CNCAC

                                                                                                                                                                                                       Photo: Karina Bergmans

Playing with words and exploring belonging: new projects at fieldwork, fall 2011

In partnership with the Ottawa-based, Coalition of New Canadians for Arts and Culture (CNCAC) as well as textile artist, Karina Bergmans, fieldwork is thrilled to host a very special day of creativity and fun on Sunday, September 11^th, 2011. This is a free, public event and fieldwork welcomes your attendance and participation!

Following last year’s successful G40 Wheels to the Fields Tour, fieldwork has partnered with the CNCAC again. On September 11^th, creative artists from around the world, who are now living in the Ottawa area, will come together to create a collective sculptural piece at fieldwork, a rural outdoor art space near Maberly, just west of Perth, Ontario.  The inspiration for the partnership between fieldwork  and the CNCAC has been to create opportunities for a diverse group of Ottawa-based artists to travel to rural Ontario, to explore the fall fieldwork installations, to network amongst each other, to share stories and skills, and to create sculpture.

Maria Gomez Umana, CNCAC Operations, Partners, and Members Director, describes the participatory work, Rooting through Creation, as “a day of collective creation in our search for identity as New Canadians. Led by Zimbabwean artist, Chikonzero Chazunguza, the group will construct several collective sculptures with all natural materials. The making of the sculptures will symbolize the individual and group process we go through as migrants who are working on rooting and thus become part of this land”. The finished pieces of art will remain on the fieldwork site as a record of the artistic experience.

Following the CNCAC’s Rooting Through Creation, (11:00am to 1:00pm) the group will have a pot-luck lunch. Bring your lunch and any natural materials you would like to contribute with for the sculpture. The event will be documented with photos and a short video which will be posted on the CNCAC website.

After lunch, fieldwork is pleased to host the opening of a new fall 2011 installation, OOH, AH, WOW by Karina Bergmans.  As Bergmans explains, “As a multi-disciplinary artist, I work in the mediums of fiber art, sculpture, and installation. I collaborate with the community through performance art and public craft projects. I thrive on redirecting the original purpose of material and recontextualizing it through a conceptual idea. Themes in my work are based on our collective experiences of language, communication, text and word play”.

The sculptures that Bergmans has created for fieldwork have challenged her to create work with hay and tarp materials, and in large scale, for an outdoor fall/winter season installation. In selecting words for this exhibition, Bergmans says,”I considered the palindrome (a word that can be spelled backwards and forwards i.e.: racecar), but I also looked at letters that can be flipped vertically and be the same letter i.e.: U, T, A, O, W, H, M, X, Y, V, because the work will be viewed from front and back. Influenced by graffitti style font and lettering, I chose the words OOH, AH, and WOW because they illicit excitement and isolate the graffiti tagging aesthetic to a bucolic environment”.

Karina Bergmans’ will present a brief discussion of her work followed by the opening from 2:00pm to 4:00pm.

Hope to see you out in the field!

In partnership with the Ottawa-based, Coalition of New Canadians for Arts and Culture (CNCAC), fieldwork was thrilled to host a very special day of creativity and fun on Saturday, June 26^th.

Billed as Canada’s G40 Wheels to the Fields Tour, with reference to the global events occurring in Toronto that week, a bus full of artists from around the world ventured out from Ottawa to the fieldwork site.  The idea for the event was to create opportunities for a diverse group of Ottawa-based artists to get out to rural Eastern Ontario, to explore the summer fieldwork installations (see other blog descriptions below), to network amongst each other and share stories and skills, and to create some art in a collaborative way. Musicians, photographers, dancers and visual artists participated.

On what promised to be a very soggy forecast, the 30 artists that boarded the bus for the activities were not disheartened. Guitars, maracas, drums and voices in hand, the group sang and danced despite the intermittent showers. Visual artists, Chikonzero Chazunguza and Hamid Ayoub led the group in a collective painting exercise. Canvases and rain don’t mix well, so a little shelter was erected under some canopy tents and tarps and the painting began. What a great activity! Some wonderfully fun and evocative canvases burst into colour and shape. Some used found plant bits and fastened them to the canvas, some used badges from the Badges for Brooke Valley installation and integrated them in the work. 

It was an inspirational day and a testament to the good-nature and positive spirit of artists who were determined to have fun, despite the wet weather.  As the weather improved, participants enjoyed walking through the forest, exploring the Canadian landscape and hearing from Susie Osler about her studio-based, ceramic art process.

fieldwork is encouraged by this pilot event to create opportunities for New Canadians to explore the site. With an overwhelmingly positive evaluation from participants of the Wheels to the Fields event, we are hoping to continue this partnership with CNCAC in the future.

Thank you to Chikonzero Chazunguza, Hamid Ayoub, Marcia Mathoo, JP Melville, Julie Hodgson, Susie Osler, Cam Gray, and the friendly staff support from the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO) and volunteers with the CNCAC. Thank you to photographer, Bill Shugar, for his wonderful photographs documenting the day!