Laurie Zinkand-Selles

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Laurie Zinkand-Selles’s work considers time and memory, contrasting the brevity of our human experience with that of historical/architectural structures and environments. Her recent series of photo based screen prints, draws on historical images of Toronto and considers the evolving nature of the city. They are narratives of the past within an architectural or geographical context. Her work is inspired by travel, photography, appropriated print imagery, pattern and texture. These are used to suggest the passage of time and to consider the layers of memories that accumulate, collectively and individually, in a given place or time.

Lost Station II, 2015. Photo-based screen print, coloured pencil, collage (found postcard), Maidstone. Image, 10”h x 12” w. Paper, 16.5 h x 19”w.

Biography

Laurie Zinkand-Selles is a visual artist living in Toronto. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Iowa where she received her BA in Fine Arts. She moved Toronto in 1981, where she studied at OCAD and at George Brown College. She has been exhibiting her work since 1997 and became a member at Open Studio in Toronto, in 2007. Her work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions and is included in private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States and the UK, including The National Bank of Canada.

To view more examples of Laurie Zinkand-Selles’s work or to contact the artist, visit her web site.

 

Zavi Lerman

 

Zavi Lerman, “Growing Gardens”. Drypoint Etching, Chine Colle Collage, 24 x 18 inches, 2013

 Zavi Lerman is an artist and teacher living in Toronto. She is currently a Master’s student at Columbia University where she is studying Art and Art Education. After completing her BFA at York University in 2005 she began printing at Open Studio. The artist wishes to thank Open Studio for providing a facility that makes the fun and wonder of printmaking accessible to many.

In her art and teaching practice Zavi is interested in the artistic development and creative process of both artists and non-artists. Cycles, patterns, evidence of growth or change, and play with mark making are topics she explores in her artwork.

Artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow’s book from 1899, Composition, challenges the artist to think of art as putting together “lines, masses, and colours to make harmonies.” For Dow, art is made up of line, notan (a Japanese word for light-dark), and colour.

Zavi embraces Dow’s challenge by marking the metal surface in intaglio, through various acid resists, photo-etching, fine drawing, banging, sanding, or drilling. She then plays with the repetition and arrangement of the images printed on assorted Japanese papers. No two prints are the same. They are all variations from a starting point that come together in different ways to be enjoyed and considered by the viewer.

Pomegranate and Garden Series

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Pomegranates are beautiful fruits enjoyed during the Jewish New Year to represent a fresh start, and that one should be fruitful. For me, pomegranates represent the way many experience art making and the creative process.  They are seasonal, can be hard to open and they can make a mess! Art, like pomegranates provides us with many seeds or ideas to plant, and both are nourishing.

Cloud Series

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Our plans and moods can be influenced by the weather. We can protect ourselves from the weather but we cannot control it. For these prints I worked the copper plate with different resists and acid concentrations to create lots of texture.

Ephemera Series

This series is based on found manufactured plastic packages that accumulate. There are multiples of them. I like to find out how these packages will print. What will they look like? What patterns emerge when they are repeated? How are they transformed?

-“Rectangles”, drypoint, collograph, chine colle, 12” x 18”

-“Circles”, drypoint, collograph, chine colle, 12” x 18”

Tree Series

Each person has his tree. Mine is dreamlike, changing, swirling and growing.

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Victoria Cowan

“The Upper Side,” by Victoria Cowan

Found in Translation

Left in the cellar during early days before language and maps. Translated notes without sequence, phrases sampled from necessity and echo, taste and rhythm, while searching for seeds.

One of the uses of art is to call our attention to an idea by including an element of dissonance in our work. I believe that art is created somewhere inside the space between the artist, the viewer and the materials. By including a text that doesn’t have an immediately obvious connection to the image, I hope that the viewer will take a moment to speculate on the meaning of the piece, thus making more conscious his/her part in the act of creation.

“Magic Air” by Victoria Cowan.

“Observing the Sky”, Victoria Cowan.

Many of the pieces in this series include a text blindly drawn as four single lines of material cut out of discarded books, catalogues, magazines, etc. I edit this random ‘poetry’ slightly to give it flow while deliberately maintaining its ambiguous nature. Though these lines are the departure point for the image, they are only lightly connected to the final work and are rarely the first element noticed by a viewer.

These pieces are all collages made from my own prints and a variety of other sources. Thus, as with the text, many of the visual elements are not what they once were.

“Timeless”, by Victoria Cowan.

Victoria Cowan is a prize-winning graduate of OCAD and Concordia University. Active both as a jurist and instructor, Victoria shows regularly and has won awards in printmaking and painting. Her work, teaching schedule, up-coming exhibitions and public lectures can be seen at her web site.