Spending her childhood in Korea then immigrating to Canada, her art is an attempted reconciliation of two dramatically different aesthetic traditions, one of which has a particularly rich textile tradition. Her recent artwork presents rhythmic juxtapositions of hues and lines inspired by the fourteenth century Chogakbo quilting in Korea. She enjoys working intuitively with both new and recycled materials to create sometimes harmonious, sometimes disjointed assemblage of emotive forms and colours to evoke the varied experiences of her life.

She currently lives and works in Calgary, AB.

About the Artist: Do-Hee Sung

Do-Hee Sung grew up in Korea and lived in Seoul for 25 years before moving to Canada.

Sung says her experience in Canada has strongly shaped her and is reflected in the form and function of her pieces. Living in Canada has broadened her ceramic perspective and taught her about Western culture and suitable utilitarian pottery.

The form of her pots reflects the soft contour of Korean traditional architecture. She also use Puncheong techniques from the Chosun Dynasty to show doily designs. She employ these techniques in order to recreate the harmony of her two cultures.

Sung adds that the function of her pots shows her experience in Canada, and the form and surface decoration reflects her cultural heritage and personal story. She says she would like her pieces to comfort and calm people just like the old Korean palaces calm and comfort her.

May 5 is Red Dress Day, a national day for honouring missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. It is a day to raise awareness and education about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit people and men.
 

On the day, people across North America hang red dresses in private and public spaces to remember missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual plus people in solidarity with family members and loved ones.

In honour of Red Dress Day, we are featuring two artworks by Faye HeavyShield from the AFA Art Collection: red dress and blood.

• click the arrow icons ( < or > ) above to scroll through images

Additional information about blood

The sculpture featured above is one component of a larger installation entitled blood. The installation reflected on Faye HeavyShield's ancestry and identity. 

The diverse elements of the installation included:

• drawings composed directly on the gallery walls
• a solid 3-dimensional rectangular form painted red and covered in miniature cloth red bundles
• the installation of string and red cloth bundles (featured)

These elements depicted the inseparability of the past and the present, and the communal and the personal. The installation explored memory, especially the ritualized and repetitive acts to preserve it.

In the words of the artist:

“My parents blessed me with language, kindness, and strength, my brothers and sisters taught me loyalty, my children give me hope. This is blood.”

About the Artist: Faye HeavyShield

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blood Nation.

She graduated from the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts) in 1985 and continued her studies at the University of Calgary.

Gaining prominence and recognition over the past 20 years, her work has been the subject of many solo shows, including major exhibitions of First Nations contemporary art. Her work is featured in collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, as well as the AFA Art Collection. She was one of three artists selected to receive the 2021 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2021.

In April 2022, it was announced that HeavyShield was the winnter of the $75,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This annual award recognizes an artist who has made outstanding contributions to Canadian visual arts. 

HeavyShield's work is a fusion of highly evolved personal and powerful imagery influenced by her Christian and Blood upbringing. Her minimalist installations are metaphors of the human body and a reflection of her personal experiences.

Image descriptions

red dress - A bright red dress is hung on a black mannequin stand facing front toward the viewer. The dress has mid-length sleeves splaid to each side, a smal V in the neckline, and a simple seam between bodice and skirt. Across the chest of the bodice are two lines of large white metal and paper tags that hang from a line of glass beads. 

blood - A long column of approximately 30 red strings hang from a ceiling in a gallery space, with hundreds of red cloth bundles tied to each string. Where the column of string meets the cement floor, the strings are laid out to spread away from the centre to create a kind of web around the column.

Every year on April 23, World Book and Copyright Day is celebrated to encourage enjoyment of reading books. Our featured artwork by Audrey Mabee says it all: there is "no such thing as too many books."
 

The artwork was acquired in 2009 through AFA's Art Acquisitions by Application program.

About the Artist:

Audrey Mabee enjoys experimentation with colour and space. Her work has been influenced primarily by artists with a unique drawing style, such as Modigliani. The strong colours of Hundertwasser and Matisse, the fantasies of Chagall and the exquisite patterns of Klimt have also been a major influence for her.

The subjects and colours she uses are intended to make you feel good and smile when you first look at her work. If you find something in them that also makes you think and wonder, all the better.

Image description

In the center of the artwork, a red haired woman is organizing items on the grey table in a room filled with varied colors of books stacked on five shelves on a bookshelf behind her. She is wearing a long sleeved, red shirt and purple vest, where the vest looks like aisles of colorful books. On the table is a beige table lamp with light on shining on the pink tulip, large green mat and an opened book. 

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.
 

~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Today is Shakespeare’s 457^th birthday! To celebrate, this week’s Work of the Week pays homage to an iconic flower mentioned in one of the most famous lines from one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Please enjoy Wild Rose by Annora Brown.

Did you know: April 23 is also the day of Shakespeare’s death in 1616?

Need more Shakespeare? Organizers of Edmonton’s Freewill Shakespeare Festival are currently planning this year’s iteration with two plays – Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth. Get more information on these productions here:  www.freewillshakespeare.com/shows.

About the Artist: Annora Brown (1899 - 1987)

Annora Brown's father was a member of the North West Mounted Police, and her mother was one of Fort Macleod's first schoolteachers.

As a child her mother had encouraged her to draw and paint. She attended Normal school in Calgary, and when she graduated she took a job teaching in a rural school. While on a visit to her aunt in Toronto in 1925 she decided to apply to study art at the Ontario College of Art. She was accepted and began her studies under well-known Canadian artists, Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald. One of her classmates was another Albertan, Euphemia McNaught.

After she moved back to Alberta she taught art at Mount Royal College in Calgary from 1929 to 1931. In 1931 she returned to Fort Macleod to look after her ailing mother. While in Fort Macleod she gave art classes in rural Southern Alberta for the Department of Extension of the University of Alberta.

She exhibited with the Alberta Society of Artists in 1931 at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede even though, at the time, women were not members of that organization. However, in order to comply with the regulations of the Societies Act of Alberta, the A.S.A could not legally exclude women and so she became the first female member of that organization, albeit a token one. She resigned in 1936.

From 1945 to 1950, she taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts. She was a member of the Calgary Sketch Club, an active member of the Handicraft Guild in Fort Macleod, and an Honourary member of the Alberta Handicraft Guild.

In 1971 she received an Honourary Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, from the University of Lethbridge. In 1965, she moved to Sidney, British Columbia on Vancouver Island where she continued to paint until her death in 1987.

Working mainly in oils, tempera and watercolour, she is best known for her paintings and drawings of the flowers and plants of southern Alberta, as well as paintings inspired by Indigenous legends. She illustrated many magazines and produced more than 600 images for nearly a dozen books. She was commissioned by the Glenbow Foundation to paint 200 pictures of different Alberta wildflowers, a project that took her over three years to complete. She designed a stained glass window for Christ Church in Fort Macleod and a mural for Crescent Heights High School in Calgary.

She was also an author, and in 1955 she published An Old Man's Garden a series of legends and stories associated with the flowers in the area drained by the Oldman River in Southern Alberta. Following this she published the autobiographical Sketches of Life. Her work is included in many public and private collections, and she received many national and provincial awards, prizes and honours.